Holocaust, the

The annihilation of an estimated 16 million people by the Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945, principally in the numerous extermination and concentration camps, most notably Auschwitz (Oswiecim), Sobibor, Treblinka, and Maidanek in Poland, and Belsen, Buchenwald, and Dachau in Germany. Camps were built on railway lines to facilitate transport. Of the victims, around 6 million were Jews (over 67% of European Jews); around 10 million Ukrainian, Polish, and Russian civilians and prisoners of war, Romanies, socialists, homosexuals, and others (labelled ‘defectives’) were also imprisoned and/or exterminated. Victims were variously starved, tortured, experimented on, and worked to death. Millions were executed in gas chambers, shot, or hanged. It was euphemistically termed the final solution (of the Jewish question). The precise death toll will never be known. Holocaust museums and memorial sites have been established in Israel and in other countries, and many Jews remember those who died by observing Yom Ha-Shoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day.