The Jerusalem Post - Israel News

Holocaust

The Holocaust, or the Shoah, is defined by Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Center, Yad Vashem, as the "sum total of all anti-Jewish actions carried out by the Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945." Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany systematically killed at least 6 million European Jews, approximately two-thirds of Europe's pre-war Jewish population, during the Holocaust. The Nazi regime also murdered Roma, disabled, homosexuals, Slavs, Jehovah's Witnesses, political opponents and black people. Nazi regime & the rise to power The collapse of Germany's Weimar Republic, founded after the First World War, amid economic strife and political violence, saw the rise of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazi Party) under the leadership of Adolf Hitler. Despite a failed putsch in 1923, the Nazi Party became the largest party in Germany in the 1930s and Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany in January 1933 by German President Paul von Hindenburg. Although Hitler had risen to power through democratic means, Nazi Germany pursued a path of institutionalized violence and political suppression, racial propaganda and persecution of non-Aryan minority groups. From April 1933, antisemitic legislation was implemented and Jews boycotted. In 1935, the Nuremberg laws were announced, excluding Jews from German citizenship and marriage with Germans, thereby institutionalizing much of the racism that was held to be important in Nazi ideology. The late 1930s saw intense antisemitic policies implemented by the Nazi regime, culminating in Kristallnacht (The Night of Broken Glass) in November 1938, attacks on the Jews of Vienna following the annexation of Austria and mass arrests and deportations. World War II The Second World War began when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. Shortly afterwards, German forces began the process of confining Jewish Poles in ghettos. The Nazi occupation of the USSR and eastern Poland led to the murder of many Jews, with those remaining confined to ghettos. The establishment of concentration camps, initially for "undesirables" and political opponents, was built up into a network of hundreds of concentration and extermination camps in German-occupied territory. The first extermination of prisoners at the infamous Auschwitz camp took place in September 1941. Final Solution The "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" was formulated by the Nazi leadership at the January 1942 Wannsee Conference with the goal of the annihilation of the Jewish people. Jews from across Europe were deported en masse to concentration and extermination camps and murdered by an extensive system of gas chambers, death marches and killing squads. Only 10% of Polish Jewry, who numbered over 3 million before the war, survived the Holocaust. Although there is no exact figure for the number of Jews murdered in the Holocaust, the number of victims was approximately six million. Post-Holocaust The horrors of the Holocaust were only fully understood with the liberation of the camps by Allied soldiers. Refusing or unable to return to their countries of origin, many survivors remained in Displaced Person's camps in Germany, Austria and Italy. The British refused to permit survivors to emigrate to Palestine, and it was therefore only in 1948 that the newly-established State of Israel absorbed many of the displaced survivors. Others made Western countries their new home. Sadly, the number of Holocaust survivors that remain alive and able to recount first-hand their experiences of the horrors of persecution are dwindling all the time. International Holocaust Memorial Day is commemorated annually on 27 January. The day remembers the six million Jews murdered and the millions of people killed in Nazi persecution and subsequent genocides across the world.

Milan and Como in spring: History, fashion, and more

Exploring springtime in Milan and Como: From the Duomo’s marble majesty to the Galleria’s fashion wonders.

|ByLAURI DONAHUE
LAKE COMO at Sunset
SONNY BAURNFREUND speaks outside the home of the grandparents he never met.

A name and a place: After 83 years, 52 descendants honor Holocaust victims in Antwerp

'Growing up, it was clear to me that I would live in Israel – it felt like the most fitting response to what my grandparents endured.'

|ByDEBBIE FRIEDMAN
Anne Frank diary in Madame Tussauds museum on April 25, 2017 in Amsterdam Netherlands.

This week in Jewish history: Anne Frank’s first diary entry, Israel bombs Iraqi nuke reactor

A highly abridged weekly version of Dust & Stars – Today in Jewish History.

|BySTEVEN DRUCKER
Holocaust survivors light memorial candles on the day Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump participates in an event commemorating the one-year anniversary of the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, at his golf resort in Doral, Florida, U.S., October 7, 2024.

Why this Holocaust survivors son thanks President Trump - opinion

My Holocaust survivor roots taught me to sense danger early. On October 7, that sense returned

|ByHARRY ZIMMERMAN 

Survive, in Order to Create: Exhibiton launched in Ma'ale Adumim art museum

“The Destroyed World” hall presents the destroyed Jewish life. Apart from the killing of millions of people, the Holocaust involved the destruction of of a whole world of Jewish spirit and identity.

JUNE 3, 2025
ByALEK D. EPSTEIN
‘In Memory of the Victims of the Rumbula Forest Massacre’ by Haim Aronstam, 1973.

The comeback of the conservative-sovereigntist Right in Poland - analysis

The 43-year-old historian, director of the Polish National Remembrance Institute (IPN), won the presidential race, despite polls foreseeing his defeat.

JUNE 2, 2025
Presidential campaign posters in Poland.

German Jewish educator who saved children from Holocaust to be subject of animated documentary

"The Fredy Hirsch Story," will feature original research conducted by New York Times editor Jody Becker and consultation from Hirsch's niece.

JUNE 2, 2025
TEACHER AND Zionist youth movement leader Fredy Hirsch, who ran the children’s block in Auschwitz-Birkenau

Another White Paper and moral stain: Britain is betraying the Jewish people again - opinion

Britain must reaffirm its alliance with the Jewish state not only by reiterating Israel’s right to self-defense, but by investigating and putting an end to UK-Hamas ties.

JUNE 1, 2025
ByDEBORAH DANINO HARKHAM
PRO-ISRAEL counter-demonstrators attend a march in London last month. Britain must not only reiterate Israel’s right to self-defense, but also investigate and put an end to UK-Hamas ties, the writer demands. (

'Dangerous distortion,' Auschwitz Museum calls out AI-generated images of Holocaust victims

The museum claims that the Facebook page 90's History has been producing AI images of Auschwitz victims, using "real content," from its website.

JUNE 1, 2025
Screenshot of an image published by the Facebook page 90's History (left), which the Auschwitz Museum claims has been AI-generated using information and photographs (right) from its website.

'The Jews, 5,000 Years and Counting:' Jewish history can be funny - review

The Jews: 5,000 Years and Counting achieves an incredible feat: It covers our entire “epic journey through time, space, and guilt” in 224 pages.

JUNE 1, 2025
BEN-GURION AIRPORT security, Terminal 1, during the COVID-19 pandemic

Antisemitic vandal defaces Holocaust memorial, synagogues with green paint in Paris

The Wall of the Righteous, dedicated to 3,900 individuals who helped rescue Jews in France during the Holocaust, was one of the vandalized sites.

MAY 31, 2025
A synagogue in france that was vandalized with green paint, May 31, 2025.

Poland votes for its next president, with Polish-Jewish history on the ballot

Voters are casting their ballots in the decisive runoff between Rafał Trzaskowski, the liberal-centrist mayor of Warsaw, and Karol Nawrocki, a right-wing historian rewriting Holocaust history.

MAY 31, 2025
BySHIRA LI BARTOV/JTA
Presidential campaign posters in Poland.

New doc tells story of Holocaust survivor, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel

An Elie Wiesel documentary presents a compelling portrait of a Holocaust survivor who bore witness.

MAY 31, 2025
IMAGES FROM the documentary ‘Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire.’

German minister: Future weapons deliveries to Israel depend on Gaza situation

"We are examining this and, if necessary, we will authorize further arms deliveries based on this examination," Wadephul said.

MAY 30, 2025
ByREUTERS
German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul lays flowers in honor of shooting victims Israeli Embassy workers Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, US, May 28, 2025.

Sa'ar: The new antisemitism targets the State of Israel, seeks to eliminate Jewish state

Minister Gideon Sa'ar made two speeches at the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Conference in Jerusalem - which he chaired - on Tuesday and Wednesday.

MAY 28, 2025
Newly appointed Israeli minister of Foreign Affairs Gideon Saar attends a replacing ceremony at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Jerusalem on November 10, 2024.