Welcome visitor!  This site has been created to inform you of the tragic even that happened between 1933-1945 in Europe.  This event was called the Holocaust.  As you scroll through the pages of this site you will find inormation on the folowing:

• Chronology- a page that describes events that lead to the Holocaust and gives a timeline of events
• Key Influences page- breaks down the influences into categories such as economic, cultural, social, political, and physical
• Key Figures Page- important people who were linked to the Holocaust
• Implications Page- the impact that the Holocaust had on people then, and now
• Possible Outcomes- different conclusions that could have happened
• Remembarance Page- museums and memorials set up to remember the Holocaust
• Picture Page- photos to make the event of the Holocaust more real.

What does Webster's Dictionary define the Holocaust as?

ho·lo·caust 'hO-l&-"kost, 'hä- also -"kästor'ho-l&-kost noun
1 : a sacrifice consumed by fire,
2 : a thorough destruction especially by fire. (i.e. a nuclear holocaust)
3 a often cap. : the mass slaughter of European civilians and especially Jews by the Nazis during World War II -- usually used with the b : a mass slaughter of people; especially genocide.

The first two definitions explain the meaning of the word, the third shows that it has become a proper noun in the English language. So is that all there is to it? Of course not.

Beyond The Mere Definition

The Holocaust is generally regarded as the systematic slaughter of not only 6 million Jews, (two-thirds of the total European Jewish population), the primary victims, but also 5 million others, approximately 11 million individuals wiped off the Earth by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. It is hard to grasp the idea that it isn't just 11 million deaths, but 11 million people whose lives were cut off because of racism and hate, all in a period of 11 years (1933-1945). There are actually two main phases to the Holocaust, the period between 1933 and 1939, the Nazi rise, and the period between 1939 and 1945, the period of war, or more specifically, World War II. The first concentration camp opened in January 1933, when the Nazis came to power, and continued to run until the end of the war and the Third Reich: May 8, 1945.

The idea that the Holocaust represents 11 million lives that abruptly ended is a difficult concept, but this is an important point, and one this site hopes to help bring across. The Holocaust was the extermination of people not for who they were but for what they were. Groups such as handicaps, Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Catholics, Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, political dissidents and others were persecuted by the Nazis because of their religious/political beliefs, physical defects, or failure to fall into the "Aryan" ideal.

The unfortunate truth is that the Holocaust is a subject whose gravity is obvious, but it is easy to become almost numb to it. As Elie Wiesel, Nobel Laureate and famous Holocaust survivor has said, "the essense of this tragedy is that it can never be fully conveyed." When viewing this site, think about the individual people in the images you see. Remember that the Holocaust is something that we should all learn about so that we never let such a terrible crime against mankind happen again. One of the reasons you can listen to survivors is that it helps to show that every one of those 11 million has a story, but they aren't alive to tell it.