The Holocaust was the mass murder of six million Jews and millions of other people leading up to, and during, World War II. The killings took place in Europe between 1933 and 1945. They were organised by the German Nazi party which was led by Adolf Hitler.The largest group of victims were Jewish people. Nearly 7 out of every 10 Jews living in Europe were killed.

 

The word “Holocaust,” from the Greek words “holos” (whole) and “kaustos” (burned), was historically used to describe a sacrificial offering burned on an altar. Since 1945, the word has taken on a new and horrible meaning, the mass murder of 6 million European Jews (as well as members of some other persecuted groups, such as Gypsies and homosexuals) by the German Nazi during the Second World War. To the leader Adolf Hitler, Jews were an inferior race, an alien threat to German racial purity and community. After years of Nazi rule in Germany, during which Jews were consistently persecuted, Hitler’s “final solution”–now known as the Holocaust–came to fruition under the cover of world war, with mass killing centres constructed in the concentration camps of occupied Poland.Sometimes, governments send people to concentration camps to do forced labour or to be killed. For example, concentration camps were run by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during World War II. The Nazis used concentration camps to kill millions of people in The Holocaust and force many others to work as slaves.

 
 

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Anne Frank was a Jewish teenager who went into hiding during the Holocaust, witing her experiences in the renowned work 'The Diary of Anne Frank.'

Annelies Marie “Anne” Frank (June 12, 1929 to March 1945) was a world-famous German-born writer and World War II Holocaust victim. Her work, The Diary of Anne Frank, has been read by millions. Fleeing Nazi persecution of Jews, the family moved to Amsterdam and went into hiding for two years. During this time, Anne wrote about her experiences and wishes. She was 15 when the family was found and sent to concentration camps, where she died. 



Anne Frank and her sister Margot both came down with typhus in the early spring of 1945 and died within a day of each other. The girls were being held at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, where food was scarce, sanitation was awful and disease ran rampant.   Anne Frank died sometime in March 1945, only a few weeks before British soldiers liberated the concentration camp where she was interned. Anne Frank was just 15 years old at the time of her death, one of more than 1 million Jewish children who died in the Holocaust.


 

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