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Thehistory of the Jews during World War II is almost synonymous with thepersecution andmurder of Jews which was committed on an unprecedented scale in Europe and European North Africa (pro-Nazi Vichy-North Africa andItalian Libya). The massive scale ofthe Holocaust which happened duringWorld War II greatly affected theJewish people and world public opinion, which only understood the dimensions of theFinal Solution after the war. The genocide, known asHaShoah in Hebrew, aimed at the elimination of the Jewish people on the European continent. It was a broadly organized operation led byNazi Germany, in which approximately six million Jews were murdered methodically and with horrifying cruelty. 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] Duringthe Holocaust in occupied Poland, more than one million Jews were murdered in gas chambers of theAuschwitz concentration camp alone. The murder of the Jews of Europe affected Jewish communities inAlbania,Austria,Belarus,Belgium,Bosnia & Herzegovina,Channel Islands,Croatia,Czech Republic,Estonia,France,Germany,Greece,Hungary,Italy,Latvia,Libya,Lithuania,Luxembourg,Moldova, theNetherlands,North Macedonia,Norway,Poland,Romania,Russia,Serbia,Slovakia, andUkraine.[2]
Leading to World War II, nearly all Jewish businesses in Nazi Germany had either collapsed under financial pressure and declining profits, or had been forced to sell out to the Nazi German government as part of the "Aryanization" policy inaugurated in 1937. As thewar started,massacres of Jews took place originally as part ofOperation Tannenbergagainst the Polish nation. The much larger and methodical mass killings of Jews began with the onset ofOperation Barbarossa in 1941. Led byEinsatzgruppen and theOrder Police battalions, the destruction of European Jews took place with the active participation oflocal Auxiliary Police includingBelarusian,Estonian,Latvian,Lithuanian, andUkrainian units.[2]
| Country | Estimated Pre-War Jewish population | Estimated killed | Percent killed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Poland | 3,400,000 | 3,000,000 | 88.25% |
| Soviet Union (excl.Baltic states) | 3,000,000 | 1,000,000 | 33.3% |
| Romania | 757,000 | 287,000 | 38% |
| Hungary | 445,000 | 270,000 | 60.7% |
| Czechoslovakia | 357,000 | 260,000 | 73% |
| Germany | 500,000 | 165,000 | 33% |
| Lithuania | 150,000 | 145,000 | 96.7% |
| Netherlands | 140,000 | 102,000 | 72.9% |
| France | 300,000 | 76,000 | 25.33% |
| Latvia | 93,500 | 70,000 | 74.9% |
| Austria | 206,000 | 65,000 | 31.5% |
| Yugoslavia | 68,500 | 60,000 | 87.6% |
| Greece | 70,000 | 58,800 | 84% |
| Belgium | 90,000 | 25,000 | 27.8% |
| Italy | 46,000 | 7,500 | 16.3% |
| Luxembourg | 3,600 | 1,200 | 33.3% |
| Estonia | 4,300 | 1,000 | 23% |
| Norway | 1,800 | 758 | 42.1% |
| Bulgaria | 48,400 | 142 | 0.3% |
| Denmark | 7,800 | 116 | 1.49% |
| Albania | 200 | 100 | 50% |
| Finland | 2,200 | 7 | 0.32% |
| Total | 9,689,500 | 5,594,623 | 57.74% |
Before the onset of war, the firstpogrom in Nazi Germany wasKristallnacht, often calledPogromnacht, or "night of broken glass," in which Jewish homes were ransacked in numerous German cities along with 11,000 Jewish shops, towns and villages,[4] as civilians andSA stormtroopers destroyed buildings with sledgehammers, leaving the streets covered in smashed windows — the origin of the name "Night of Broken Glass." The main part of the rioting took place on 9–10 November 1938. Jews were beaten to death; 30,000 Jewish men were taken toconcentration camps; and 1,668synagogues ransacked with 267 set on fire. FollowingOperation Barbarossa launched on 22 June 1941, in the city ofLviv in the occupied territory of theGeneral Government, Ukrainian nationalistsorganized two large pogroms in July 1941, in which around 6,000 Jews were murdered.[5][6]
In Lithuania, localmilitant groups engaged in anti-Jewish pogroms on July 25 and 26, 1941 aroundKaunas even before the Nazi forces arrived, killing about 3,800 Jews and burning synagogues and Jewish shops.[7] Perhaps the deadliest of these Holocaust-era pogroms was theIași pogrom in Romania, in which as many as 14,000 Jews were killed by Romanian citizens, police, and military officials.
By December 1941,Adolf Hitler decided to completelyexterminateEuropean Jews.[8] In January 1942, during theWannsee conference, severalNazi leaders discussed the details of the "Final Solution of the Jewish question" (Endlösung der Judenfrage).Dr. Josef Bühler urgedReinhard Heydrich to proceed with the "Final Solution" in theGeneral Government. They began to systematically deport Jewish populations from the ghettos and all occupied territories to the six camps designated asVernichtungslager, orextermination camps:Auschwitz-Birkenau,Belzec,Chelmno,Majdanek,Sobibór andTreblinka II.Sebastian Haffner published the analysis in 1978 that Hitler from December 1941 accepted the failure of his goal to dominate Europe forever on his declaration of war against theUnited States, but that his withdrawal and apparent calm thereafter was sustained by the achievement of his second goal—the extermination of the Jews.
Even as the German Nazi war machine faltered in the last years of the war, precious military resources such as fuel, transport, munitions, soldiers, and industrial resources were still being heavily diverted[clarification needed] away from the war and towards the death camps. By the end of the war, more than half of Jewish population of Europe had been murdered in theHolocaust.Poland, home of thelargest Jewish community in Europe before the war, had over 90% of its Jewish population, or about 3,000,000 Jews, murdered by the Nazis.Greece,Yugoslavia,Lithuania,Czechoslovakia, theNetherlands, andLatvia each had over 70% of their Jewish population murdered.[2]
Hungary andAlbania lost around half of their Jewish populations, the Soviet Union, Germany, Austria and Luxembourg lost over one third of its Jews, Belgium and France each saw around a quarter of their Jewish populations murdered.[2]
During the war, Spain became an unlikely haven for several thousand Jews. They were mainly from Western Europe, fleeing deportation to concentration camps from occupied France, but also Sephardic Jews from Eastern Europe, especially in Hungary. Trudy Alexy[who?] refers to the "absurdity" and "paradox of refugees fleeing the Nazis'Final Solution to seek asylum in a country where no Jews had been allowed to live openly as Jews for over four centuries."[9]
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Approximately 1.5 million Jews served in the regular Allied militaries duringWorld War II.[10]
Approximately 550,000 American Jews served in the various branches of theUnited States Armed Forces. Roughly 52,000 received U.S. military awards.[11] Another 500,000 served in theRed Army, and more than 160,000 earned citations, with over 150 receiving theHero of the Soviet Union award. Some 100,000 Jews served in the Polish Army during the German invasion, and thousands served in theFree Polish Forces, including about 10,000 inAnders' Army. Over 60,000 Jews served in theBritish Armed Forces (excluding dominion or colonial personnel), including 14,000 in theRoyal Air Force and 15,000 in theRoyal Navy. About 30,000 Jews fromMandatory Palestine also served in the British military, including 5,500 who served in theJewish Brigade, a military formation composed of Jewish soldiers from Palestine led by British-Jewish officers.[12][13][14] About 17,000 Canadian Jews served in theCanadian Armed Forces.[15]
Jewish partisans also fought throughout occupied Europe and were organized into groups such as theBielski partisans,United Partisan Organization and theParczew partisans. Jewish resistance fighters took part in theWarsaw Ghetto Uprising.
