Victims of Nazi Germany

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Nazi Germany persecuted people because of who they were or what they believed. The rules and laws they created treated people who were not part of the “Aryan” ideal as inferior or dangerous. This discrimination targeted many groups, including Jews, Romani people, Slavic peoples, disabled people, LGBTQ+ people, religious opponents, and political dissidents.

The persecution grew from unfair laws to mass actions. People were kept in ghettos, forced to work, had their property taken, and were humiliated or tortured. Some were sterilized or sterilized against their will, and others were jailed, shipped to camps, or killed. In the worst phase, millions were murdered in extermination camps or killed in mass shootings, starvation, and brutal abuse.

The Holocaust specifically aimed to wipe out the Jewish people in Europe, a plan the Nazis called the Final Solution. Jews were crowded into ghettos, then deported to camps where most were murdered. The Nazis also killed many other groups they considered “unworthy,” though with different levels of brutality and timing. The war gave the regime more ways to kill across German-occupied Europe.

Estimates of victims vary, but they show a massive death toll. About six million Jews died, and millions of other people were killed as well. In Poland, the Nazis murdered many Jews and Poles, including members of the intelligentsia and clergy. In eastern Europe, Slavic peoples and Soviet civilians and prisoners of war suffered enormous losses. The Romani people also faced genocide, with hundreds of thousands killed. Disabled people were murdered or sterilized as part of a eugenics program. Some groups, like Jehovah’s Witnesses and political opponents, were targeted for their beliefs or activism. Homosexual men were persecuted and many were imprisoned or killed.

Some people fought back. Resistance members, religious leaders, and ordinary citizens tried to help others, hide persecuted people, or resist Nazi rules. The Danish rescue of most of its Jewish population is one notable example of people taking action to save lives.

The war and the Holocaust left millions dead and changed the world. Afterward, historians and institutions worked to document what happened and remember the victims. Databases and memorials, such as those created to record Jewish victims and other persecuted groups, help ensure that the names and experiences of the dead are not forgotten.