I’m Jewish, and my grandparents were in the Holocaust and it would be really different if they weren’t. My grandmother has a really amazing story as do many other Jews and non-Jews.

The conflict (Jews being rounded up for the ghettos) truly began September 1, 1939. Millions of Jews were sent to ghettos and then taken to concentration camps in freight cars. Two of the most famous concentration camps are Warsaw and Auschwitz. Before that, Jews were humiliated in public. They had to surrender their property, they were boycotted, beaten, imprisoned, and killed.

In concentration camps Jews were either sent to the gas chambers or enslaved. Jews weren’t the only people killed, Nazis also killed Gypsies, handicapped, and many more because they were considered “impure.”

Jews were the only to be marked for total elimination. Many thought that the Jews were the murderers of Christ.

Outside of Germany Jews were wanted to stay in their towns or villages by the other population. For instance, in Hungary Jews were protected for economic reasons, France sent about 100,000 refuges to Nazi camps, but they refused to send their own Jewish citizens to the camps, and in Denmark, Jews were protected by the government.

Resistance movements in Belgium, Norway, and the Netherlands led many Jews to their safety. In the camps (of course) Jews fought the Nazis seeking revenge and honor, but they were defeated by the Nazis.

Adolf Hitler had a bit of Jewish blood in himself, but no one knew until after his suicidal death. Out of maybe 8 million Jews, 2 million survived leaving 6 million that had their life taken from them only in World War II. The overall record is bleak and cruel. The war ended on September 2, 1945. The Nazis lost the war against the Allies, but in the process killing millions of people, especially Jews.