International Holocaust Remembrance Day, or the International Day in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, is an international memorial to all the people who suffered and died during the Holocaust of World War II. It is a day meant to honor over six million men, women, and children, murdered by genocide in European ghettos, concentration camps, mass shootings, and extermination camps.
The Holocaust, known as the shoah in Hebrew, was the attempt by the Nazi Fascist Party in Germany to commit a mass genocide focusing on Jews, LGBTQ, disabled people, and political dissidents during World War II. The Nazis regime assumed power under Adolf Hitler in 1933. They used antisemitism, racist propaganda, racist legislation, and physical persecution to commit systematic murder culminating in the deaths of millions of people, most of whom were Jews.
The German Nazis believed that in order to “improve” the genetic make-up of their German population they had to mercilessly persecute people they deemed to be “genetically inferior”. The individuals Nazis targeted for persecution included Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Gay people, Roma/Sinti people, Black people, Slavic people, and those people considered mentally or physically disabled.
In 1941, the Nazis enacted ‘The Final Solution to the Jewish Problem’ which legislated Nazi governmental procedures for committing systematic murder of Europe’s Jews and other “Undesirable” people. Death squads called ‘Einsatzgruppen’ swept through Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, killing Jews by firing squad into mass graves. By the end of 1941, the first concentration camp, ‘Chelmno’ in Poland, was established, which gave the Nazis Party an opportunity to accelerate this genocide on an massive scale between 1941 and 1945.
By the end of 1945, Nazi Germany and their Axis power allies established more than 44,000 concentration camps and other incarceration sites and ghettos. The Nazis used these sites for a range of purposes, including forced labor, indefinite incarceration of supposed enemies of the state, and mass murder. Most European Jewish people—two out of every three—were killed.
| Country | Jewish Population by Country before WWII | Jewish Population Murdered by German Nazis |
| Albania | 200 | unknown |
| Austria | 185,000 | 65,500 |
| Belgium | 90,000 | 25,000 |
| Bulgaria | 50,000 | unknown |
| Czechoslovakia | 709,000 | 590,000 |
| Denmark | 7,500 | 80 |
| Estonia | 4,500 | 1,000 |
| France | 315,000 | 74,000 |
| Germany | 237,000 | 165,000 |
| Greece | 72,000 | 69,000 |
| Hungary | 825,000 | 560,000 |
| Italy | 100,000 | 8,000 |
| Latvia | 93,500 | 70,000 |
| Lithuania | 153,000 | 130,000 |
| Luxembourg | 4,000 | 1,200 |
| Netherlands | 140,000 | 100,000 |
| Norway | 1,800 | 760 |
| Poland | 3,350,000 | 3,000,000 |
| Romania | 1,070,000 | 480,000 |
| Soviet Union | 3,030,000 | 1,340,000 |
| Yugoslavia | 203,500 | 164,500 |
| Total: | 10,641,800 | 6,844,040 |
As we remember those who were lost, it is important that we do not forget about this act of genocide, lest we repeat it. In the words of author Elie Wiesel, "To forget the Holocaust is to kill twice."
To learn more, please check out any of the following Alachua County Library District resources available at your local branch.
