The Holocaust was the systematic, state-organized persecution and murder of about six million Jewish people—and hundreds of thousands of others—by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945.

Quick Scoop: What Happened in the Holocaust?

From 1933 to 1945, the Nazi dictatorship in Germany turned racist antisemitic ideas into government policy, aiming to remove Jews from society and ultimately to kill them. This genocide unfolded step by step, moving from discrimination to segregation, then mass shootings, and finally industrialized killing in death camps.

How it Started (1933–1939)

  • 1933: Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party took power in Germany and quickly turned the country into a dictatorship.
  • Jews were blamed for Germany’s problems and targeted by laws that removed their civil rights, jobs, and ability to participate in public life.
  • The 1935 Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of citizenship and forbade marriage or relationships between Jews and so‑called “Aryan” Germans.
  • November 1938: Kristallnacht (“Night of Broken Glass”) saw synagogues burned, Jewish businesses smashed, and thousands of Jews arrested and sent to early concentration camps.

These years laid the foundation for mass murder by isolating Jews socially, economically, and legally.

From Persecution to Mass Murder (1939–1941)

  • September 1939: Germany invaded Poland, starting World War II and bringing millions more Jews under Nazi rule.
  • Jews in occupied Poland and later elsewhere were forced into overcrowded ghettos, starved, and exploited as forced labour.
  • Many died from hunger, disease, and harsh conditions even before the killing centers were built.

In June 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union, and mobile killing squads called Einsatzgruppen , with help from local collaborators, began mass shootings of Jewish men, women, and children, murdering over a million people in fields, forests, and ravines.

The “Final Solution” and Death Camps (1942–1945)

  • January 20, 1942: At the Wannsee Conference, senior Nazi officials coordinated the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”—a plan to murder all Jews in Europe.
  • The Nazis built or expanded killing centers (death camps) in occupied Poland: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, Chelmno, and Majdanek.
  • Jews from across Europe were deported in cattle cars—crammed trains without food, water, or toilets—to these camps.

In these camps:

  • Most deportees were murdered on arrival in gas chambers disguised as showers.
  • Others were kept temporarily for forced labor in brutal conditions that few survived.
  • Around 2.5 million people were murdered in the gas chambers of these six main death camps alone.

Historians estimate that Nazi Germany and its collaborators murdered about six million Jews—around two‑thirds of Europe’s prewar Jewish population.

Other Groups Targeted

The Holocaust primarily targeted Jews, but the Nazi regime also persecuted and murdered many other groups.

These included:

  • Roma and Sinti (often called “Gypsies”), against whom the Nazis also carried out genocide.
  • People with disabilities, many of whom were killed in the so‑called “euthanasia” program using gas and lethal injections.
  • Political opponents (such as communists and social democrats), Jehovah’s Witnesses, and others who resisted or did not fit Nazi ideology.
  • Many Slavic civilians and prisoners of war, especially in Eastern Europe, were also killed or deliberately starved.

While not all of these crimes are called “the Holocaust” in a strict sense, they were part of the broader system of Nazi terror and mass murder.

How It Ended and Why It’s Remembered

  • As Allied armies advanced in 1944–1945, they liberated camps and exposed the scale of the crimes to the world.
  • After the war, major Nazi leaders were tried at Nuremberg for crimes against humanity and war crimes.
  • Survivors struggled to rebuild their lives, often with no remaining family or community.

The Holocaust is remembered today as a warning about where unchecked hatred, racism, antisemitism, and authoritarian power can lead if societies do not defend human rights and the equal value of every person.

TL;DR: The Holocaust was the Nazi-led genocide during World War II in which about six million Jews—and many others—were systematically persecuted and murdered through ghettos, mass shootings, and death camps between 1933 and 1945.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.