Between 1933 and 1945 Nazi Germany and its allies established more than 44,000 camps, sub-campes,

and various incarceration sites. These locations were used for a wide range of purposes,

but the most terrific is the one we all associate with the word Holocaust today,

the mass murder of Jews and other minorities and gas chambers by Nazi Germany.

Of the 9 million Jews who lived in Europe before the Holocaust,

and estimated two-thirds were murdered, though the scale of mass killing was new,

the prejudice that led to it was not. Jews in Europe had been victims of discrimination

and persecution since the Middle Ages, mostly for religious reasons. Christian saw the Jewish

faith as an aberration that had to be quashed. In addition to being attacked and killed, Jews were

sometimes forced to convert or not allowed to practice certain professions. In the 19th century,

new, more hateful theories about the Jewish people were born. They weren't just members of a

different faith. They weren't even fully human. Even Jews who converted to Christianity were still

different because of their bloodline. They were still other, someone that doesn't belong.

And then in the 1920s and 1930s, Hitler and the Nazis took anti-Semitism even further still,

that a new layer of blame to all this garbage, they preached that it was the Jews fault that Germany

had lost World War I. It was a Jewish conspiracy against Germans that was still preventing Germany

from thriving as a nation. It was the Jews fault that Germany lay in economic ruins. Hitler's hatred

of Judaism truly knew no bounds. And he would spend that hatred sadly, spread it to an all-too-willing

audience. As early as August 1920, Hitler compared the Jews to germs. He stated the diseases cannot

be controlled unless you destroy their causes. The influence of the Jews would never disappear without

removing its cause, the Jew from our midst. He'd write. He'd soon share ideas like that in political

speeches, speeches, audiences thunderously applauded. These radical ideas embraced by an alarming

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