The Holocaust: Six Million Jews Murdered
A state builds an industrial system to kill an entire people, and comes close to succeeding
Quick facts
- Period
- January 1933 - May 1945
- Jewish deaths
- Approximately six million
- Systematic killing phase
- 1941-1945
- Major killing centers
- Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Sobibor
What happened
Beginning when Adolf Hitler came to power in January 1933, Nazi Germany progressively stripped Jews of legal rights, property, and safety, escalating after the outbreak of World War II into what the regime called the Final Solution to the Jewish Question. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum defines the result plainly: the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million European Jews by Nazi Germany and its allies and collaborators, carried out between 1941 and 1945 through mass shootings, gas chambers, and purpose-built killing centers including Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, and Sobibor, alongside starvation, forced labor, and disease in ghettos and camps. The killing ended only with Germany's defeat in May 1945, by which point roughly two out of every three European Jews alive in 1939 had been murdered.
Why it matters
The Holocaust destroyed the demographic and cultural center of Ashkenazi Jewish life in Europe, including its major centers of religious scholarship, and it became the decisive argument for many Jews and non-Jews alike that a Jewish state was a matter of survival rather than choice, directly shaping the diplomatic and political conditions that led to Israel's founding just three years after the war ended.
How we know
The Holocaust is among the most thoroughly documented events in modern history, established through Nazi Germany's own administrative and transport records, survivor and perpetrator testimony, and physical evidence at camp and killing sites, synthesized and maintained by institutions including the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Yad Vashem.
Sources
- Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Introduction to the Holocaust · Reputable sourceencyclopedia.ushmm.org · The domain "encyclopedia.ushmm.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Pogroms · Reputable sourceencyclopedia.ushmm.org · The domain "encyclopedia.ushmm.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
See something wrong? . Corrections with a source get fixed fastest.
Related timelines
- World War II → · The Holocaust was carried out by Nazi Germany during World War II; see the World War II timeline for the wider war, the Nazi regime, and the Allied victory that ended the killing.