Holocaust Victims

While the term Holocaust victims generally refers to Jews, the Nazis also persecuted and killed millions of members of other groups they considered inferior (Untermenschen), undesirable or dangerous.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) states: “The Holocaust was the murder of six million Jews and millions of others by the Nazis and their collaborators during World War II."

In addition to Jews, the targeted groups included Poles (of whom 2.5 million gentile Poles were killed) and some other Slavic peoples; Soviets (particularly prisoners of war); Romanies (also known as Gypsies) and others who did not belong to the "Aryan race"; the mentally ill, the deaf, the physically disabled and mentally retarded; homosexual and transsexual people; political opponents such as social democrats and socialists; and religious dissidents, i.e. members of Jehovah's Witnesses and Catholics. Taking into account all of the victims of Nazi persecution, they systematically killed an estimated six million Jews and mass murdered an additional eleven million people during the war. Donald Niewyk suggests that the broadest definition, including Soviet civilian deaths would produce a death toll of 17 million.

Despite often widely varying treatment (some groups were actively targeted for genocide, while others were mostly not), these victims all perished alongside one another, some in concentration camps such as Dachau, some as victims of other forms of Nazi brutality, but most in death camps, such as Auschwitz, according to the extensive documentation left behind by the Nazis themselves (both written and photographed), eyewitness testimony (by survivors, perpetrators, and bystanders) and the statistical records of the various countries under occupation.