2026-01-27

Holocaust Remembrance Day 2026

Aushwitz


The Holocaust refers to the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators during World War II. In Hebrew, the term Shoah which means catastrophe is often used to describe this genocide

It also targeted other groups deemed subhuman including Romani people, disabled individuals, Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, gay men, and political opponents with numbers in the millions driven by Nazi racial ideology and the goal of racial purity and conquest.

SS Deaths Head    
It all began with discriminatory laws and harassment in Germany after 1933. Jews were forced into overcrowded ghettos. Millions of targeted individuals were shot by mobile killing squads called Einsatzgruppen and gassed in extermination camps like Auschwitz.
It included ghettos, mass shootings, and extermination camps, culminating in the Final Solution which was a plan to eliminate all Jewish people in Europe.

Slavs, Roma, people with disabilities, homosexuals, and others were also systematically murdered. Extreme antisemitism and racial supremacy were the order of the day. They aimed to create a racially pure German empire with abundant living room which they referred to as Lebensraum.

See Also:

Elie Wiesel
Yom HaShoah 2020
International Holocaust Remembrance Day