The Holocaust was the systematic,2

Question

bureaucratic,3
state-sponsored persecution4
and murder of six
million Jews by Adolf Hitler and his Nazi
regime. Holocaust is a word of Greek origin
meaning “sacrifice by fire.” The Nazis, who came
to power in Germany in January 1933, believed
that Germans were “racially superior”5
and that
the Jews, deemed “inferior,”6 were an alien7
threat to the so-called German racial community.
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,8
and behavioral grounds, among them Communists,9
Socialists,10 Jehovah’s Witnesses,In 1933, the Jewish population of Europe stood at over nine million. Most European Jews lived in
countries that Nazi Germany would occupy or influence during World War II. By 1945, the Germans13
and their collaborators killed nearly two out of every three European Jews as part of the “Final
Solution,” the Nazi policy to murder the Jews of Europe.
Although Jews, whom the Nazis deemed a priority danger to Germany, were the primary victims of Nazi
racism, other victims included some 200,000 Roma (Gypsies). At least 200,000 mentally or physically
disabled patients, mainly Germans, living in institutional settings, were murdered in the socalled Euthanasia14 Program.
As Nazi tyranny15 spread across Europe, the Germans and their collaborators persecuted and
murdered millions of other people. Between two and three million Soviet prisoners of war were
murdered or died of starvation, disease, neglect, or maltreatment. The Germans targeted the nonJewish Polish intelligentsia16 for killing, and deported millions of Polish and Soviet civilians for forced
labor in Germany or in occupied Poland, where these individuals worked and often died under
deplorable17 conditions.
From the earliest years of the Nazi regime, German authorities persecuted homosexuals and others
whose behavior did not match prescribed social norms. German police officials targeted thousands of
political opponents (including Communists, Socialists, and trade unionists)18 and religious dissidents19
(such as Jehovah’s Witnesses). Many of these individuals died as a result of incarceration20 and
maltreatment.21
Administration of the “Final Solution”
In the early years of the Nazi regime, the National Socialist government established concentration
camps to detain real and imagined political and ideological opponents. Increasingly in the years before
the outbreak of war, SS22 and police officials incarcerated Jews, Roma, and other victims of ethnic and
racial hatred in these camps.To concentrate and monitor the Jewish population as well as to facilitate23 later deportation24 of the
Jews, the Germans and their collaborators created ghettos,25 transit camps, and forced-labor camps in
order to keep Jews grouped closely together during the war years. The German authorities also
established numerous forced-labor camps, both in the so-called Greater German Reich26 and in
German-occupied territory, for non-Jews whose labor the Germans sought to exploit.27
Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) and, later,
militarized battalions of Order Police officials, moved behind German lines to carry out mass-murder
operations against Jews, Roma, and Soviet state and Communist Party officials. German SS and police
units, supported by units of the Wehrmacht and the Waffen SS, murdered more than a million Jewish
men, women, and children, and hundreds of thousands of others.
Between 1941 and 1944, Nazi German authorities deported millions of Jews from Germany, from
occupied territories, and from the countries of many of its Axis28 allies to ghettos and to killing centers,
often called extermination camps, where they were murdered in specially developed gassing facilities.
The End of the Holocaust ;
In the final months of the war, SS guards moved camp inmates by train or on forced marches, often
called “death marches,” in an attempt to prevent the Allied liberation29 of large numbers of prisoners.
As Allied forces moved across Europe in a series of offensives against Germany, they began to
encounter and liberate concentration camp prisoners, as well as prisoners en route by forced march
from one camp to another. The marches continued until May 7, 1945, the day the German armed
forces surrendered unconditionally to the Allies.30
For the western Allies, World War II officially ended in Europe on the next day, May 8, while Soviet
forces announced their “Victory Day” on May 9, 1945.
In the aftermath of the Holocaust, many of the survivors found shelter in displaced persons (DP) camps
administered by the Allied powers. Between 1948 and 1951, almost 700,000 Jews emigrated31 to Israel,
including 136,000 Jewish displaced persons from Europe. Other Jewish DPs emigrated to the United
States and other nations. The last DP camp closed in 1957.
The crimes committed during the Holocaust devastated32 most European Jewish communities and
eliminated hundreds of Jewish communities in occupied eastern Europe entirely.
PART A: Which TWO of the following best identify the central ideas of this text?
A. The Nazi party oppressed people who were different from them by forcing them
into camps.
B. World War II was fought by Israel and Germany, who kept Jewish prisoners of
war in horrible death camps.
C. Only Jews were persecuted during the Holocaust, and no one defended them
because they felt it did not affect them.
D. The Holocaust was motivated by prejudice and organized by the government.
E. The German Nazis were exercising their right to border control by deporting
illegal aliens, but other nations perceived this as immoral.
F. Socialists, Einstatzgruppen, Trade-Unionists, Communists, SS, disabled people,
and Roma were all victims of genocide.

Answer 1

The two statements that best identify the central ideas of the text are:

D. The Holocaust was motivated by prejudice and organized by the government.

F. Socialists, Einsatzgruppen, Trade-Unionists, Communists, SS, disabled people, and Roma were all victims of genocide.

These options accurately reflect the systematic nature of the Holocaust and the broad range of groups that were targeted and persecuted by the Nazi regime.