5.6 ? 6.1 million Jews
3.0 ? 3.5 million Polish Jews
200 000 ? 800 000 Roma & Sinti
200 000 ? 300 000 handicapped
10 000 ? 25 000 homosexuals
2 000 Jehovah's Witnesses
death toll^ not exact of the holocaust

Holocaust refers to Nazi Germany's systematic genocide of various ethnic, religious, national, and secular groups during World War II starting in 1941 through to 1945.

The word Holocaust, from the Greek word holokauston (Greek for "a completely (holos) burnt (kaustos) sacrificial offering"). It meant "a burnt sacrifice offered to God", originally referred to a sacrifice Jews were required to make by the Torah, and later to large scale catastrophes or massacres. Due to the theological meaning that this word carries, many Jews find the use of this word problematic, as it could imply that Jews were a sacrifice.


The international and widespread scale. Unlike other mass killings, which were usually carried out in a specific area or country, the Holocaust was methodically carried out in virtually every inch of Nazi-occupied territory, with Jews and other victims being persecuted and killed in what are now 35 present-day nations of Europe, being sent to concentration camps in some nations, and death camps in other nations. The Nazis kept up the mass murder right up to the end of World War II, and the Holocaust ended only when the Allies charged into Germany itself, forcing the Nazis to surrender in May 1945.

Victims of the Holocaust were primarily Jews, but also Communists, homosexuals, Roma and Sinti (also known as gypsies), the physically handicapped, the mentally retarded, Soviet prisoners of war, Polish, Russian, and other Slavic intelligentsia, political activists, Jehovah's Witnesses, some Catholic and Protestant clergy, trade unionists, psychiatric patients, and common criminals all perished alongside one another in the camps, according to the extensive documentation left behind by the Nazis themselves (written and photographed), eye-witness testimony (by survivors, perpetrators, and bystanders), and the statistical records of the various countries under occupation.