by Ray Cook

Created on: December 18, 2008

The Holocaust was the systematic and industrialized destruction of European Jewry between 1933 and 1945 by the German Nazi regime and its sympathizers.

The Holocaust has had profound political, legal, cultural and psychological repercussions which reverberate to this day.

Population and Demographics

It is estimated that at least six million Jews were murdered or died as a result of persecution during the time of the Nazi regime and especially during the latter part of World War II in what is known as The Final Solution of the Jewish Question. If you consider that the pre-war Jewish population estimate for Europe including European Russia is 9.3 million then it is clear that only one third of the Jewish population survived. But the loss of life was not evenly spread across countries. By far the largest number of Jews, in the region of 5 million, were living in Poland and the Soviet Union. Apart from these two countries, Jews numbered in the hundreds of thousands in Hungary, France and Germany itself and were a small but significant minority.

As a result of the Holocaust Jewish life in Poland and Russia was more or less completely eradicated. The Jews who survived and dragged themselves back to their homes were often set upon and killed. The Communist regimes in Eastern Europe after the war were inimical to religious life or anything which could be seen as non-conformist. Deprived of family, home and homeland, hundreds of thousands decided to emigrate to Palestine and the United States and in the former case, were often turned back by the British Mandate authorities who were in the business of appeasing Arab sensibilities in the Middle East. Others tried South America or South Africa.

Such was the destruction of Jewry that the world population took about 60 years to recover to its 1939 numbers.

Society and Culture

Jewish life in Eastern Europe had existed for about 600 years. Here Jews were less assimilated, more observant and led a more rural existence in hundreds of shtetls or small townships. They were also found in large cities such as Warsaw, Lodz, and Kiev. Generally much poorer than their Western counterparts, they had developed a rich culture of music, language, literature and learning. The Hasidic movement had its roots in Russia and Poland. When war broke out city Jews were prominent in science, the arts, medicine and even the military. Some cities had significant populations of 30 to 40 percent.

After the war there was a profound difference and a new reality.

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