What is the Holocaust?
 The
Jewish People have known many tragedies throughout their history,
but the Holocaust stands out clearly in the minds of everyone.
In the 1930s, Adolf Hitler, the German leader, set
out to conquer the world and rid it of all the Jews. In Europe, where
more Jews lived than anywhere else, he almost succeeded. Everywhere
Hitler's Nazi regime reached, Jews were persecuted and forced into
slave labor. Some fought back, like in the Warsaw Ghetto, but they
had little chance against the powerful German army, which had overrun
most of Europe. Others met their death in enormous concentration camps
like Auschwitz, or in death camps like Treblinka.
Hitler ruled Germany for just twelve years; World
War II was waged for only six. But in that time over six million Jews
were shot, gassed, burned and tortured to death by the Nazis and their
allies. One and a half million of these victims were children.
Here, on this map of Europe, are faces representing
Hitler's victims. Old and young, men and women, boys and girls, all
died at Hitler's hands. Only a handful remained to rebuild Jewish
life in Europe, America, and Israel. Imagine the victims as the black
and white pictures on the page, and the survivors as the colored pictures.
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