Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The American government first became aware of the Holocaust in German-occupied Europe in 1942 and 1943. Following a report on the failure to assist the Jewish people by the Department of State , the War Refugee Board was created in 1944 to assist refugees from the Nazis.
The Holocaust (/ ˈ h ɒ l ə k ɔː s t / ⓘ), [1] known in Hebrew as the Shoah (שואה), was the genocide of European Jews during World War II.Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population.
Historians have argued that this indicates Hitler gave a verbal order to Himmler at this meeting for the Einsatzgruppen to target Jews under the guise of anti-partisan warfare. [24] According to Felix Kersten's memoirs, Himmler told him that the extermination of the Jews was expressly ordered by Hitler and had been delegated to Himmler. [25]
The German American Bund, led by Fritz Kuhn, was formed in 1936 and lasted until America formally entered World War II in 1941. The Bund existed with the goal of a united America under ethnic German rule and following Nazi ideology. It proclaimed communism as their main enemy and expressed anti-Semitic attitudes. [4]
Jews in the Middle East were also affected by the Holocaust. Most of North Africa came under Nazi control and many Jews were discriminated against and used as slaves until the Axis defeat. [207] In 1945, hundreds of Jews were injured during violent demonstrations in Egypt and Jewish property was vandalized and looted.
German Jews claimed that they knew of the Holocaust from a wide range of sources, which included radio broadcasts from Italy and what they heard from friends or acquaintances, but they did not know details until 1943. [42] Responses from non-Jewish Germans indicate that "the majority of Germans identified with the Nazi regime."
The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941–1945 is a 1984 nonfiction book by David S. Wyman, former Josiah DuBois professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Wyman was the chairman of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies.
Although the Holocaust was organized by the highest levels of the Nazi German government, the vast majority of Jews murdered were not German, but were instead residents of countries invaded by the Nazis after 1938. Of the approximately 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis, approximately 160,000 to 180,000 were German Jews. [1]