Introduction to the Holocaust Published April 16, 2009 FAIRCHILD AIR FORCE BASE, Wash. -- The United States Congress established the Days of Remembrance as our Nation's annual commemoration of the Holocaust. For 2008, the Days of Remembrance are 27 April through 4 May, and Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) is Friday, 2 May. Why is the Holocaust important to study? What do you perceive to be the most important lessons to be learned from the study of the Holocaust, and why? Over the next few weeks, leading up to the remembrance week, the Inland Northwest Company Grade Officer Council hopes to help you answer these questions by providing articles that will introduce the Holocaust, the first concentration camps, personal histories and the Holocaust's aftermath. What is the time period and definition of the Holocaust? The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. The Holocaust refers to the period from 30 January 1933, when Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, to 8 May 1945 (V-E Day), the end of World War II in Europe. "Holocaust" is a word of Greek origin meaning "sacrifice by fire." The Nazis believed that Germans were "racially superior" and that the Jews, deemed "inferior," were an alien threat to the so-called German racial community. How did the Germans define who was Jewish? The Nazi authorities did not have a set policy or definition for Jewish persons until 1935. On Nov. 14, 1935, the Nazis issued the following definition of a Jew: anyone with three Jewish grandparents; someone with two Jewish grandparents who belonged to the Jewish community on Sept. 15, 1935, or joined thereafter; was married to a Jew or Jewess on Sept. 15, 1935, or married one thereafter; was the offspring of a marriage or extramarital liaison with a Jew on or after Sept. 15, 1935. How many non-Jewish civilians were murdered during World War II? It is also important to note that during the era of the Holocaust, German authorities also targeted other groups because of their perceived "racial inferiority": Roma (Gypsies), the disabled, and some of the Slavic peoples (Poles, Russians, and others). Other groups were persecuted on political, ideological, and behavioral grounds, among them Communists, Socialists, Jehovah's Witnesses, habitual criminals and homosexuals. The Simon Wiesenthal Center estimates that approximately five million from these groups were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators or died as a result of incarceration and maltreatment. Next Series: First Concentration Camps Sources: The Museum of Tolerance of the Simon Wiesenthal Center; The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, The Holocaust Encyclopedia, www.ushmm.org; The Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center, www.wsherc.org.