The Holocaust was a significant event during World War II. It was perhaps the worst atrocity against humankind throughout history. The Holocaust was the systematic extermination of 6 million Jews by the Nazi's. As well as Jews, hundreds of thousands of Gypsies, and at lest two hundred and fifty thousand mentally or physically disabled persons were also victims. Hitler's motivations for the holocaust were entirely racial. Hitler tried to implement his concept of racial superiority for Aryans, by trying to kill off the Jews.
             The persecution of the Jews began before World War II had started. When the Nazi regime came to power one of their first acts was to define the term Jew. "Anyone with three or four Jewish grandparents was automatically a Jew, regardless of whether that individual was a member of the Jewish community. Half-Jews were considered Jewish only if they themselves belonged to the Jewish religion or were married to a Jewish person. All other half-Jews, and persons who had one Jewish grandparent, were styled Mischlinge or half-breeds." The Nazi's then attempted to eliminate Jews from economic life by wiping them out of business. This process was called "Aryanization". The Nazi's then went on to kill two out of every three European Jews by 1945.
             Of the approximately 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust about 3 million were killed in concentration camps, about 1.4 million killed in shooting operations, and more than 600 000 in ghettos. Treblinka, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Dachau, Chelmno, Sobibor, Belzek and Majdanek are just some of the concentration camps. The camps were usually filled with women, children, or older men, who could not work; Jews capable of labor were retained in shops or plants, but they too were eventually killed. Initially these camps were designed to incarcerate political prisoners, enemies of the regime, criminals and security risks. But in 1939 the T4- Euthan
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