In 1933 approximately nine
million Jews lived in the countries of Europe that would be
occupied by Germany during the war. By 1945 two out of every three
European Jews had been killed by the SS Men. The
Holocaust was the systematic annihilation of six million Jews.
But Jews were not the only group singled out for persecution by
Hitler’s Nazi
regime. As many as one-half million Gypsies, at least 250,000
mentally or physically disabled persons, and more than three
million Soviet prisoners-of-war also fell victim to Nazi genocide.
Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, Social Democrats, Communists,
partisans, trade unionists, Polish intelligentsia and other undesirables
were also victims of the hate and aggression carried out by the
Nazis.
The number of children
killed during the Holocaust is not fathomable and full statistics
for the tragic fate of the children will never be known. Some
estimates range as high as 1.5 million murdered children. This
figure includes more than 1.2 million Jewish children, tens of
thousands of Gypsy children and thousands of handicapped children.
The Buchenwald Concentration
Camp was a Nazi concentration camp established on the Ettersberg
near Weimar, Thuringia, Nazi Germany, in July 1937, and one of the largest such camps on German soil.
Between July 1937 and April 1945, some 250,000 people were incarcerated in Buchenwald by the Nazi
regime. One estimate places the number of deaths in Buchenwald at 56,000.
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