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  3. Holocaust
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Holocaust - Topics

The Holocaust, during which some 6 million Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and other people were systematically exterminated by Nazi Germany during World War II, was one of the most horrific war crimes ever committed.

Jews wearing Star of David badges, Lodz Ghetto, Poland, World War II, 1940-1944. The Nazis forced Jews into over-crowded ghettos from which thousands were deported to the death camps.

Anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitism in Medieval Europe Many of the anti-Semitic practices seen in Nazi Germany actually have their roots in medieval Europe. In many European cities, Jews were confined to certain neighborhoods called ghettos. Some countries also required Jews to distinguish themselves from Christians with a yellow badge worn on their garment, or a special hat called […]

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2:17 minTV-PG

Auschwitz

As Allied troops move across Europe, they encounter the horror of thousands of prisoners in Nazi camps.

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Raoul Wallenberg - Swedish architect, businessman and diplomat, who saved thousands of Jews from the Holocaust in German-occupied Hungary. Pictured: Raoul Wallenberg while serving as Sweden's special envoy in Budapest, Hungary, in 1944.

Raoul Wallenberg

Childhood of Privilege Raoul Gustav Wallenberg was born near Stockholm, Sweden, on August 4, 1912. His parents both hailed from prominent Swedish families, whose members included bankers, bishops, diplomats and professors. Wallenberg’s father, Raoul Oskar Wallenberg (1888-1912), a lieutenant in the Swedish navy, had died of an illness three months before his son’s birth. His […]

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Jewish business destroyed during Kristallnacht, 1938

Kristallnacht

Hitler and Anti-Semitism Soon after Adolf Hitler became Germany’s chancellor in January 1933, he began instituting policies that isolated German Jews and subjected them to persecution. Among other things, Hitler’s Nazi Party, which espoused extreme German nationalism and anti-Semitism, commanded that all Jewish businesses be boycotted and all Jews be dismissed from civil service posts. […]

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Anne Frank, the Holocaust

Anne Frank

Who Was Anne Frank? Anne Frank was born Annelies Marie Frank in Frankfurt, Germany, on June 12, 1929, to Edith Hollander Frank (1900-45) and Otto Frank (1889-1980), a prosperous businessman. Less than four years later, in January 1933, Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany and he and his Nazi government instituted a series of measures […]

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Armenian Genocide, survivors gathered in the barracks at Aleppo, c1918.The Armenian Genocide refers to the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I. It was implemented through wholesale massacres and deportations, with the deportations consisting of forced marches under conditions designed to lead to the death of the deportees. The total number of resulting Armenian deaths is generally held to have been between one and one and a half million. Other ethnic groups were similarly attacked by the Ottoman Empire during this period, including Assyrians and Greeks, and some scholars consider those events to be part of the same policy of extermination. It is widely acknowledged to have been one of the first modern genocides, as scholars point to the systematic, organized manner in which the killings were carried out to eliminate the Armenians, and it is the second most-studied case of genocide after the Holocaust. The word genocide was coined in order to describe these events. (Photo by: Pictures From History/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Genocide

What is Genocide? The word “genocide” owes its existence to Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish lawyer who fled the Nazi occupation of Poland and arrived in the United States in 1941. As a boy, Lemkin had been horrified when he learned of the Turkish massacre of hundreds of thousands of Armenians during World War I. Lemkin later […]

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History of ethnic cleansing, Bosnian War refugeesJon Jones/Sygma/Sygma via Getty Images

Ethnic Cleansing

WHAT IS ETHNIC CLEANSING? The phrase “ethnic cleansing” came into wide usage in the 1990s, to describe the treatment suffered by particular ethnic groups during conflicts that erupted after the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia. After the republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina declared its independence in March 1992, Bosnian Serb forces waged a systematic campaign—including forced deportation, […]

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