Most people know what the Holocaust was. They have at least a vague image of what transpired in Europe during the 1940s. Still, the details may be blurry. So, let’s take a look at history and the events that shocked the world. And, even though this was clearly not the first genocide in the world, it was one of particular proportions and scale, and therefore noteworthy.

At the time of the Second World War, the Holocaust, also referred to as the Shoah, was a genocide of European Jews. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its allies killed around six million Jews in German-occupied Europe, representing about two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. The killings happened in pogroms and mass shootings, and also through a technique of extermination by labor in prisoner-of-war camp and in gas chambers and gas vans in German extermination camps, mostly Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek, Sobibór, Beec, Chemno, and Treblinka in occupied Poland.

The Holocaust is one of those things that people remember as something they want to “never again” happen to humanity. Let’s hope that they can hold up to this ideal. Either way, let’s dive into the past and explore what led up to it, the magnitude of the murders and the methods the Nazis used.