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In this video, Professor Paul Bookbinder of UMass Boston gives a short overview of the Holocaust.
Jews arriving on the platform at Auschwitz, May 1944
Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-N0827-318 / CC-BY-SA 3.0
"The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews and others by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. Holocaust is a word of Greek origin meaning "sacrifice by fire." The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were "racially superior" and that the Jews, deemed "inferior," were an alien threat to the so-called German racial community.
During the era of the Holocaust, German authorities also targeted other groups because of their perceived "racial inferiority": Roma (Gypsies), the disabled, and some of the Slavic peoples (Poles, Russians, and others). Other groups were persecuted on political, ideological, and behavioral grounds, among them Communists, Socialists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and homosexuals."
-United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Scholar Doris Bergen describes the phases of events that led to the Holocaust.
Use Library of Congress subject heading to identify primary sources. From the "everything" dropdown select "Personal Narratives".
For search terms try:
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) or
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Poland -- Warsaw
Holocaust Jewish (1939-1945) Polish
OR
Use advanced search: SUBJECT Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) and KEYWORD diaries
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives -- History and criticism for books about diary writing during the Holocaust.
