The+Holocaust+itl

"Holocaust" is a word of Greek origin meaning "sacrifice by fire." By 1945, the Germans and their collaborators killed nearly two out of every three European Jews as part of the "Final Solution." the Nazi policy to murder the Jews of Europe. Although Jews, whom the Nazis deemed a priority danger to Germany, were the primary victims of Nazi racism, other victims included some 200,000 Roma (Gypsies). As Nazi tyranny spread across Europe, the Germans and their collaborators persecuted and murdered millions of other people. Between two and three million Soviet prisoners of war were murdered or died of starvation, disease, neglect, or maltreatment. The Germans targeted the non-Jewish Polish intelligentsia for killing, and deported millions of Polish and Soviet civilians for forced labor in Germany or in occupied Poland, where these individuals worked and often died under deplorable conditions. The term "Nazi" is an acronym for "Nationalsozialistishe Deutsche Arbeiterpartei" ("National Socialist German Worker's Party"). It is estimated that 11 million people were killed during the Holocaust. Six million of these were Jews. On April 1, 1933, the Nazis instigated their first action against German Jews by announcing a boycott of all Jewish-run businesses. The Nuremberg Laws, issued on September 15, 1935, began to exclude Jews from public life. The Nuremberg Laws included a law that stripped German Jews of their citizenship and a law that prohibited marriages and extramarital sex between Jews and Germans. The Nuremberg Laws set the legal precedent for further anti-Jewish legislation.