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There have been instances, throughout history, of massacres of whole populations of peoples. Examples Include the destruction of Carthage by the Romans, the slaughter of the Armenians under the Ottoman Empire, and the massacres of the Herreros by the German rulers in South West Africa. None of these atrocities, however, was executed on such a scale or with equal efficiency as the systematic killing of European Jews by Nazi Germany under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, whose determination to eliminate these populations from Europe sent approximately six million Jewish men, women and children to death. The total number of Jews slated for extermination was eleven milion. But because the bulk of Soviet Jewry survived the war, and nations like England and Switzerland were never invaded, the Nazi war machine fell short of this goal by approximately one-half. There were other groups who also died in concentration camps, such as Gypsies, Poles and homosexuals. Treatment of these four groups, however. remained relatively random in contrast to the total destruction of Jews. During Hitler's dictatorship, one-third of the world Jewish population was exterminated. The sixteen million Jews of 1939 were reduced to under eleven million by 1945. |
