The Holocaust (from the Greek ????a?st??

holkaustos: hlos, "whole" and kausts, "bur

nt"),[2] also known as the Shoah (Hebrew: ?????, HaShoah, "the catastrophe"), wa
s a genocide in which approximately six million Jews were killed by Adolf Hitler
's Nazi regime and its collaborators.[3] Some historians use a definition of the
Holocaust that includes the additional five million non-Jewish victims of Nazi
mass murders, bringing the total to approximately eleven million.Killings took p
lace throughout Nazi Germany and German-occupied territories.[4]
From 1941 to 1945, Jews were targeted and methodically murdered in a genocide, o
ne of the largest in history, and part of a broader aggregate of acts of oppress
ion and killings of various ethnic and political groups in Europe by the Nazis.[
5] Every arm of Germany's bureaucracy was involved in the logistics and the carr
ying out of the genocide, turning the Third Reich into "a genocidal state".[6] N
on-Jewish victims of broader Nazi crimes include Romanis, Christian Poles, commu
nists, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Soviet POWs, and the mentally and physi
cally disabled.[7] In total, approximately 11 million people were killed, includ
ing approximately one million Jewish children.[8][9] Of the nine million Jews wh
o had resided in Europe before the Holocaust, approximately two-thirds were kill
ed.[10] A network of about 42,500 facilities in Germany and German-occupied terr
itories were used to concentrate, confine, and kill Jews and other victims.[11]
Between 100,000 and 500,000 people were direct participants in the planning and
execution of the Holocaust.[12]
The persecution and genocide were carried out in stages. Initially the German go
vernment passed laws to exclude Jews from civil society, most prominently the Nu
remberg Laws of 1935. A network of concentration camps was established starting
in 1933 and ghettos were established following the outbreak of World War II in 1
939. In 1941, as Germany conquered new territory in eastern Europe, specialized
paramilitary units called Einsatzgruppen were used to murder around two million
Jews and "partisans", often in mass shootings. By the end of 1942, victims were
being regularly transported by freight train to specially built extermination ca
mps where, if they survived the journey, most were systematically killed in gas
chambers. The campaign of murder continued until the end of World War II in Euro
pe in April May 1945.
Jewish armed resistance to the Nazis occurred throughout the Holocaust. One nota
ble example was the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943, when thousands of poorly arm
ed Jewish fighters held the Waffen-SS at bay for four weeks. An estimated 20,000
to 30,000 Jewish partisans actively fought the Nazis and their collaborators in
Eastern Europe.[13][14] French Jews were also highly active in the French Resis
tance, which conducted a guerilla campaign against the Nazis and Vichy French au
thorities. In total, there were over a hundred armed Jewish uprisings.[15]