The Holocaust: Facts and Figures
Before World War II, Europe had 9.5 million Jews. About six million were murdered.
* Number of Jews who lived in Europe before 1933: Approximately 9.5 million, 60 percent of the world’s Jews
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* Jews estimated murdered in the Holocaust: 6 million
* Number of Jews in Europe in 1950: 3.5 million, of which about 2 million in the USSR
* Number of Jewish children killed by Nazis: 1.1 million
* Number of homosexuals killed by Nazis: Between 3,000 and 9,000
* Number of mentally ill or physically disabled put to death by Nazis: approximately 200,000
* Roma (Gypsy) people killed by Germans: Estimates range between 220,000 and 500,000
* Number of camps, prisons and other facilities of incarceration within Germany and the lands it occupied: 40,000.
* Number of Nazi extermination camps: 6 - Auschwitz, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor and Treblinka, all of them in occupied Poland
* Number of cities, towns and villages where Germans forced Jews to live in closed ghettos: Approximately 1,100, according to the “Yad Vashem Encyclopedia of the Ghettos During the Holocaust”
* Number of Nazi war criminals imprisoned after being convicted, between 1945 and 1985: 10,000
* Number of Nazi war criminals executed during the same period: 5,000
Countries occupied by Germans, with percentage of their Jewish populations killed, and number of victims in parentheses:
Poland: 91 percent (approximately 3 million)
Greece: 87 percent (65,000)
Lithuania: 83 percent (140,000)
Slovakia: 80 percent (71,000)
Yugoslavia: 77 percent (60,000)
Latvia: 76 percent (70,000)
Netherlands: 71 percent (100,000)
Hungary: 66 percent (550,000)
Bohemia/Moravia: 66 percent (78,000)
Norway: 45 percent (762)
Romania: 44 percent (270,000)
Estonia: 44 percent (2,000)
Belgium: 38 percent (25,000)
Luxembourg: 28 percent (1,000)
Soviet Union: 33 percent (1,000,000)
France: 30 percent (77,000)
Austria: 27 percent (50,000)
Germany: 25 percent (142,000)
Italy: 17 percent (7,500)
Finland: 0.35 percent (8)
Denmark: 0.75 percent (60)
Bulgaria: 0 percent (0)
Key dates
1933
January 30: Adolf Hitler elected chancellor of Germany
March 22: Dachau, the first concentration camp, is opened outside Munich
March 23: Reichstag passes Enabling Act, giving Hitler power to make laws without approval of the parliament
April 1: Semi-official boycott of Jewish businesses in Germany, ignored by many citizens
September 15: Nuremberg Laws issued, depriving Jews of citizenship, prohibiting them from having sexual relations with Aryans, and a variety of other restrictions that removed them from public life
1936
March 7: Roma are stripped of German citizenship; German army occupies the Rhineland, violating both the Versailles and Locarno treaties
1938
March 11-13: The Anschluss, in which Germany occupies and annexes Austria
September 28: Signing of the Munich Agreement, in which the Allies -- excluding Czechoslovakia -- agree to German occupation of the Sudetenland, German-speaking border regions of Czechoslovakia
November 9-10: Kristallnacht: A night of anti-Jewish pogroms throughout Germany and occupied territories. Some 90 Jews are killed, and another 30,000 are arrested and sent to concentration camps. Two hundred and sixty-seven synagogues are destroyed
1939
September 1: Germany invades Poland, triggering World War II
1940
April 9: Germany invades Denmark and Norway
May 10: Germany invades Belgium, the Netherlands and France
1941
April 6: Germany invades Greece and Yugoslavia
June 22: Germany invades Soviet Union. Here, Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing squads), are used to murder Jews.
December 7: Japan attacks U.S. naval station at Pearl Harbor; U.S. enters the war
December 8: After Einsatzgruppen are found inefficient for mass killings, the first murders by poison gas (using automobile exhaust) begin at Chelmno death camp
1942
January 20: Wannsee Conference, Berlin. Senior German officials are presented with the plan for the “Final Solution” already decided upon at the highest levels. Adolf Eichmann takes minutes.
March 27: Deportations of Jews from France begin
July 15: Deportations of Jews from the Netherlands begin
July 22: Deportations from Warsaw Ghetto begin; within two months, some 260,000 Jews are taken to Treblinka.
1943
April 19: Warsaw Ghetto Uprising begins (after massive deportations the preceding year)
1944
March 19: Germany occupies Hungary. Deportations of what will be 400,000 Jews from Hungary begin
June 6: D-Day - Allies begin counter-invasion of France
July 23: First death camp is liberated, Majdanek, by Soviet troops
August 25: Liberation of Paris
1945
January 27: Soviets liberate Auschwitz death camp
April 30: Hitler kills himself in his Berlin bunker
May 8 (May 9 in USSR): Signing of unconditional surrender by Germany to Allies.
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