WHAT WAS THE HOLOCAUST?
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The Holocaust (Shoah) was a unique event in 20th century history. It evolved slowly between 1933 and 1945. It began with discrimination; then the Jews were separated from their communities and persecuted; and finally they were treated as less than human beings and murdered.
During the Second World War the Nazis sought to murder the entire Jewish population of Europe and to destroy its culture. In 1941 there were about 11 million Jews living in Europe; by May 1945 the Nazis had murdered six million of them. One-and-a-half million of these were children.
WHAT WERE CAMPS?
In the early years of the Nazi regime, the National Socialist government established concentration camps to detain real and imagined political and ideological opponents. Camps used as detention and labour centres, and six death camps, which were camps used almost exclusively as "death centres". These camps were Auschwitz - Birkenau, Chelmno, Treblinks, Belzec, Sobibor and Majdanek.
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CHELMNO
Chełmno extermination camp, built during World War II, was the first of the Nazi German extermination camps.
AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU
The Auschwitz concentration camp complex was the largest of its kind established by the Nazi regime.
TREBLINKA
Treblinka was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II.
BELZEC
Bełżec was a Nazi German extermination camp built by the SS for the purpose of implementing the secretive Operation Reinhard, the plan to eradicate Polish Jewry, a key part of the "Final Solution"
SOBIBOR
Sobibór was a Nazi German extermination camp built and operated by the SS near the railway station of Sobibór during World War II.
MAJDANEK
Majdanek, or KL Lublin, was a Nazi German concentration and extermination camp built and operated by the SS on the outskirts of the city of Lublin during the German occupation of Poland in World War II.