Historians generally identify 30 January 1933, when Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany and the Nazi persecution of Jews became state policy, as the beginning of the Holocaust in a broad sense.

Key starting points

  • Many scholars mark the start of the Holocaust as 30 January 1933, because Nazi antisemitic laws, propaganda, and the first concentration camp at Dachau followed soon after, turning discrimination into an organized system of persecution.
  • Others focus on 1939–1941 as the start of the Holocaust in its more “genocidal” phase, when World War II began, ghettos were created in occupied Poland, and mass shootings by mobile killing units (Einsatzgruppen) escalated into systematic mass murder.

From persecution to genocide

  • Between 1933 and 1939, Jews in Germany were stripped of rights, excluded from public life, and subjected to violence such as the November 1938 pogrom known as Kristallnacht, which many see as a major turning point toward more radical policies.
  • By late 1941 and into 1942, the Nazis moved from mass shootings and starvation to industrialized killing in extermination camps, with policies later summed up under the term “Final Solution,” which is why some define those years as the Holocaust’s lethal core.

How historians phrase it

  • A common way to put it is that the Holocaust “evolved,” beginning with state-sponsored persecution after January 1933 and culminating in full-scale genocide during World War II, especially from 1941 onward.
  • So, if someone asks “when did the Holocaust start,” the historically grounded answer is that it began with Nazi seizure of power in 1933, even though the organized mass killing phase developed a few years later.

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