Most historians agree that Hitler issued an
explicit order to kill all Jews across Europe, but there is disagreement as to when. Some historians cite inflammatory statements by Hitler and other Nazi leaders as well as the concurrent
mass shootings of Serbian Jews, plans for
extermination camps in Poland, and the beginning of the deportation of German Jews as indicative of the final decision having been made before December 1941. Others argue that these policies were initiatives by local leaders and that the final decision was made later. On 5 December 1941, the Soviet Union
launched its first major counteroffensive. On 11 December,
Hitler declared war on the United States after Japan
attacked Pearl Harbor. The next day, he
told leading Nazi party officials, referring to his
1939 prophecy, "The world war is here; the annihilation of the Jews must be the necessary consequence." It took the Nazis several months after this to organize a continent-wide genocide.
Reinhard Heydrich, head of the
Reich Main Security Office (RSHA), convened the
Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942. This high-level meeting was intended to coordinate anti-Jewish policy. The majority of Holocaust killings were carried out in 1942, with it being the peak of the genocide, as over 3 million Jews were murdered, with 20 or 25 percent of Holocaust victims dying before early 1942 and the same number surviving by the end of the year.
Mass shooting , mainly by local Ukrainians. but more likely
Berdychiv, Ukraine on 28 July 1941 The systematic murder of Jews began in the Soviet Union in 1941. During the invasion, many Jews were conscripted into the
Red Army. Out of 10 or 15 million Soviet civilians who
fled eastwards to the Soviet interior, 1.6 million were Jews. Local inhabitants killed as many as 50,000 Jews in pogroms in Latvia,
Lithuania,
eastern Poland, Ukraine, and the Romanian borderlands. Although German forces tried to incite pogroms, their role in causing violence is controversial.
Romanian soldiers killed tens of thousands of Jews from Odessa by April 1942. Prior to the invasion, the
Einsatzgruppen were reorganized in preparation for mass killings and instructed to shoot Soviet officials and Jewish state and party employees. The shootings were justified on the basis of Jews' supposed central role in supporting the communist system, but it was not initially envisioned to kill all Soviet Jews. The occupiers relied on locals to identify Jews to be targeted. The first German mass killings targeted adult male Jews who had worked as civil servants or in jobs requiring education. Tens of thousands were shot by the end of July. The vast majority of civilian victims were Jews. In July and August
Heinrich Himmler, the leader of the
SS (
Schutzstaffel), made several visits to the
death squads' zones of operation, relaying orders to kill more Jews. At this time, the killers began to murder Jewish women and children, too. Executions peaked at 40,000 a month
in Lithuania in August and September and in October and November reached their height
in Belarus. , Belarus The executions often took place a few kilometers from a town. Victims were rounded up and marched to the execution site, forced to undress, and shot into previously dug pits. The favored technique was a shot in the back of the neck with a single bullet. In the chaos, many victims were not killed by the gunfire but instead
buried alive. Typically, the pits would be guarded after the execution but sometimes a few victims managed to escape afterwards. Executions were public spectacles and the victims' property was looted both by the occupiers and local inhabitants. Around 200 ghettos were established in the occupied Soviet Union, with many existing only briefly before their inhabitants were executed. A few large ghettos such as Vilna,
Kovno,
Riga,
Białystok, and
Lwów lasted into 1943 because they became centers of production. Victims of mass shootings included Jews deported from elsewhere. Besides Germany, Romania
killed the largest number of Jews. Romania deported about 154,000–170,000 Jews from
Bessarabia and Bukovina to ghettos in
Transnistria from 1941 to 1943. Jews from Transnistria were also imprisoned in these ghettos, where the total death toll may have reached 160,000. Hungary expelled thousands of
Carpathian Ruthenian and foreign Jews in 1941, who were shortly thereafter
shot in Ukraine. At the beginning of September, all German Jews were required to wear a yellow star, and in October, Hitler decided to
deport them to the east and ban emigration. Between mid-October and the end of 1941, 42,000 Jews from Germany and its annexed territories and 5,000
Romani people from Austria were deported to Łódź, Kovno, Riga, and
Minsk. In late November,
5,000 German Jews were shot outside of Kovno and
another 1,000 near Riga, but Himmler ordered an end to such massacres and some in the senior Nazi leadership voiced doubts about killing German Jews. Executions of German Jews in the Baltics resumed in early 1942. After the expansion of killings to target the entire Soviet Jewish population, the 3,000 men of the
Einsatzgruppen proved insufficient and Himmler mobilized 21 battalions of
Order Police to assist them. In addition, Wehrmacht soldiers,
Waffen-SS brigades, and local auxiliaries shot many Jews. By the end of 1941, more than 80 percent of the Jews in central Ukraine, eastern Belarus, Russia, Latvia, and Lithuania had been shot, but less than 25 percent of those living farther west where 900,000 remained alive. By the end of the war, around 1.5 to 2 million Jews were shot and as many as 225,000 Roma. The murderers found the executions distressing and logistically inconvenient, which influenced the decision to switch to other methods of killing.
Deportation ,
Germany to the
Lublin District of the
General Governorate, 25 April 1942. Unlike the killing areas in the east, the deportation from elsewhere in Europe was centrally organized from Berlin, although it depended on the outcome of negotiations with allied governments and popular responses to deportation. Beginning in late 1941, local administrators responded to the deportation of Jews to their area by massacring local Jews in order to free up space in ghettos for the deportees. If the deported Jews did not die of harsh conditions, they were killed later in extermination camps. Jews deported to Auschwitz were initially entered into the camp; the practice of conducting selections and murdering many prisoners upon arrival began in July 1942. In May and June, German and Slovak Jews deported to Lublin began to be sent directly to extermination camps. In Western Europe, almost all Jewish deaths occurred after deportation. The occupiers often relied on local policemen to arrest Jews, limiting the number who were deported. In 1942, nearly 100,000 Jews were deported
from Belgium,
France, and
the Netherlands. In France, 25 percent of the Jews were killed, most of whom were either non-citizens or recent immigrants.
Si Kaddour Benghabrit and
Abdelkader Mesli saved hundreds of Jews by hiding them in the basements of the
Grand Mosque of Paris and other resistance efforts in France. The death rate in the Netherlands was higher than neighboring countries, which scholars have attributed to difficulty in hiding or increased collaboration of the Dutch police. The German government sought the deportation of Jews from allied countries. The first to
hand over its Jewish population was Slovakia, which
arrested and deported about 58,000 Jews to Poland
from March to October 1942. The
Independent State of Croatia had already
shot or killed in concentration camps the majority of its Jewish population (along with a
larger number of Serbs), and later deported several thousand Jews in 1942 and 1943. The Bulgaria government cooperated by deporting 11,000 Jews from
Bulgarian-occupied Greece and
Yugoslavia, who were murdered at Treblinka, but
declined to allow the deportation of Jews from its prewar territory, due to widespread opposition from prominent individuals and groups within Bulgaria itself. Until German occupation of
Hungary in March 1944, the Hungarian government did not deport very many of its
approximately 846,000 people considered Jewish by the racial laws of that time (although Jews were murdered in raids and incidents). Also, Romania did not send many Jews; the Romanian and Hungarian Jewish populations were the largest surviving European Jewish populations after 1942. But
between March 1944 and 9 July 1944, 434,000 of the still 825,000 Hungarian Jews were deported on trains, mostly to Auschwitz where the great majority of them were murdered immediately. Roughly
255,000 Jewish Hungarians (29.6 percent) are estimated to somehow have survived the war and Holocaust. Prior to the
German occupation of Italy in September 1943, there were no serious attempt to deport Italian Jews, and Italy refused to allow the deportation of Jews in many
Italian-occupied areas. Nazi Germany did not attempt the destruction of the
Finnish Jews and the
North African Jews living under French or Italian rule.
Extermination camps Gas vans developed from those used to kill mental patients since 1939 were assigned to the
Einsatzgruppen and first used in November 1941; victims were forced into the van and killed with engine exhaust. The first extermination camp was
Chełmno in the Wartheland, established on the initiative of the local civil administrator
Arthur Greiser with Himmler's approval; it began operations in December 1941 using gas vans. In October 1941,
Higher SS and Police Leader of Lublin
Odilo Globocnik began work planning
Belzec—the first purpose-built extermination camp to feature stationary
gas chambers using carbon monoxide based on the previous
Aktion T4 programme—amid increasing talk among German administrators in Poland of large-scale murder of Jews in the General Governorate. In late 1941 in
East Upper Silesia, Jews in forced-labor camps operated by the
Schmelt Organization deemed "unfit for work" began to be sent in groups to Auschwitz where they were murdered. In early 1942,
Zyklon B became the preferred killing method in extermination camps after gassing experiments were conducted on Russian POWs in late August 1941. and medical experiments. Belzec,
Sobibor, and
Treblinka reported a combined revenue of RM 178.7 million from belongings stolen from their victims, far exceeding costs. Combined, the camps required the labor of less than 3,000 Jewish prisoners, 1,000
Trawniki men (largely Ukrainian auxiliaries), and very few German guards. About half of the Jews killed in the Holocaust died by poison gas. Thousands of Romani people were also murdered in the extermination camps. Prisoner uprisings at
Treblinka and
Sobibor meant that these camps were shut down earlier than envisioned.
Liquidation of the ghettos in Poland at
Belzec,
Sobibor, and
Treblinka from January 1942 to February 1943 Plans to kill most of the Jews in the General Governorate were affected by various goals of the SS, military, and civil administration to reduce the amount of food consumed by Jews, enable a slight increase in rations to non-Jewish Poles, and combat the
black market. In March 1942, killings began in Belzec, targeting Jews from Lublin who were not capable of work. This action reportedly reduced the black market and was deemed a success to be replicated elsewhere. By mid-1942, Nazi leaders decided to allow only 300,000 Jews to survive in the General Governorate by the end of the year for forced labor; for the most part, only those working in
armaments production were spared. The majority of ghettos were liquidated in mass executions nearby, especially if they were not near a train station. Larger ghettos were more commonly liquidated during multiple deportations to extermination camps. During this campaign, 1.5 million
Polish Jews were murdered in the largest killing operation of the Holocaust. In order to reduce resistance, the ghetto would be raided without warning, usually in the early morning, and the extent of the operation would be concealed as long as possible.
Trawniki men would cordon off the ghetto while the
Order Police and
Security Police carried out the action. In addition to local non-Jewish collaborators, the Jewish councils and
Jewish ghetto police were often ordered to assist with liquidation actions, although these Jews were in most cases murdered later. Chaotic, capriciously executed selections determined who would be loaded onto the trains. Many Jews were shot during the action, often leaving ghettos strewn with corpses. Jewish forced laborers had to clean it up and collect any valuables from the victims. became significant as a symbol of
Jewish resistance against the Nazis. The Warsaw Ghetto
was cleared between 22 July and 12 September 1942. Of the original population of 350,000 Jews, 250,000 were killed at Treblinka, 11,000 were deported to labor camps, 10,000 were shot in the ghetto, 35,000 were allowed to remain in the ghetto after a final selection, and around 20,000 or 25,000 managed to hide in the ghetto. Misdirection efforts convinced many Jews that they could avoid deportation until it was too late. During a six-week period beginning in August, 300,000 Jews from the
Radom District were sent to Treblinka. At the same time as the mass killing of Jews in the General Governorate, Jews who were in ghettos to the west and east were targeted. Tens of thousands of Jews were deported from ghettos in the Warthegau and East Upper Silesia to Chełmno and Auschwitz. 300,000 Jews—largely skilled laborers—were shot in
Volhynia,
Podolia, and southwestern Belarus. Deportations and mass executions in the
Bialystok District and Galicia killed many Jews. Although there was practically no resistance in the General Governorate in 1942, some Soviet Jews improvised weapons, attacked those attempting to liquidate the ghetto, and set it on fire. These
ghetto uprisings were only undertaken when the inhabitants began to believe that their death was certain. In 1943, larger uprisings in
Warsaw,
Białystok, and
Glubokoje necessitated the use of heavy weapons. The uprising in Warsaw prompted the Nazi leadership to liquidate additional ghettos and labor camps in German-occupied Poland with their inhabitants massacred, such as the
Wola Massacre, or deported to extermination camps for fear of additional Jewish resistance developing. Nevertheless, in early 1944, more than 70,000 Jews were performing forced labor in the General Governorate.
Forced labor , Belarus, forced to clean a street, July 1941 werke in Auschwitz Beginning in 1938—especially in Germany and its annexed territories—many Jews were drafted into
forced-labor camps and segregated work details. These camps were often of a temporary nature and typically overseen by civilian authorities. Initially, mortality did not increase dramatically. After mid-1941, conditions for Jewish forced laborers drastically worsened and death rates increased; even
private companies deliberately subjected workers to murderous conditions. Beginning in 1941 and increasingly as time went on, Jews capable of employment were separated from others—who were usually killed. They were typically employed in non-skilled jobs and could be replaced easily if non-Jewish workers were available, but those in skilled positions had a higher chance of survival. Although conditions varied widely between camps, Jewish forced laborers were typically treated worse than non-Jewish prisoners and suffered much higher mortality rates. In mid-1943, Himmler sought to bring surviving Jewish forced laborers under the control of the SS in the concentration camp system. Some of the forced-labor camps for Jews and some ghettos, such as Kovno, were designated concentration camps, while others were dissolved and surviving prisoners sent to a concentration camp. Despite many deaths, as many as 200,000 Jews survived the war inside the concentration camps. Although most Holocaust victims were never imprisoned in a concentration camp, the image of these camps is a popular symbol of the Holocaust. Including the Soviet prisoners of war, 13 million people were brought to Germany for forced labor. The largest nationalities were Soviet and Polish and they were the worst-treated groups except for Roma and Jews. Soviet and Polish forced laborers endured inadequate food and medical treatment, long hours, and abuse by employers. Hundreds of thousands died. Many others were forced to work for the occupiers without leaving their country of residence. Some of Germany's allies, including Slovakia and Hungary, agreed to deport Jews to protect non-Jews from German demands for forced labor. East European women were also kidnapped, via
lapanka, to serve as sex slaves of German soldiers in
military and
camp brothels despite the prohibition of relationships, including fraternization, between German and foreign workers, which imposed the penalty of imprisonment ==Perpetrators and beneficiaries==