Holocaust

During the Holocaust, Nazi Germany exterminated some 6 million Jews, as well as millions of Roma people, political dissenters, homosexuals and others, in one of the most horrific war crimes ever committed.

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During the Holocaust, Jewish photographer Henryk Ross used his camera as a tool of resistance against the Nazi regime by documenting the harsh realities inside the ghetto of Lodz, Poland.

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Auschwitz, in the village of Brzezinka, Poland, built in 1942 during the Holocaust. (Credit: Scott Barbour/Getty Images)

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Featured Overview

During the Holocaust, Jewish photographer Henryk Ross used his camera as a tool of resistance against the Nazi regime by documenting the harsh realities inside the ghetto of Lodz, Poland.

3:52m watch

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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, sometimes called history’s oldest hatred, is hostility or prejudice against Jewish people. The Nazi Holocaust is history’s most extreme example of anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism did not begin with Adolf Hitler—Anti-Semitic attitudes date back to ancient times.

Broken glass.

The “Night of Broken Glass” was a Nazi pogrom that foreshadowed the Holocaust.

While some had been driven from the camp, thousands of emaciated prisoners had been left behind to die.

A mother sits with five of her children at a Displaced Persons Camp in Europe.

In the wake of the Holocaust, the Allies set up the camps throughout Europe to offer temporary homelands to traumatized populations.

Holocaust Remembrance Day

History Shorts: The Moment Behind International Holocaust Remembrance Day

Of all the horrific days throughout the Holocaust, the day many choose to remember it by is the anniversary of a liberation.

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Holocaust
Spectators show the Hitler salute during the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics on August 1, 1936 in Berlin.

Adolf Hitler oversaw an Olympic Games that was staged to glorify himself and Nazi-led Germany.

Oskar Schindler

Oskar Schindler saved more than 1,000 Jews during the Holocaust—while undeniably heroic, his real story is also more complicated.

A mother sits with five of her children at a Displaced Persons Camp in Europe.

In the wake of the Holocaust, the Allies set up the camps throughout Europe to offer temporary homelands to traumatized populations.

Of all the horrific days throughout the Holocaust, the day many choose to remember it by is the anniversary of a liberation.

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When US Troops Liberated Dachau Concentration Camp

The wrenching images and first-hand testimonies of Dachau recorded by U.S. soldiers brought the horrors of the Holocaust home to America.

While some had been driven from the camp, thousands of emaciated prisoners had been left behind to die.

Auschwitz: Numbers Reveal the Horrors of WWII's Deadliest Concentration Camp

How many were killed, how many children were sent to the site and the numbers of people who attempted to escape are among the facts that reveal the scale of crimes committed at Auschwitz.

Adolf Hitler Tried (and Failed) to Be an Artist

Long before he rose to become a ruthless dictator, the Nazi leader was a struggling young artist.

Anne Frank's Diary

Publishers were initially reluctant to publish the teenage author’s chronicle of life during the Holocaust. They thought readers were not ready to confront the horrors of World War II.

Dr. Death

Horrifying medical experiments on twins helped Nazis justify the Holocaust.

The M.S. St Louis

The more than 900 passengers of the M.S. St. Louis were denied entry by immigration authorities in multiple countries in the lead-up to the Holocaust.

Sophie Tucker

“My Yiddishe Momme" became an anthem for new immigrants in the 1920s. Victimized Jews later sang it in concentration camps.

Pope Pius XII

The controversial pope stayed silent on the fate of Jews during the Holocaust.

Normal Danes sprang into action and pulled off an astounding feat.

The desperate parents of Kindertransport refugees paid a terrible price for their lives.

Kristallnacht

The 1938 pogrom sparked harsh criticism, but not much action.

Kristallnacht

Mobs attacked 7,500 Jewish-owned stores and businesses and killed 96 people.

Seventy years after Americans liberated Dachau, Joshua Kaufman and Daniel Gillespie reconnect.

Joshua Kaufman shares his outlook on life since being liberated from Dachau on April 29, 1945.

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Auschwitz

Allied troops entering former Nazi territory at the close of World War II confronted heartbreaking scenes of unthinkable atrocities.

Virginia Hall

A diplomat who used the power of paperwork, a 16-year-old girl who shot Nazis from her bicycle and a teacher who hid Jewish children in baskets were among those who risked their lives to save others during World War II.

Freddie and Truus Oversteegen sometimes ambushed Nazi officers from their bicycles—and never revealed how many they had assassinated.

Kristine Keren's Green Sweater during the Holocaust

It was knit by the girl's grandmother, who was then killed by Nazis, and it kept the child warm as the child endured incredible hardship.

Carl Lutz

Carl Lutz managed to save half of Budapest's Jewish population by exploiting the Nazi's respect for paperwork.

Waitlists, bombings and restrictive U.S. immigration policies thwarted Anne Frank's family's chances of escaping the Holocaust.

A recently released book details an overheard conversation with Nazi officials as new evidence for an old theory.

Anne Frank

The new material reveals a different side of the murdered teenage author.

Jews captured during the Warsaw ghetto being marched to a collecting point for deportation.

The Treblinka uprising put a stop to the Holocaust’s second deadliest camp.

Johan van Hulst

Johan van Hulst saved hundreds of lives—but was haunted by his inability to do more.

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, sometimes called history’s oldest hatred, is hostility or prejudice against Jewish people. The Nazi Holocaust is history’s most extreme example of anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism did not begin with Adolf Hitler—Anti-Semitic attitudes date back to ancient times.

A warning sign near the entrance to the former Auschwitz camp. (Credit: Artur Widak/NurPhoto/Getty Images)

The Sonderkommando participated in the Nazi killing machine—and made sure the world knew what happened at Auschwitz.

In the winter of 1945, the Nazis tried to destroy the evidence of the Holocaust.

Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911), English scientist who studied heredity, founder of science of eugenics.

Eugenics is the now-discredited practice of “improving” the human race and reducing the impact of hereditary disease by mating people with desirable traits.

Funeral of Ernst vom Rath, a German diplomat assassinated in 1938 by 17-year-old Herschel Grynszpan. The assassination triggered the violent attack on German Jews called 'Kristallnacht', the Night of Broken Glass. (Credit: Everett Collection Historical/Alamy Stock Photo)

Ernst vom Rath’s murder triggered a two-day pogrom against German Jews.

Anne Frank

Multiple people have been suspected of informing the Nazis of the Franks' hiding place, while one theory suggests it may have simply been bad luck.

Young Nazis Saluting During March, 1934

When Helmuth Hübener learned the truth about Nazi Germany, he spread the word—and paid the ultimate price.

Henryk Ross risked his life to take thousands of secret photographs inside the ghetto at Lodz, Poland.

She lived an unspeakable hell. As both an inmate and head women’s doctor at Auschwitz, Dr. Gisella Perl saved hundreds of lives with her bare hands.

Broken glass.

The “Night of Broken Glass” was a Nazi pogrom that foreshadowed the Holocaust.

The Ghetto Heroes Monument commemorating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of WWII.

Find out more about the largest, armed Jewish resistance movement of World War II.

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 (1912- c. 1947) was a Swedish businessman-turned-diplomat based in Budapest, who was responsible for the rescue of thousands–some estimates are as high as 100,000–of Hungarian Jews from extermination by the Nazis.

Jewish business destroyed during Kristallnacht, 1938

Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, was a prolonged series of violent attacks on Jewish people, homes, businesses and synagogues in 1938 Germany.

TOPSHOT-WWII-CONCENTRATION CAMP-AUSCHWITZTOPSHOT - A photo taken 27 May 1944 in Oswiecim, showing Nazis selecting prisoners on the platform at the entrance of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. The Auschwitz camp was established by the Nazis in 1940, in the suburbs of the city of Oswiecim which, like other parts of Poland, was occupied by the Germans during the Second World War. The name of the city of Oswiecim was changed to Auschwitz, which became the name of the camp as well. Over the following years, the camp was expanded and consisted of three main parts: Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, and Auschwitz III-Monowitz. Red Army soldiers liberated the few thousand prisoners whom the Germans had left behind in the camp, 27 January 1945. AFP PHOTO/ YAD VASHEM ARCHIVES (Photo by Yad Vashem Archives / AFP) (Photo by -/Yad Vashem Archives/AFP via Getty Images)

Auschwitz, also known as Auschwitz-Birkenau, opened in 1940 and was the largest of the Nazi concentration and death camps.

The entrance gate with the inscription "Arbeit macht frei" can be seen at the Dachau concentration camp memorial site. US soldiers liberated more than 30,000 people imprisoned in the camp on April 29, 1945.

Dachau, a concentration camp that opened in Nazi Germany in 1933 after Adolf Hitler seized power, held thousands of Jews, political prisoners and others.

Anne Frank, the Holocaust

German Jewish teenager Anne Frank died in the Holocaust, but her memoir from her family's two years in hiding, published as "The Diary of Anne Frank," has been read by millions worldwide.

Watch towers surrounded by high voltage fences at Auschwitz II-Birkenau which was built in March 1942. The camp was liberated by the Soviet army on January 27, 1945.

The Holocaust was the persecution and murder of millions of Jews, Romani people, political dissidents and homosexuals by the German Nazi regime from 1933-1945.

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)

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 massac...

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

Ethnic cleansing is the attempt to get rid of—through deportation, displacement or even mass killing—members of an ethnic group.