The Holocaust (from Greek ὁλόκαυστος [holókaustos]: hólos, "whole" and kaustós, "burnt"), also known as The Shoah is the term generally used to describe the genocide of approximately six million European Jews during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored extermination by Nazi Germany. The man responsable for that was Adolf Hitler.Some scholars maintain that the definition of the Holocaust should also include the Nazis' systematic murder of millions of people in other groups, including ethnic Poles, Romani, Soviet civilians, Soviet prisoners of war, people with disabilities, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and other political and religious opponents. By this definition, the total number of Holocaust victims would be between 11 million and 17 million people.
Eberhard Jäckel wrote in 1986 that the Holocaust was unique because:
"the National Socialist killing of the Jews was unique in that never before had a state with the authority of its responsible leader decided and announced that a specific human group, including its aged, its women and its children and infants, would be killed as quickly as possible, and then carried through this resolution using every possible means of state power".
Stolpersteine:
To remember holocaust victims, Gunter Demnig created Stolpersteine.
Stones are neatly paved into the sidewalk, they force passers-by to stop and read them. “Here lived” begins the inscriptions engraved in brass on the concrete squares measuring about four inches—on each one, just the name, date, and place of death of a person killed by the Nazis.
