Concentration Camps and Refugees
In the last months of the war and immediately afterwards, Allied soldiers discovered a number of concentration camps that had been used by the Nazis to imprison and exterminate an estimated 11 million people, 6 million of whom were Jews. Romanis, Slavs, homosexuals, Roman Catholics, and various minorities and disabled persons, as well as political enemies of the Nazi regime (particularly communists) formed the remaining 5 million. The best-known of these camps is the death camp at Auschwitz in which about 1.1–1.6 million Jews and political prisoners were killed.
Read more about this topic: End Of World War II In Europe
Famous quotes containing the word refugees:
“The exile is a singular, whereas refugees tend to be thought of in the mass. Armenian refugees, Jewish refugees, refugees from Franco Spain. But a political leader or artistic figure is an exile. Thomas Mann yesterday, Theodorakis today. Exile is the noble and dignified term, while a refugee is more hapless.... What is implied in these nuances of social standing is the respect we pay to choice. The exile appears to have made a decision, while the refugee is the very image of helplessness.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)