~The Holocaust~ (video on youtube)

The Holocaust began with Hitler's rise to power in January of 1933 and ended on May 8th, 1945. During this time, more than six million Jews and millions of other groups were caught in the negative attention of Nazi Germany. While all murders were devastating to the native population, non were as crucial as that of the Jews. During this period, 5,000 Jewish communities were wiped out and the total that died represents 1/3 of all Jewish people alive at that time. Hitler started a war that cost 50 million people their lives. Due to a series of events, Hitler assumed dictatorial powers in March 23, 1933 when the Enabling Act was passed. With total power available to him, he quickly developed a sophisticated police and military force, and killed all who questioned or criticized his authority. From this authority began the first concentration camp. Dachau, just outside of Munich which started as a political prison camp, but evolved over time into a full scale Nazi concentration camp to exterminate the Jews as well as others. By the end of 1934, Hitler's campaign against the Jews was in full force. The Nazis were claiming them to be mongrels who were corrupting the pure German race, and persecutions of the Jewish grew in strength. Those who could, fled to other European countries which gave them safety for a while. Germany starts World War II with the invasion of Poland in September on 1939 and in 1940 established Jewish ghettos in Poland where they could be isolated from the rest of society. Conditions in the ghetto were horrible, with not enough food, water, or space. It was very unclean and many died from this. From this point, the Germans worked on more and more efficient ways to liquidate the "undesirables" by bringing them to death camps to systemically kill them and recycle any valuables for the war effort. And in this instance, a valuable was a person who was healthy, so the Germans would literally work them to death. They would work them so hard they had no energy to do anything, then they would be killed. In June 1941, Germany attacked the Soviet Union and began the implementation of the Final Solution - the beginnings of the destruction of all the undesirables. At first they were gathered up, shot and thrown into massive open graves. It is estimated that over 1 million people died this way, but Hitler came to the conclusion that it wasn't efficient enough, so more and more death camps sprang up. This atrocity continued to end the war - with liberation not happening until July 1944 and later. In July 1944, the Soviet Union liberated Maidanek Concentration Camp and then in January 1945 - Auschwitz Concentration Camp and so on until Nazi Germany was totally defeated and all people's were freed. In the end there were only about 200,000 Jewish survivors by the end of the liberation and the death counts from the Holocaust were estimated to be around six million Jews and millions of other people who did not fit the Aryan mold.