The Holocaust was the persecution and killing of six million Jews by the Nazi regime. The total number of people killed during this period was 11 million, of which six million were Jews. Not only were adults murdered, but approximately 1.5 million children were also murdered. The destruction of 5,000 Jewish communities also occurred during this period. The word “Holocaust” comes from Greek and means “fire sacrifice”. Another word for this extermination of six million Jews is “Shoah”. “Shoah” means devastation, ruin or waste. The Nazis who led this persecution came to power in Germany in January 1933. The Nazis saw Jews as evil or cowardly and saw Germans as hard-working, honest, and courageous. The Germans were destined to rule and the Jews were condemned to extinction. Not only were Jews a target, but so were gypsies, disabled people, and some Slavs. The Holocaust began in 1933, when Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, and ended in 1945, when the Allies defeated the Nazis. On April 1, 1933, the Nazis began their first action against the Jews by announcing a boycott of all Jewish-run businesses. . About five months later, on September 15, 1935, the Nuremberg Laws were enacted which excluded Jews from public life and also took away their citizenship. November 9-10, 1938; the burning of synagogues and the destruction of Jewish businesses took place. Jews were physically attacked, and approximately 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps. This night was also known as “Kristallnacht” or “Night of Broken Glass”. Also on November 9, Hershel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old Jewish boy, shot Ernest vom Rath because he was estranged from his family. Rath was the third secretary of the Ger... the focus of the paper... their neighbors, the Allies, created Israel in 1948. Israel was created as a homeland for Jewish survivors. A Holocaust survivor named Mr. Greenbaum recounts his experience to visitors to the Holocaust Museum. “The Germans rounded up his family and other local Jews in 1940 in the Starachowice ghetto, in his hometown in Poland, when he was only 12 years old. He was later deported to a forced labor camp where he and his sister were transferred while the rest of the family was sent to die in Treblinka. By the age of 17 he had been enslaved in five camps in five years, and was on track for a sixth when American soldiers freed him in 1945.” Researchers have recorded around 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps across Europe. “We knew before how horrible life was on campuses and in ghettos,” said Hartmut Bergoff, director of the German Historical Institute, “but the numbers are incredible.