The Holocaust

Main contributor: MyHeritage team

The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was a systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators during World War II. The genocide took place between 1933 and 1945, targeting not only Jews but also other groups such as homosexuals, Communists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Slavs, and the handicapped^[1]. As a result, many Jewish families lost loved ones, and the task of tracing their family history became more challenging. This article aims to provide an overview of the Holocaust in the context of researching family history and offer resources for those seeking information about their ancestors who survived or perished in the Holocaust.

Etymology

The term "Holocaust" is derived from the Greek word "holokauston." This is a translation of the Hebrew word "olah," meaning a burnt sacrifice offered whole to God.^[2] The Greek word holokauston comes from the combination of holos (meaning whole) and kaustos (meaning burnt). In Hebrew, the word used to describe the Holocaust is Shoah, which means catastrophe. The word Shoah appears in the Bible more than a dozen times, always signifying complete and utter destruction. The term Shoah has its biblical root in the term "shoah u-meshoah" (wasteness and desolation) that appears in both the Book of Zephaniah (1:15) and the Book of Job (30:3).^[3] While both terms, Holocaust and Shoah, are used to describe the genocide perpetrated by Nazi Germany during World War II, they have different origins and meanings. Holocaust is derived from Greek and has a religious connotation related to burnt offerings, while Shoah is a Hebrew term with a biblical origin signifying complete destruction or catastrophe.^[4]

Historical overview

The Nazi rise to power

The Nazi Party, led by Adolf Hitler, emerged as one of several right-wing extremist political groups in Germany following World War I.^[5] In the early 1930s, the party gained significant support due to widespread economic hardship and political instability in the country. By November 1932, the Nazis had won 33.1 percent of the vote in parliamentary elections, making them the largest party in the Reichstag.^[6] As a result, a small circle around President Paul von Hindenburg came to believe that the Nazi Party was Germany's only hope of forestalling political chaos ending in a Communist takeover.^[7] In January 1933, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany, marking the beginning of the Nazi regime.

Anti-Jewish legislation and policy

Once in power, the Nazi regime implemented a series of brutal policies aimed at oppressing and persecuting Jewish people and other minorities.^[8] These policies were designed to completely exclude Jews from German society and strip them of their rights. Some of the most notorious anti-Jewish laws included the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, which stripped Jews of their German citizenship and prohibited marriages between Jews and non-Jews. Additionally, Jews were subjected to various forms of discrimination, including being barred from certain professions, schools, and public spaces.

Kristallnacht

Kristallnacht, also known as the "Night of Broken Glass," took place on November 9-10, 1938, throughout Germany, annexed Austria, and areas of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia recently occupied by German troops.^[9] This wave of violent anti-Jewish pogroms was instigated primarily by Nazi Party officials and members of the SA (Sturmabteilung: commonly known as Storm Troopers) and Hitler Youth.^[10] The name "Kristallnacht" refers to the shards of shattered glass that lined German streets in the wake of the pogrom—broken glass from the windows of synagogues, homes, and Jewish-owned businesses plundered and destroyed during the violence.^[11]

The events were triggered by the assassination of Ernst vom Rath, a German embassy official stationed in Paris, by Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old Polish Jew whose parents had been expelled from Germany.^[12] In response, Nazi storm troopers destroyed 7,000 Jewish businesses, set fire to more than 900 synagogues, killed 91 Jews, and deported some 30,000 Jewish men to concentration camps.^[13]

Kristallnacht marked a turning point in National Socialist antisemitic policy, as it signaled the German public's passivity towards more radical measures against Jews.^[14] Following the pogrom, anti-Jewish policy became increasingly concentrated in the hands of the SS, leading to forced emigration and eventually the deportation of the Jewish population "to the East".^[15] This event is considered a significant precursor to the Holocaust and the Nazis' attempt to annihilate the European Jews.

The onset of World War II and its effect on Jewish populations

The invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany in September 1939 marked the beginning of World War II.^[16] As the war progressed, the Nazis occupied numerous countries across Europe, bringing millions of Jews under their control. The invasion and occupation tactics employed by the Nazis were brutal and ruthless, with civilians often caught in the crossfire. In many cases, Jewish populations in occupied territories were forced into ghettos, where they faced overcrowding, starvation, and disease.^[17] The Einsatzgruppen, mobile killing units that followed the German army as it advanced eastward, were responsible for the mass murder of Jews and other targeted groups in the occupied Soviet Union.^[18] These units carried out brutal face-to-face killings in ditches, fields, beaches, ravines, and barns, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

The ‘Final Solution’

By early 1942, the annihilation of the Jews had become the formal policy of the Nazis.^[19] Operation Reinhard, a covert plan to "liquidate" the two million Jews under Nazi control in occupied Poland, was approved. This plan involved the deportation and murder of Jews living in ghettos, with the ultimate goal of exterminating all Jewish people in Europe. Three extermination camps, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka II, were established in occupied Poland as part of Operation Reinhard.^[20] Approximately 1.75 million men, women, and children were murdered at these camps, where they were deceived into entering gas chambers disguised as showers. In addition to the extermination camps, the Nazis also operated a network of concentration camps, which initially targeted political opponents and other perceived enemies of the state.^[21] As the war progressed, these camps increasingly became sites of forced labor and mass murder. Auschwitz, for example, served as both a concentration camp and an extermination camp, becoming the focal point of the enslavement and murder of Europe's Jews by 1944.

Liberation and aftermath

The Holocaust came to an end with the liberation of the concentration and extermination camps by Allied forces, beginning in July 1944.^[22] The scenes encountered by the liberating soldiers were horrifying, with thousands of emaciated and diseased prisoners still living in the camps. Many of these survivors continued to suffer from malnutrition and disease even after their liberation. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, the world was left to grapple with the immense scale of loss and suffering caused by the Nazi regime. For the survivors, rebuilding their lives often meant facing a future without their families, homes, or possessions. The Holocaust remains a stark reminder of the devastating consequences of unchecked hatred and prejudice.

Resources for researching ancestors affected by the Holocaust

MyHeritage

MyHeritage has partnered with a number of archives and resources to provide records relating to the Holocaust, including JewishGen and the Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. These records may include individuals' names, biographical details, photographs, and information about the submitters. Some collections of interest include:

JewishGen

JewishGen is a free online resource that provides a wealth of information for those researching their Jewish family history. The website features a Timeline of the Holocaust, Frequently Asked Questions, and descriptions of the 15,000 extermination, concentration, and other camps that existed during the Holocaust.^[23] Additionally, JewishGen's Yizkor Book Project Database lists all known yizkor books (memorial books created by Holocaust survivors) by location and provides links to translated versions available on the website.^[24]

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM)

The USHMM is the United States' national institution for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust history.^[25] The museum offers a variety of resources for genealogists and family historians, including the Holocaust Survivors and Victims Resource Center, which maintains a searchable database of survivors and victims, as well as the Benjamin and Vladka Meed Registry of Holocaust Survivors.^[26] The USHMM also provides access to digitized Holocaust records, such as Jews' ID cards, applications for postwar aid, and lists of ghetto inhabitants.^[27]

Yad Vashem

Located in Jerusalem, Yad Vashem is the world center for Holocaust research and commemoration.^[28] As of March 29, 2023, Yad Vashem has collected approximately 4.8 million identities of Jewish Holocaust victims. They expect to reach a benchmark of five million names in the next few years. In 2022 alone, Yad Vashem managed to locate some 40,000 additional Holocaust victims' names. According to expert estimates, in the coming years, some 200,000-300,000 names could be added to the Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names, leading to a total of more than five million identities out of the estimated six million victims of the Holocaust.^[29] Yad Vashem's archive contains more than 210 million pages of material, including more than 131,000 testimonies, and 500,000 photos as well as over 90,000 titles and thousands of periodicals.^[30]

Concentration camp archives

The Nazis were meticulous record-keepers, and though they did try to destroy the evidence of the genocide, some records did survive. Concentration camps such as Dachau, Bergen-Belsen , Flossenberg, Grosen-Rosen, Ravensbrook, Stutthof, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Terezin, and Auschwitz have their own archives and they can be contacted to request information about people who were imprisoned there.

Additional resources

The Jewish Historical Institute

References

[1] Introduction to the Holocaust

[2] ttps://learn.saylor.org/mod/book/view.php?id=54932&chapterid=40591

[3] ttps://www.haaretz.com/jewish/holocaust-remembrance-day/2019-05-01/ty-article/.premium/shoah-how-a-biblical-term-became-the-hebrew-word-for-holocaust/0000017f-dbbf-d3ff-a7ff-fbbf41b70000

[4] ttps://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1983/04/10/what-the-term-holocaust-has-come-to-mean/1c0dc753-3013-4209-ac72-425fc15595b1/

[5] ttps://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-nazi-rise-to-power

[6] ttps://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-nazi-rise-to-power

[7] ttps://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-nazi-rise-to-power

[8] ttps://www.hmd.org.uk/resource/antisemitic-laws/

[9] ttps://www.britannica.com/event/Kristallnacht

[10] ttps://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/kristallnacht

[11] ttps://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/goebbels-kristallnacht/

[12] ttps://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/kristallnacht

[13] ttps://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/goebbels-kristallnacht/

[14] ttps://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/kristallnacht

[15] ttps://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/kristallnacht

[16] ttps://www.hmd.org.uk/resource/the-effect-of-the-second-world-war/

[17] ttps://www.iwm.org.uk/history/what-was-the-holocaust

[18] ttps://www.iwm.org.uk/history/what-was-the-holocaust

[19] ttps://www.iwm.org.uk/history/what-was-the-holocaust

[20] ttps://www.iwm.org.uk/history/what-was-the-holocaust

[21] ttps://www.iwm.org.uk/history/what-was-the-holocaust

[22] ttps://www.iwm.org.uk/history/what-was-the-holocaust

[23] ttps://www.jewishgen.org/

[24] ttps://www.jewishgen.org/Yizkor/database.html

[25] ttps://www.ushmm.org/

[26] ttps://www.ushmm.org/remember/resources-holocaust-survivors-victims

[27] ttps://www.ushmm.org/online/world-memory-project/

[28] ttps://www.yadvashem.org/

[29] ttps://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-735776

[30] ttps://www.yadvashem.org/collections/about-the-online-documents-archive.html

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