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The Holocaust: ghettos, killing and remembrance

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During the war the Nazis moved from persecution to mass murder. This lesson covers how it happened, how people resisted, and why we remember.

Ghettos and mass shootings

After invading Poland in 1939, the Nazis forced Jews into ghettos: sealed-off, overcrowded parts of towns. In the Warsaw ghetto more than 400,000 people were crammed together, and many died of hunger and disease.
After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, mobile killing units called Einsatzgruppen, with help from local collaborators, shot Jewish men, women and children in mass shootings. More than a million Jews were murdered this way.

The death camps

On 20 January 1942, at the Wannsee Conference, senior Nazi officials met to coordinate what they called the 'Final Solution': the plan to murder all of Europe's Jews.
Jews were deported by train from across Europe to death camps in occupied Poland, such as Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Most were murdered in gas chambers soon after arriving.
About 1.1 million people were murdered at Auschwitz, around 1 million of them Jews.
In all, around six million Jews were murdered, about two out of every three Jews in Europe. The Nazis also persecuted and murdered Roma and Sinti people, disabled people, and others they targeted.

Resistance, liberation and remembrance

Jews resisted in many ways: secretly keeping records, running schools and prayer in the ghettos, escaping, and armed revolts such as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of April 1943.
Some non-Jews risked their lives to hide or rescue Jews.
Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz on 27 January 1945. British troops liberated Bergen-Belsen in April 1945.
Leading Nazis were tried at Nuremberg in 1945 to 1946. The word genocide was created in 1944 to describe crimes like this. The UK marks Holocaust Memorial Day on 27 January each year.
Worked example

Why is it important to study and remember the Holocaust?

  1. It shows how prejudice, made into government policy step by step, can end in mass murder.
  2. It honours the millions of individual people who were murdered, and those who survived and resisted.
  3. It warns us to challenge hatred and protect human rights today.

Answer: To remember the victims as people, to understand how genocide happened, and to recognise and challenge prejudice today.

Key idea

Ghettos from 1939; mass shootings from June 1941. Wannsee Conference (20 January 1942) coordinated the 'Final Solution'. Death camps included Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Around six million Jews were murdered; Roma and Sinti, disabled people and others were also targeted. Resistance included the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (1943). Auschwitz liberated 27 January 1945, now Holocaust Memorial Day.

The interactive lesson includes the diagrams for this topic.

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