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The Holocaust

50 cards · 🇺🇸 English

The Nazi genocide of six million Jews and other persecuted groups during WWII.

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What was the Holocaust?

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1What was the Holocaust?
The systematic genocide of European Jews during World War II (1941-1945), in which Nazi Germany and its collaborators murdered approximately six million Jews, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population
2What is the Hebrew term for the Holocaust?
Shoah (שּׁוֹאָה), meaning 'catastrophic destruction', which exclusively refers to Jewish victims
3What were the primary methods of murder in the Holocaust?
Mass shootings across Eastern Europe and poison gas chambers in extermination camps
4What were the main extermination camps in occupied Poland?
Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, and Chełmno
5What was the Nazis' euphemism for the genocide of Jews?
The 'Final Solution' (Endlösung der Judenfrage - Final Solution to the Jewish Question)
6When did the systematic murder of Jews begin?
Following the June 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, when 1.5 to 2 million Jews were shot by German forces and local collaborators
7When was the 'Final Solution' formally adopted?
By early 1942, the Nazis decided to murder all Jews in Europe
8What were the Nuremberg Laws (1935)?
Laws that restricted Jews' economic activity, reserved full citizenship for those of 'German or related blood', and criminalized marriages and relationships between Jews and non-Jewish Germans
9What was Kristallnacht?
The Night of Broken Glass (November 9-10, 1938), a nationwide pogrom where over 7,500 Jewish shops were looted, over 1,000 synagogues were damaged or destroyed, at least 90 Jews were murdered, and 30,000 Jewish men were arrested
10How many German Jews lived in Germany in 1933?
Roughly 500,000, making up less than 1% of the country's population
11When did the Nazis seize power?
Early 1933, when Hitler was appointed chancellor in January
12What were the Nazis' foundational ideological beliefs?
Racism and the pursuit of Lebensraum (living space), defining the German nation as a racial community and seeking to purge racially foreign and socially deficient elements
13What was Lebensraum?
'Living space' - the Nazi goal of acquiring additional territory in Eastern Europe for German colonization
14What happened after Germany's invasion of Poland (September 1939)?
Occupation authorities began to establish ghettos to segregate Jews
15What were ghettos in the Holocaust context?
Segregated urban areas where Jews were forced to live under poor conditions, often walled off and heavily guarded
16When did the majority of Holocaust victims die?
1942, though the killing continued until the end of the war in 1945
17What happened to property belonging to murdered Jews?
It was redistributed to German occupiers and other non-Jews
18What were extermination camps?
Camps specifically designed for mass murder, where victims were killed primarily with poisonous gas
19What was Auschwitz?
The largest Nazi concentration and extermination camp complex, located in German-occupied Poland, where over 1 million people were murdered
20What were the Einsatzgruppen?
Mobile killing squads that followed German forces during the invasion of the Soviet Union, conducting mass shootings of Jews and other victims
21What was the Wannsee Conference?
A January 1942 meeting where Nazi officials coordinated the implementation of the Final Solution
22What were forced labor camps?
Camps where prisoners were forced to work, often under brutal conditions, with many dying from starvation, abuse, exhaustion, or being used as test subjects in medical experiments
23What were death marches?
Forced evacuations of concentration camp prisoners near the end of the war, where thousands died from exhaustion, exposure, and murder
24What other groups were targeted by the Nazis?
Roma and Sinti, Soviet prisoners of war, Polish and Soviet civilians, people with disabilities, homosexual men, political opponents, and others deemed undesirable
25What was Aktion T4?
The Nazi euthanasia program that murdered people with disabilities, serving as a precursor to Holocaust killing methods
26What was the stab-in-the-back myth?
The false but influential belief promoted after WWI that Germany was defeated not on the battlefield but betrayed by socialists and Jews at home
27How did Nazi ideology characterize Jews?
As 'the embodiment of everything wrong with modernity', a separate racial group alien to Europe, and as controlling both Soviet and Western powers
28What was the Volksgemeinschaft?
The Nazi concept of a 'racial community' of Germans, unbounded by Germany's physical borders
29How did the Nazis initially try to force Jews from Germany?
Through anti-Jewish laws, encouraged harassment, economic restrictions, and policies meant to force emigration
30What happened to Jewish businesses in Nazi Germany?
Many were boycotted, vandalized, or forced to close; in 1938-1939, businesses were expropriated to force Jews out of the economy