Thematic and Chronological Narrative

About the Holocaust explores the history of the Holocaust thematically and chronologically. Each chapter in the narrative is divided into subchapters with explanatory texts. Useful related resources accompany the texts and may include photos, video testimonies, documentary footage, documents, artifacts and art.

What was the Holocaust?

The Holocaust was unprecedented genocide, total and systematic, perpetrated by Nazi Germany and its collaborators, with the aim of annihilating the Jewish people. The primary motivation was the Nazis' anti-Semitic racist ideology....

Nazi Germany and the Jews 1933-1939

“That was the heart of the problem of German Jewry: it was so much a part of German society that the Nazi blow hit it from within. It didn’t come from without, as for the Polish Jews, who were occupied. No one occupied...

The Outbreak of World War II and Anti-Jewish Policy

“There are in this part of the world [Eastern and Central Europe] 6,000,000 Jews… for whom the world is divided into places where they cannot live and places where they cannot enter.”Chaim WeizmannThe beginning of...

The Ghettos

“We have entered into a new life, and it is impossible to imagine the panic that has arisen in the Jewish Quarter. Suddenly we see ourselves penned in on all sides. We are segregated and separated from the world and the fullness...

The Beginning of the Final Solution

The naked people stepped down the stairs carved in the pit’s wall, and walked over the heads of those who lay there to the spot where the SS man told them. Then they lowered themselves atop of the dead or those who were still...

The Implementation of the Final Solution

Then for the first time we became aware that our language lacks words to express this offense, the demolition of a man… We had reached the bottom. It is not possible to sink lower than this… Nothing belongs to us anymore:...

The World of the Camps

Time there is not like it is here on earth… The inhabitants of this [other] planet had no names, they had no parents nor did they have children… They breathed according to different laws of nature, they did not live –...

Combat and Resistance

“It is impossible to put into words what we have been through. What happened exceeded our boldest dreams. The Germans fled twice from the ghetto… My life’s dream has come true. Defense in the ghetto has become a...

Rescue of Jews During the Holocaust

"In those times there was darkness everywhere. In heaven and on earth, all the gates of compassion seemed to have been closed. The killer killed and the Jews died and the outside world adopted an attitude either of complicity...

The Fate of the Jews Across Europe

“In the meantime, I continued as usual going to school, to the Jewish school; and every night children would disappear. Every morning the teacher would open her attendance book, count the children, and as there were fewer children,...

The Final Stages of the War and the Aftermath

“So for us even the hour of liberty rang out grave and muffled, and filled our souls with joy and yet with a painful sense of shame… and also with anguish, because we felt that this should never happen, that now nothing...

Thematic and Chronological Narrative

What was the Holocaust?

Nazi Germany and the Jews 1933-1939

The Outbreak of World War II and Anti-Jewish Policy

The Ghettos

The Beginning of the Final Solution

The Implementation of the Final Solution

The World of the Camps

Combat and Resistance

Rescue of Jews During the Holocaust

The Fate of the Jews Across Europe

The Final Stages of the War and the Aftermath

New Yad Vashem website redirection