The Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Poland

The Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Poland
Top, clockwise: Warsaw Ghetto burning, May 1943 • Einsatzgruppe shooting of women from the Mizocz Ghetto, 1942 • Selection of people to be sent directly to the gas chamber right after their arrival at Auschwitz-II Birkenau • Jews captured in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising led to the Umschlagplatz by Waffen SS • Łódź Ghetto children deported to Chełmno extermination camp, 1942.
Overview
Period1941 – 1945
TerritoryNazi-occupied Poland, including present-day western Ukraine and western Belarus
PerpetratorsNazi Germany, his allied countries and local collaborators in their occupied territories
Killed3,000,000+ Polish Jews
Holocaust survivors157,000–375,000 in the Soviet Union
50,000 liberated from Nazi concentration camps

The Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Poland was the genocide of Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland between September 1939 and May 1945. At least 3,000,000 Jews in Poland (90% of pre-war Polish Jews) were killed. Many were killed at the Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor, Treblinka and Auschwitz concentration camp. Polish Jews constituted half of the Holocaust victims.

Events

Poland lost 20% of her population to 5.5 years of Nazi occupation, including at least 3,000,000 Jews in Poland. In 1939, at least 7,000 Jews were killed in Nazi-occupied zone, while the Soviet Union deported many Jews to the Russian mainland, where most survived the war. In 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, expanding the Holocaust into Soviet territories.

Operation Reinhard

Particularly, at least 1,800,000 Jews were killed in Operation Reinhard, which involved deportations and mass extermination in death camps.

Aftermath

When the last death camp was freed, merely 1–2% of Polish Jews survived.

References

  1. ↑ Edele, Mark; Warlick, Wanda (2017). "Saved by Stalin? Trajectories and Numbers of Polish Jews in the Soviet Second World War". Shelter from the Holocaust: Rethinking Jewish Survival in the Soviet Union. Wayne State University Press. pp. 96, 123. ISBN 978-0-8143-4268-8.
  2. ↑ Stola, Dariusz (2017). "Jewish emigration from communist Poland: the decline of Polish Jewry in the aftermath of the Holocaust". East European Jewish Affairs. 47 (2–3): 169–188 [171]. doi:10.1080/13501674.2017.1398446. S2CID 166031765.
  3. ↑ Laqueur, Walter (July 30, 2009). "Towards the Holocaust". The Changing Face of Antisemitism: From Ancient Times to the Present Day. ISBN 9780195341218. Retrieved November 3, 2024.
  4. 1 2
  5. ↑ Joanna Tokarska-Bakir (2023). Cursed: A Social Portrait of the Kielce Pogrom. Cornell University Press. ISBN 9781501771484. Retrieved October 16, 2024.