About World Holocaust Victims' Day

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Holocaust Victims' Day remembers the horrific events of the 1930s through the mid-1940s in Europe, including summary killings, imprisonment, discrimination, and other state-supported acts of terror that began as early as 1933. Holocaust Victims' Day marks the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp by Russian soldiers on January 27, 1945, and is observed in memory of the over 12 million victims who perished.

The Holocaust is one of the most significant manmade tragedies in recent history in scale and brutality. Victims were targeted based on their faith, physical or mental challenges, political views, color, and sexual orientation. Many were imprisoned and used as slave labor, and others were murdered, died of disease, or starved in purpose-built concentration camps.

People targeted by the Nazi regime for imprisonment and extermination included those of the Jewish faith, Catholic faith, Romani (Gypsies), the mentally ill, disabled, communists, persons of color, and homosexuals. Political prisoners were generally communists or thought leaders and intellectuals, irrespective of faith, including teachers, artists, writers, journalists, clergy, lawyers, politicians, and business owners. For example, when Nazi Germany conquered Poland six weeks after invading in 1939, only three percent of the intellectual class remained alive. Anyone who could lead or form resistance was murdered.

The largest demographic targeted and murdered were those of the Jewish faith; in totality, 25% of the world's Jewish population perished under Nazism. Though a smaller population, 25% of the world's Romani population was exterminated during the Holocaust as well.

Using a network of concentration camps connected by trains to imprison and enslave people by demographic was not a Nazi invention. The tactic was first deployed during the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1917, resulting in over one million deaths. Officers of the German army were allies of the Ottomans in WWI and participated in the slaughter. Sixteen years later, they perfected the system during WWII.

Holocaust Victims' Day honors all the victims, regardless of faith, race, health, or sexual orientation, and urges society to learn from the circumstances leading up to and causing this international tragedy.