World Religions › Modern
The Holocaust
1941–1945; persecution from 1933· Event· Judaism, Christianity & Islam
Historical recordConfirmed by archaeology, outside sources or contemporary records.
Nazi Germany's systematic, state-organized murder of about six million Jews, roughly two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population.
See it on the World Religions map →What it is
After taking power in 1933, the Nazis stripped Jews of rights through boycotts, the 1935 Nuremberg Laws and the 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom. From 1941 mobile killing units shot Jews across occupied Soviet lands; from 1942 death camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka murdered people on an industrial scale. Nazi racial theory defined Jews by ancestry, not belief. The Nazis also murdered Roma, disabled people, Soviet prisoners and others. Jews call it the Shoah, Hebrew for 'catastrophe'.
Why it matters
It destroyed centuries-old Jewish communities, strengthened support for a Jewish state, forced churches to rethink anti-Jewish teaching, and shaped human-rights law, including the 1948 Genocide Convention.
Sources and history
Nazi Germany's own records, the Nuremberg trials, the camp sites, population data, and tens of thousands of survivor testimonies gathered by Yad Vashem and the USC Shoah Foundation.
Questions and debates
Historians still debate exactly when and how the Nazi leadership decided on total extermination, and how far centuries of Christian anti-Judaism prepared the ground.
Connections (3)
▸The Holocaust devastated the heartland of Hasidism (Baal Shem Tov)Historical record
The connection
Hasidism's heartland, Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Hungary and Romania, was exactly where the Nazis murdered most Jews. Most Hasidim and many dynasties were wiped out. A few rebbes, including the leaders of Satmar, Lubavitch and Belz, escaped and rebuilt in Brooklyn, Jerusalem and Bnei Brak; Hasidim now number several hundred thousand and are growing fast.
When and where
Eastern Europe, 1939–45; rebuilding in New York and Israel from the late 1940s; Rebbes Joel Teitelbaum (Satmar) and Menachem Mendel Schneerson (Lubavitch).
Historical evidence
Deportation records, Yad Vashem documentation, community memorial books, and demographic studies such as Marcin Wodziński's 'Historical Atlas of Hasidism' (2018).
Questions and debates
Prewar Hasidic numbers are uncertain, since they were not counted separately, and why the movement rebounded so strongly is still studied.
▸The Holocaust increased support for Founding of the State of IsraelMostly agreed by scholars
The connection
The murder of six million Jews convinced many Jews and much of world opinion that Jews needed their own state. Many of some 250,000 Jewish survivors in displaced-persons camps sought to reach Palestine, where Britain limited entry. US pressure and public sympathy fed into the UN partition vote, and survivors made up a large share of Israel's early immigrants.
When and where
Displaced-persons camps in Germany, Austria and Italy, 1945–48; the Exodus ship affair, 1947; the UN vote, November 1947; President Truman.
How do we know?
UN debate records, surveys of displaced persons, Truman's papers, and Israeli immigration records.
Questions and debates
Historians debate how decisive the Holocaust was compared with decades of Zionist state-building and Cold War politics; Palestinians ask why they bore the cost of Europe's crime.
▸The Holocaust spurred Catholic rethinking at Second Vatican CouncilMostly agreed by scholars
The connection
After the Holocaust, Catholics confronted centuries of teaching that blamed Jews collectively for Jesus's death. French Jewish historian Jules Isaac, whose wife and daughter were killed at Auschwitz, urged Pope John XXIII in 1960 to change course. The council's Nostra Aetate (1965) rejected that blame and condemned antisemitism.
When and where
Vatican, Isaac's audience with John XXIII, June 1960; drafted under Cardinal Augustin Bea; approved October 28, 1965.
How do we know?
The text of Nostra Aetate, council records, Isaac's own account, and later documents such as the Vatican's 'We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah' (1998).
Questions and debates
The document never names the Holocaust; debate continues over Pius XII's wartime record, with Vatican archives opened to researchers in 2020.