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Question: What year was the Holocaust!?
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first Nazi camp (holocaust) started in 1933

http://en!.wikipedia!.org/wiki/Holocaust#C!.!.!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

~Define "Holocaust"!. The Nazis never used the term!. It came into vogue during the terrorist campaigns of Jewish terror groups like the Levi, the Stern Gang and Irgun when they were trying to force creation of a Jewish homeland in the British Mandate of Palastine!.

If you refer to the Nazi "racial purification" and "social cleansing" programs, then it is not a Jewish issue!. Jews represent about half of those killed in the death camps and about 18 to 28% of those who died in the Concentration Camps (the difference is highly significant and if you don't know it, you should learn it)!. The genocide of the Serbs and Roma, as a percentage of population, was more complete than that of the Jews!. Had the Red Army not repelled Operation Barbarossa and sealed the fate of the Third Reich at Stalingrad, Moscow, Kursk and Smolensk, another 10 to 30 million Slavs would have been murdered!.

Himmler organized the Einsatzgruppen shortly after Barbarossa was launched!. Realizing the detrimental effect that Einsatzgruppen operations were having on the troops, he ordered the construction of the Death Camps!. Chelmno started operations in December, 1941!. Himmler then realized that the mass executions were wasting a valuable and necessary source of slave labor and he ordered the termination termination of Operation 14f13 in the spring of 1943!.

The first Death Camp he closed, because it was working with such speed and ferocity, was Jasenovac!. About 15% of the victims there were Jewish!. The seventh and last Extermination Camp to cease mass executions was Auschwitz II (Birkenau)!. About 1/2 of the victims at Auschwitz II were Jews!. Many of the Jews would have been sent to the camps for various other reasons even if they had not been Jews!.

Himmler, Heydrich and Goering designed and initiated the programs, briefing Hitler in only after they were operational!. Hitler, of course, approved them!. The "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" was probably Goering's brainchild, although at his trial he said it was Hitler's!. I believe history points the finger at Goering far more clearly than it does at Hitler, although there is no question that Hitler approved it!. It was announced to senior National Socialist officials at the Wannsee Conference in January, 1942, months after it had been implemented by Himmler and Heydrich!.

The first Concentration Camp, Dachau, was opened in 1933!. The concentration camps remained opened until they were liberated or, moved or until the end of the war!. The Concentration Camps were not part of "The Holocaust", depending on how you define the term!.

The Nazi regime lasted from 1931 until 1945!. Murder was always part of the program, with the earlier targets being communists, who were killing Nazis in the streets with the same relish that National Socialists were killing them!. Exploitation, removal of, segregation of and slaughter of the Jews was a common occurrence long before the Nazis were conceived!. The Catholic Church had its go during the Spanish Inquisition!. The Jewish Pale was a Russian concoction!. The British plan to create a Jewish colony on Madagascar (including forced emigration) pre-dated Hitler but when Hitler suggested doing the same thing, he was unable to because he was at war with France and the UK and he needed their support to make it happen!. As late as May 1940, Hitler and Himmler agreed that mass executions were not an option because that was a 'Bolshevik' solution and not the German way of doing things!.

The Nazis did examine things like the genocide of the American Indians and the activities of the US Bureau of Indian Affairs when they planned their own policies and they were sure after things like the SS St Louis and the Evian Conference that the world wouldn't real care to much (and would probably secretly applaud) if they initiated the 'Final Solution'!. Given that Jan Karski brought his first hand accounts and photographs out of the Warsaw Ghetto and Belzec in the Spring of '42 to London and Washington and there was not outcry of protest, you can't say they were incorrect in their assessment!.

If by "Holocaust" you mean the systematic slaughter of Jews, you ignore what the Nazis really stood for and what they really did!. If you mean the "racial purification" program, that was part and parcel of the Nazi agenda and lasted the entire time they held power!. If you mean organized mass executions (of Jews and non-Jews alike) the euthanasia program lasted about 18 months from December 41 until spring '43, with smaller scale operations being conducted by the Einsatzgruppen from July 41 and at Auschwitz II until early/mid mid 44!. Other executions happened after Auschwitz II closed down and at places other than at the 7 killing centers, but not on the same scale!. The death factories were short lived and they did not kill 6 million Jews, and probably did not kill 6 million people, although the toll is certainly at least 5 million (Jew and non-Jew combined)!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

It depends!. You could say it was from Jan 30, 1933 to April 30, 1945!. From when the Hitler took power to when Hitler was turned into powder (they cremated the body after his suicide)!.

Another way to see it is from Jan 20, 1942 to April 29, 1945!. Jan 20 is the date of the Wannsee Conference!. It was a one day conference by high ranking Nazi officials where the laid out their plans to exterminate the Jews and all other peoples they didn't like!.

Before then, the policy had been one of oppression, relocation, and terror!. Basically, they put the Jews on reservations called Ghettos!. At that conference, their mandate was to find a way to kill them!.

May 8, 1945 is the final surrender date of Germany even though many if not all death camps had been liberated by then!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

It took a lot longer than a "year" for Hitler and the SS to exterminate 6 million Jews and untold numbers of gypsies, Poles, Slavs, and non-Aryans!. The intense brutality went over a decade!. So that it never happens again, PLEASE read the histories!Www@QuestionHome@Com

It wasn't a single year!. It began and escalated during the Nazi rule of Germany, which lasted from 1933 to the end of WWII in 1945!. The last years of that period had the largest number of deaths!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

The holocaust began in 1938, and ended in 1945!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

It was between october 1938 and december 1944Www@QuestionHome@Com

1930's and 40'sWww@QuestionHome@Com

1933-1945Www@QuestionHome@Com