View source for Victims of Nazi Germany

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{{For|notable individuals who were murdered by the Nazi regime|List of victims of Nazism}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=December 2024}}
{{Use American English|date=October 2015}}
{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders sortable" style="float:right; margin-left:1em; font-size:80%"
|+Estimated death toll among Nazi Germany's victims (incl. the Holocaust), 1933–1945
|-
!scope="col"|Community
!scope="col" data-sort-type="number"|Murdered
!scope="col" class="unsortable"|{{abbr|Refs.|References}}
|-
!scope="row", style="text-align:right;"|[[Jews]]
|style="text-align:right;"|{{sort|6,000,000|6 million}}|| style="text-align:center;" |<ref name=":0" />
|-
!scope="row", style="text-align:right;"|  [[East Slavs]] ([[Generalplan Ost|GPO]])
| style="text-align:right;"|{{sort|millions|millions}}|| style="text-align:center;" |<ref name=columbia/><ref>{{Cite web |title=THE GERMAN ARMY AND THE RACIAL NATURE OF THE WAR AGAINST THE SOVIET UNION |url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-german-army-and-the-racial-nature-of-the-war-against-the-soviet-union?parent=en%2F3582 |website=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum}}</ref>
|-
!scope="row", style="text-align:right;"|   [[German atrocities committed against Soviet prisoners of war|Soviet POWs]]
| style="text-align:right;"|{{sort|3,300,000|3.3 million}}|| style="text-align:center;" |{{sfn|Berenbaum|2005|p=125}}<ref name=":0" />
|-
!scope="row", style="text-align:right;"|  [[Polish people|Poles]]
| style="text-align:right;"|{{sort|1,800,000|1.8 million}}|| style="text-align:center;" |<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.ushmm.org/learn/students/learning-materials-and-resources/poles-victims-of-the-nazi-era/polish-resistance-and-conclusions|title=Polish Resistance and Conclusions|publisher=[[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]]|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180102111652/https://www.ushmm.org/learn/students/learning-materials-and-resources/poles-victims-of-the-nazi-era/polish-resistance-and-conclusions|archive-date=2018-01-02|quote=Documentation remains fragmentary, but today scholars of independent Poland believe that 1.8 to 1.9 million Polish civilians (non-Jews) were victims of German Occupation policies and the war. This approximate total includes Poles killed in executions or who died in prisons, forced labor, and concentration camps. It also includes an estimated 225,000 civilian victims of the 1944 Warsaw uprising, more than 50,000 civilians who died during the 1939 invasion and siege of Warsaw, and a relatively small but unknown number of civilians killed during the Allies' military campaign of 1944–45 to liberate Poland.}}</ref><ref name=PolandWorldWarIIcasualties-1>{{Cite web|url=https://www.projectinposterum.org/docs/poland_WWII_casualties.htm|title=Project InPosterum: Poland WWII Casualties|website=www.projectinposterum.org}}</ref><ref name=":0" />
|-
!scope="row", style="text-align:right;"|[[Serbs]]
| style="text-align:right;"|{{sort|310,000|More than 310,000}}|| style="text-align:center;" |<ref name="Croatia">{{cite web|url=http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205930.pdf|title=Croatia|department=Shoah Resource Center, The International School for Holocaust Studies|publisher=Yad Vashem}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|newspaper=[[NIN (magazine)|NIN]]|language=sr|url=http://www.knjigainfo.com/index.php?gde=@http%3A//www.knjigainfo.com/pls/sasa/bip.text%3Ftid%3D38347@ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130801090050/http://www.knjigainfo.com/index.php?gde=%40http%3A%2F%2Fwww.knjigainfo.com%2Fpls%2Fsasa%2Fbip.text%3Ftid%3D38347%40 |archive-date=1 August 2013|date=12 January 2006|title=Žrtve licitiranja - Sahrana jednog mita, Bogoljub Kočović|last=Glišić|first=Venceslav |access-date=8 May 2012 |url-status=dead}}</ref>
|-
!scope="row", style="text-align:right;"|[[Violence against people with disabilities|People with disabilities]]
| style="text-align:right;"|270,000|| style="text-align:center;" |<ref name="holocaust-education.dk">{{cite web|url=http://www.holocaust-education.dk/baggrund/eutanasi.asp|title=The Danish Center for Holocaust and [Genocide Studies]|publisher=Holocaust-education.dk|date=1939-09-01 |access-date=2015-09-27 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303081500/http://www.holocaust-education.dk/baggrund/eutanasi.asp |archive-date=2016-03-03}}</ref>
|-
!scope="row", style="text-align:right;"|[[Romani people|Romani]]
| style="text-align:right;"|250,000–500,000|| style="text-align:center;" |<ref name=":0" /><ref name="USHMM Roma">[http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005219 "Genocide of European Roma (Gypsies)"]. ''Holocaust Encyclopedia''. [[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]]. Retrieved 27 September 2012. The USHMM places the scholarly estimates at 250,000–500,000. According to {{harvnb|Berenbaum|2005|p=126}}, "serious scholars estimate that between 90,000 and 220,000 were killed under German rule."</ref>
|-
!scope="row", style="text-align:right;"|[[Persecution of Freemasons|Freemasons]]
| style="text-align:right;"|80,000|| style="text-align:center;" |<ref name="GrandLodgeofScotland">{{cite web|author=Staff|url=http://www.grandlodgescotland.com/masonic-subjects/holocaust-memorial-day/faqs|title=Holocaust Memorial Day: FAQs|publisher=Grand Lodge of Scotland|access-date=31 July 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140520120138/http://www.grandlodgescotland.com/masonic-subjects/holocaust-memorial-day/faqs|archive-date=20 May 2014|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref name="holocaust">''Freemasons for Dummies'', by Christopher Hodapp, Wiley Publishing Inc., Indianapolis, 2005, page 85, sec. "Hitler and the Nazis"</ref>
|-
!scope="row", style="text-align:right;"|[[Slovenes]]
| style="text-align:right;"|20,000–25,000|| style="text-align:center;" |<ref>The number of [[Slovenes]] estimated to have died as a result of the Nazi occupation (not including those killed by Slovene collaboration forces and other Nazi allies) is estimated between 20,000 and 25,000 people. This number only includes civilians: Slovene partisan POWs who died and resistance fighters killed in action are not included (their number is estimated at 27,000). These numbers however include only Slovenes from present-day [[Slovenia]]: it does not include [[Carinthian Slovene]] victims, nor Slovene victims from areas in present-day Italy and Croatia. These numbers are result of a 10-year-long research by the Institute for Contemporary History (''Inštitut za novejšo zgodovino'') from Ljubljana, Slovenia. The partial results of the research have been released in 2008 in the volume ''Žrtve vojne in revolucije v Sloveniji'' (Ljubljana: Institute for Contemporary History, 2008), and officially presented at the Slovenian National Council ([http://www.ds-rs.si/sites/default/files/dokumenti/zbornik_zrtve_vojne_in_revolucije.pdf]</ref>
|-
!scope="row", style="text-align:right;"|[[Persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany|Homosexuals]]
| style="text-align:right;"|Hundreds, perhaps thousands|| style="text-align:center;" |<ref name=":4">{{Cite news |title=How Many People did the Nazis Murder? |url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/documenting-numbers-of-victims-of-the-holocaust-and-nazi-persecution |archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20250517172148/https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/documenting-numbers-of-victims-of-the-holocaust-and-nazi-persecution |archive-date=2025-05-17 |access-date=2025-05-21 |work=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |language=en}}</ref>
|-
!scope="row", style="text-align:right;"|[[Republican faction (Spanish Civil War)|Spanish Republicans]]
| style="text-align:right;"|3,500|| style="text-align:center;" |<ref name=":1">{{cite web |title=Spanish Civil War |url=https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10008214 |work=[[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]] |language=en |quote=15,000 Spanish Republicans ended up in Nazi concentration camps after 1940.<br />Almost 7,000 Catholic priests, monks, and nuns were killed, primarily in the first months of the revolt.<br />Nazi authorities conscripted Spanish Republicans for forced labor and deported more than 30,000 to Germany, where about half of them ended up in concentration camps. Some 7,000 of these became prisoners in Mauthausen; more than half of them died in the camp.}}</ref>
|-
!scope="row", style="text-align:right;"|[[Jehovah's Witnesses]]
| style="text-align:right;"|1,700|| style="text-align:center;" |<ref name=":0" /><ref name="Shulman, William L 1939">Shulman, William L. ''A State of Terror: Germany 1933–1939''. Bayside, New York: Holocaust Resource Center and Archives.</ref>
|-class="sortbottom"
!Total
| style="text-align:right;"|6 million Jews and millions of others
|
|}
[[Nazi Germany]] discriminated against and persecuted people on the basis of their [[Race (human categorization)|race]] or [[ethnicity]] (actual or perceived), religious affiliation, political beliefs, [[Persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany|sexual orientation]], and, where applicable, [[Violence against people with disabilities|mental or physical disabilities]]. Discrimination did not simply exist in practice; it was institutionalized through legislation under the [[Nazi Party]] and perpetrated at an industrial scale, culminating in [[the Holocaust]]. Men, women, and children who were [[Nazi eugenics|deemed mentally or physically unfit for society]] were subject to involuntary hospitalization, [[Involuntary euthanasia#Nazi Germany|involuntary euthanasia]], and forced sterilization.

The vast majority of the Nazi regime's victims were [[Jews|Jewish]], [[Romani people|Romani]], or [[Slavs|Slavic]]. Jews, along with some Romani populations, were [[Racial policy of Nazi Germany|deemed unfit for society on racial or ethnic grounds]] and largely confined to [[Jewish ghettos established by Nazi Germany|ghettos]], then rounded up and deported to [[Types of Nazi camps|concentration or extermination camps]]. The beginning of [[World War II]] marked a colossal escalation in the Nazis' efforts to eliminate "inferior" communities across [[German-occupied Europe]], with methods including: non-judicial incarceration, confiscation of property, [[Forced labor in Nazi concentration camps|forced labour]] (and [[Extermination through labour|extermination through hard labour]]), sexual slavery, [[Nazi human experimentation|human experimentation]], malnourishment, and execution by [[Nazi death squads|death squads]]. For Jews, in particular, the Nazis' goal was total extermination—the genocide of the Jewish people, first in Europe and [[Jews outside Europe under Axis occupation|eventually in other parts of the world]]. This was presented by [[Adolf Hitler]] as the "[[Final Solution]]" to the [[Jewish question]].

The Nazi Party's policy of waging genocide against so-called "[[Untermensch|sub-humans]]" resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people, especially during [[Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union]], which began in 1941 and opened up the [[Eastern Front (World War II)|Eastern Front]], where 35% to 45% of all [[World War II casualties]] occurred. By the end of World War II and the Holocaust in 1945, the Nazis had eradicated approximately two-thirds of the entire European Jewish population in what is described by the [[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]] as "the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jewish men, women and children by the Nazi regime and [[Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy|its collaborators]]."<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/documenting-numbers-of-victims-of-the-holocaust-and-nazi-persecution|title=Documenting Numbers of Victims of the Holocaust and Nazi Persecution|publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum}}</ref>

==Scope of usage==
{{further|List of victims of Nazism|Holocaust (disambiguation)|Holocaust trivialization}}
While [[Holocaust (disambiguation)|the term ''Holocaust'']] generally refers to the [[genocide|systematic mass-murder]] of [[Jews]] in [[German-occupied Europe]], the Nazis also murdered a large number of non-Jews who were also considered subhuman (''[[Untermensch]]en'') or undesirable. Some victims belonged to several categories targeted for persecution, e.g. an [[Jewish assimilation|assimilated Jew]] who was a member of a [[communist party]] or someone of Jewish ancestry who identified as a [[Jehovah's Witnesses|Jehovah's Witness]].

[[Gentile|Non-Jewish]] [[victims of Nazism]] included [[Slavs]] (e.g. [[Russians]], [[Belarusians]],<ref>{{Cite book |title=Poteri narodonaselenii︠a︡ v XX veke : spravochnik |last1=Ėrlikhman (Эрлихман) |first1=Vadim (Вадим) |date=2004|publisher=Russkai︠a︡ panorama|isbn=5-93165-107-1|location=Moskva|oclc=54860366}}</ref> [[Polish people|Poles]], [[Ukrainians]] and [[Serbs]]), [[Romani people|the Romani]] ([[Gypsy (term)|gypsies]]), [[LGBT]] people;{{efn|See [[Persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany]] and [[Lesbians in Nazi Germany]]}}<ref>{{Cite web |date=2021-02-21 |title=Gender Nonconforming Lives in Interwar Germany|url=https://retrospectjournal.com/2021/02/21/gender-nonconforming-lives-in-interwar-germany/ |access-date=2021-11-08 |website=Retrospect Journal |language=en}}</ref> [[Developmental disability|mentally]] or [[Physical disability|physically disabled]] people;{{efn|See [[Action T4]]}} [[Soviet Union|Soviet]] [[POW]]s, [[Roman Catholics]], [[Jehovah's Witnesses]], [[Republicanism in Spain|Spanish Republicans]], [[Freemasons]],{{efn|See also [[Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory]]}} [[people of color]] (especially the [[Afro-Germans|Afro-German]] ''[[Mischling]]e'', called "[[Rhineland bastard]]s" by Hitler and the Nazi regime), and other minorities not considered [[Aryan race|Aryan]] (''[[Herrenvolk]]'', or part of the "master race");{{efn|See [[Nazism and race]]}} [[leftist]]s, [[communist]]s, [[trade unionist]]s, [[social democrat]]s, [[socialist]]s, [[anarchist]]s, and other [[dissident]]s.<ref>{{harvnb|Berenbaum|2005|loc=pp. 125}}</ref><ref>{{cite encyclopedia |last=Berenbaum |first=Michael |url=https://www.britannica.com/event/Holocaust/From-Kristallnacht-to-the-final-solution#ref215487 |title=A mosaic of victims of Nazism |encyclopedia=[[Encyclopædia Britannica]] }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Mosaic of Victims: An Overview |url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/mosaic-of-victims-an-overview |website=encyclopedia.ushmm.org |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Pencak Schwartz |first1=Terese |title=Non-Jewish Victims of the Holocaust |url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/non-jewish-victims-of-the-holocaust}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Non-Jewish Victims of Persecution in Germany |url=https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/about/nazi-germany-1933-39/non-jewish-victims.html |website=yadvashem.org |publisher=Yad Vashem |language=en}}</ref>

Taking into account all of the victims of persecution, the Nazis systematically murdered an estimated six million Jews and millions of others during [[World War II|the war]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Holocaust Misconceptions |url=https://www.ilholocaustmuseum.org/holocaust-misconceptions/ |access-date=2025-05-24 |website=Illinois Holocaust Museum |language=en-US}}</ref>

Despite widely varying treatment (some groups were actively targeted for genocide while others were not), some died in [[concentration camp]]s such as [[Dachau concentration camp|Dachau]] and others from various forms of Nazi brutality. According to extensive documentation (written and photographic) left by the Nazis, eyewitness testimony by survivors, perpetrators and bystanders, and records of the occupied countries, most perished in death camps such as [[Auschwitz concentration camp|Auschwitz-Birkenau]].

==Racial/ethnic or national groups==
{{see also|Names of the Holocaust}}

===Jews===
[[File:Chełmno (Kulmhof) 1942 (Koło).jpg|thumb|Jews delivered to Chełmno death camp were forced to abandon their bundles along the way. In this photo, loading of victims sent from the [[Łódź Ghetto|ghetto in Łódź]] in 1942.]]
The military campaign to displace persons like the Jews from [[Germany]] and other [[Territorial evolution of Germany#World War II|German-held territories]] during [[World War II]], often with extreme brutality, is known as [[the Holocaust]]. It was carried out primarily by German forces and collaborators, German and non-German. Early in the war, millions of Jews were concentrated in urban [[ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe|ghettos]]. In 1941, Jews were massacred, and by December, [[Reich Chancellery meeting of 12 December 1941|Hitler had decided to exterminate all Jews living in Europe at that time]]. The European Jewish population was reduced from 9,740,000 to 3,642,000; the world's Jewish population was reduced by one-third, from roughly 16.6 million in 1939 to about 11 million in 1946.<ref>American Jewish Committee, [http://ajcarchives.org/AJC_DATA/Files/1946_1947_2_Formatter.pdf Harry Schneiderman and Julius B. Maller, eds.] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101212142501/http://ajcarchives.org/AJC_DATA/Files/1946_1947_2_Formatter.pdf |date=2010-12-12 }}, [http://ajcarchives.org/AJC_DATA/Files/1946_1947_13_Statistics.pdf ''American Jewish Year Book,'' Vol. 48 (1946–1947)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101212142724/http://ajcarchives.org/AJC_DATA/Files/1946_1947_13_Statistics.pdf |date=2010-12-12 }}, Press of Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia, 1946, page 599</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/remaining-jewish-population-of-europe-in-1945|title=Jewish Population of Europe in 1945|website=encyclopedia.ushmm.org|language=en |access-date=2020-04-12}}</ref> The extermination of Jews had been a priority to the Nazis, regardless of the consequences.<ref>{{cite journal|doi=10.1080/1475483042000210685|title=The institutionalization of cosmopolitan morality: The Holocaust and human rights|date=2004|last1=Levy|first1=Daniel|last2=Sznaider|first2=Natan|journal=Journal of Human Rights|volume=3|issue=2|pages=143–157|s2cid=2822552 | issn = 1475-4835}}</ref>

In January 1942, during the [[Wannsee Conference]], several Nazi leaders discussed the details of the "[[Final Solution|Final Solution to the Jewish Question]]" (''Endlösung der Judenfrage'') and German [[Secretary of State|State Secretary]] [[Josef Bühler]] urged conference chairman [[Reinhard Heydrich]] to proceed with the Final Solution in the [[General Government]]. Jewish populations were systematically deported from the ghettos and the occupied territories to the seven camps designated as ''Vernichtungslager'' ([[extermination camp]]s):
* [[Auschwitz concentration camp|Auschwitz-Birkenau]]
* [[Belzec extermination camp|Belzec]]
* [[Chelmno concentration camp|Chelmno]]
* [[Majdanek]]
* [[Maly Trostenets extermination camp|Maly Trostenets]]
* [[Sobibór extermination camp|Sobibór]]
* [[Treblinka extermination camp|Treblinka]]
In 1978, [[Sebastian Haffner]] wrote that in December 1941, Hitler began to accept the failure of his primary goal—to dominate Europe, after his declaration of war against the United States, and his withdrawal—was compensated for by his secondary goal: the extermination of the Jews.<ref>Sebastian Haffner, ''The Meaning of Hitler'' {{ISBN|0-674-55775-1}}, translated from Anmerkungen zu Hitler, Publishing house. Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main. {{ISBN|3-596-23489-1}}.</ref> As the Nazi war machine faltered during the war's final years, military resources such as fuel, transport, munitions, soldiers and industrial resources were still diverted from the fronts to the death camps.
[[File:Stroop Report - Warsaw Ghetto Uprising BW.jpg|thumb|250px|A [[A Jewish boy surrenders in Warsaw|photograph]] depicting Polish Jews captured by Germans during the [[Warsaw Ghetto Uprising]], May 1943]]
In Poland{{snd}}home of Europe's largest Jewish community before the war{{snd}}the Nazis murdered 3&nbsp;million Jews, about 90&nbsp;percent of its Jewish population.<ref>{{cite web|others=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; Yad Vashem|title=The "Final Solution": Estimated Number of Jews Killed|url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/killedtable.html|access-date=30 July 2015|website=Jewish Virtual Library|publisher=}}</ref>  Although reports of the Holocaust had reached Western leaders, public awareness in the United States and other democracies of the mass murder of Jews in Poland was low at the time; the first references in ''[[The New York Times]]'', in 1942, were unconfirmed reports rather than front-page news.

[[Greece]], [[Yugoslavia]], [[Hungary]], [[Lithuania]], [[Bohemia]], the [[Netherlands]], [[Slovakia]] and [[Latvia]] lost over 70 percent of their Jewish populations; in [[Belgium]], [[Romania]], [[Luxembourg]], [[Norway]], and [[Estonia]], the figure was about 50 percent. Over one-third of the [[Soviet Union]]'s Jews were murdered; [[France]] lost about 25 percent of its Jewish population, [[Italy]] between 15% and 20%.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/jewish-losses-during-the-holocaust-by-country?parent=en%2F11652|title=Jewish losses during the Holocaust: By country|website=www.ushmm.org}}</ref> Denmark evacuated nearly all of its Jews to nearby [[Country neutrality (international relations)|neutral]] [[Sweden during World War II|Sweden]]; the [[Danish resistance movement]], with the assistance of many Danish citizens, evacuated 7,220 of the country's 7,800 Jews by sea to Sweden,<ref name=Rescue>[https://archive.org/details/rescueofdanishje0000ugol/page/n44 <!-- pg=2 quote="A total of 7,220 of these". --> Leo Goldberger: ''The Rescue of the Danish Jews: Moral Courage Under Stress'', NYU Press, 1987, preface pages XX-XXI] Linked 2014-04-29</ref> in vessels ranging from fishing boats to private yachts. The rescue allowed the vast majority of Denmark's Jewish population to avoid capture by the [[Nazism|Nazis]].<ref name=Rescue/> [[Jews outside Europe under Axis occupation]] were also affected by the Holocaust in [[The Holocaust in Italian Libya|Italian Libya]], [[History of the Jews in Algeria|Algeria]], [[History of the Jews in Tunisia|Tunisia]], [[History of the Jews in Morocco|Morocco]], [[History of the Jews in Iraq|Iraq]], [[History of the Jews in Japan|Japan]], and [[History of the Jews in China|China]].

Although Jews are an [[ethnoreligious group]], they were defined by the Nazis on purely racial grounds. The [[Nazi Party]] viewed the [[Jewish religion]] as irrelevant, persecuting Jews in accordance with [[Antisemitism|antisemitic]] stereotypes of an alleged biologically determined heritage. Defining Jews as the chief enemy, Nazi racial ideology was also used to persecute other minorities.<ref name=VotNE>{{cite web|title=Victims of the Nazi Era: Nazi Racial Ideology|date=18 August 2015|url=http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007457|publisher=[[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]] |access-date=29 August 2015}}</ref>

The [[Yad Vashem]] museum has created, in an ongoing collaboration with many partners, a database with the names and biographical details of close to 4.8 of the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis and their accomplices during the Holocaust, as well as those whose fate has yet to be determined. The names of more than one million victims remain unknown and are still being collected.<ref>[https://yvng.yadvashem.org/index.html?language=en "The Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names"] [[Yad Vashem]] website</ref>

===Slavs===
{{Further|Nazi crimes against the Polish nation|The Holocaust in Russia|The Holocaust in Serbia|Genocide of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia|The Holocaust in the Independent State of Croatia}}

==== Serbs and Slovenes ====
The [[Slavs]] were one of the most widely persecuted groups during the war, with many [[Polish people|Poles]], [[Belarusians]], [[Russians]], [[Ukrainians]], [[Slovenes]], [[Serbs]] and others killed by the Nazis.
The Nazis' genocide and brutality was their way of ensuring ''[[Lebensraum]]'' ("living space") for those who met Hitler's narrow racial requirements; this necessitated the elimination of [[Bolshevik]]s and Slavs:

{{blockquote|The Nazi revolution was broader than just the Holocaust. Its second goal was to eliminate Slavs from [[Central Europe|Central]] and [[Eastern Europe]] and to create a ''Lebensraum'' for [[Aryan race|Aryans]]&nbsp;... As Bartov (''The Eastern Front; Hitler's Army'') shows, it barbarised the German armies on the eastern front. Most of their three million men, from generals to ordinary soldiers, helped exterminate captured Slav soldiers and civilians. This was sometimes cold and deliberate murder of individuals (as with Jews), sometimes generalised brutality and neglect&nbsp;... German soldiers' letters and memoirs reveal their terrible reasoning: Slavs were 'the Asiatic-Bolshevik' horde, an inferior but threatening race.<ref>Ian Kershaw.''[https://books.google.com/books?id=_tmGaItZ0tsC Stalinism and Nazism: dictatorships in comparison]''. Cambridge University Press, 1997, p.150 {{ISBN|0-521-56521-9}}</ref>|sign=|source=}}

====Polish people====
{{Main|Nazi war crimes in occupied Poland during World War II}}
[[File:Bydgoszcz 1939 Polish priests and civilians at the Old Market.jpg|thumb|300px|upright|alt=Prisoner priests and laypeople, with their hands up|Polish priests and civilians in Bydgoszcz's Old Market Square, 9 September 1939. The Polish Church experienced [[Nazi persecution of the Catholic Church in Poland|brutal persecution]] under Nazi occupation.]]
The Nazi occupation of Poland was among the most brutal of the war, resulting in the murder of more than 1.8 million [[Polish people|ethnic Poles]] and about 3 million [[Polish Jew]]s.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.ushmm.org/learn/students/learning-materials-and-resources/poles-victims-of-the-nazi-era/polish-resistance-and-conclusions|title=Polish Resistance and Conclusions — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum|website=www.ushmm.org|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180102111652/https://www.ushmm.org/learn/students/learning-materials-and-resources/poles-victims-of-the-nazi-era/polish-resistance-and-conclusions|archive-date=2018-01-02|access-date=2019-03-04}}</ref> The six million Jewish, Roman Catholic and Orthodox Poles represented nearly 22 percent of the country's population.<ref name="The Gentile Holocaust">Craughwell, Thomas J., [https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=472 The Gentile Holocaust] Catholic Culture, Accessed July 18, 2008</ref> Poles were one of Hitler's first extermination targets, as he outlined in a 22 August 1939 [[Armenian quote|speech]] to ''Wehrmacht'' commanders before the [[Polish September Campaign|invasion]]. [[Intelligentsia]], socially prominent, and influential people were primarily targeted, although ethnic Poles and other Slavic groups were also killed ''en masse''. Hundreds of thousands of Roman Catholic and Orthodox Poles were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau and other concentration camps, and the intelligentsia were the first targets of the ''[[Einsatzgruppen]]'' death squads.<ref>{{cite book|first1=Yisrael|last1=Gutman|first2=Michael|last2=Berenbaum|first3=Raul|last3=Hilberg |author-link4=Franciszek Piper|first4=Franciszek|last4=Piper|first5=Yehuda|last5=Baur|title=Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp|url=https://archive.org/details/anatomyofauschwi00gutm_1 |url-access=limited|publisher=Indiana University Press|year=1998|page=[https://archive.org/details/anatomyofauschwi00gutm_1/page/70 70]|isbn=9780253208842}}</ref> The anti-Polish campaign culminated in [[Planned destruction of Warsaw|the near-complete destruction]] of [[Warsaw]], ordered by Hitler and [[Heinrich Himmler|Himmler]] in 1944. The original assumptions of [[Generalplan Ost]] were based on plans to exterminate around 85% (over 20 million) of ethnically Polish citizens of Poland, with the remaining 15% to be used as [[slavery|slaves]].<ref name="WFF">{{cite web|title=Generalplan Ost (General Plan East). The Nazi evolution in German foreign policy. Documentary sources|publisher=World Future Fund|work=Versions of the GPO|year=2003|location=Alexandria, VA|url=http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/GPO/gpo%20sources.htm#Versions%20of%20the%20GPO|id=Resources: Janusz Gumkowski and Kazimierz Leszczynski, ''Hitler’s Plans for Eastern Europe. Ibid.''}}</ref>

====Ukrainians====
{{main|The Holocaust in Ukraine}}
Between 1941 and 1945, approximately three million [[Ukrainians|Ukrainian]] and other gentiles were murdered as part of [[Generalplan Ost|Nazi extermination policies]] in present-day [[Ukraine]].<ref name="rpmag1">{{cite book|last=Magocsi|first=Paul Robert|title=A History of Ukraine|year=1996|publisher=University of Toronto Press|page=633|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=t124cP06gg0C|isbn=978-0-8020-7820-9}}</ref><ref name=Dawidowicz>{{cite book|first=Lucy|last=Dawidowicz |author-link=Lucy Dawidowicz|title=The War Against the Jews|url=https://archive.org/details/waragainstjews00lucy |url-access=limited|isbn=0-553-34302-5|publisher=Bantam Books|location=New York|year=1986|page=[https://archive.org/details/waragainstjews00lucy/page/403 403]}}</ref> More Ukrainians were killed fighting the ''[[Wehrmacht]]'' in the [[Red Army#Second World War ("The Great Patriotic War")|Red Army]] than American, British and French soldiers combined.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/ausland/timothy-snyder-about-europe-and-ukraine-putin-s-project-12898389.html?printPagedArticle=true#pageIndex_2|title=Putin's Project|newspaper=Faz.net|publisher=Timothy Snyder |access-date=27 June 2014|last1=Snyder|first1=Timothy}}</ref> Original Nazi plans called for the extermination of 65 percent of the nation's 23.2&nbsp;million Ukrainians,<ref name="Schmuhl">Hans-Walter Schmuhl. The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics, 1927–1945: crossing boundaries. Volume 259 of Boston studies in the philosophy of science. Coutts MyiLibrary. SpringerLink Humanities, Social Science & LawAuthor. Springer, 2008. {{ISBN|9781402065996}}, p.&nbsp;348–349</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://demoscope.ru/weekly/ssp/ussr_nac_26.php?reg=4|title=Демоскоп Weekly - Приложение. Справочник статистических показателей|publisher=Demoscope.ru |access-date=2015-09-27}}</ref> with the survivors treated as slaves.<ref name="Gellately">Robert Gellately. Reviewed works: Vom Generalplan Ost zum Generalsiedlungsplan by Czeslaw Madajczyk. Der "Generalplan Ost." Hauptlinien der nationalsozialistischen Planungs- und Vernichtungspolitik by [[Mechtild Rössler]]; Sabine Schleiermacher. ''Central European History'', Vol. 29, No. 2 (1996), pp.&nbsp;270–274</ref> Over two million Ukrainians were deported to Germany as slave labor.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.aim.org/special-report/russias-war-on-ukraine/|title=Russia's War on Ukraine|date=5 March 2014|publisher=Victor Rud|access-date=27 June 2014|archive-date=16 July 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140716092709/http://www.aim.org/special-report/russias-war-on-ukraine/|url-status=dead}}</ref> The ten-year plan would have exterminated, expelled, Germanized or [[slavery|enslaved]] most (or all) Ukrainians.

==== Russians and Soviet POWs ====
{{Main|Generalplan Ost|German mistreatment of Soviet prisoners of war|Ostarbeiter|German occupation of Byelorussia during World War II}}
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 192-208, KZ Mauthausen, Sowjetische Kriegsgefangene.jpg|thumb|left|300px|Naked Soviet prisoners of war in Mauthausen concentration camp]]
During [[Operation Barbarossa]] (the [[Axis Powers|Axis]] invasion of the Soviet Union), millions of [[Red Army]] prisoners of war were [[summary execution|summarily executed]] in the field by German armies (the ''[[Waffen SS]]'' in particular), died under inhumane conditions in German [[prisoner of war camp]]s, on [[Death marches (Holocaust)|death marches]], or had been shipped to concentration camps for execution. The Germans killed an estimated 2.8 million Soviet POWs by [[starvation]], exposure, and execution over an eight-month period in 1941–42.<ref>[http://www.gendercide.org/case_soviet.html Case Study: Soviet Prisoners-of-War], Gendercide Watch.</ref> According to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, by the winter of 1941 "starvation and disease resulted in mass death of unimaginable proportions". 140,000-500,000 Soviet citizens and POWs were murdered in the concentration camps.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10007183|title=The Treatment of Soviet POWs: Starvation, Disease, and Shootings, June 1941 – January 1942|work=[[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]]|quote=Estimates of the numbers of victims of this operation range from at least 140,000 up to 500,000.}}</ref>

Soviet civilian populations in the occupied areas were severely persecuted and endured the treacherous conditions of the [[Eastern Front (World War II)|Eastern Front]], which spawned atrocities such as the [[siege of Leningrad]], when 1.2 million civilians died. Thousands of peasant villages across Russia, [[Belarus]] and [[Ukraine]] were annihilated by German troops. During the occupation, the [[Saint Petersburg#1900 to present|Leningrad]], [[Pskov]] and [[Novgorod]] regions lost about a quarter of their populations. An estimated one-quarter of Soviet civilian deaths at the hands of the Nazis and their allies (five million Russians, three million Ukrainians and 1.5 million Belarusians) were racially motivated.<ref name=columbia>Donald L Niewyk, ''The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust,'' Columbia University Press, 2000, p 49</ref> In 1995, the [[Russian Academy of Sciences]] reported that civilian deaths in the occupied USSR, including Jews, at the hands of the Germans totaled 13.7 million dead (20% of the population of 68 million). The figure includes 7.4 million victims of Nazi genocide and reprisals, 2.2 million deaths of persons deported to Germany as forced labour, and 4.1 million famine and disease deaths. An estimated three million people also died of starvation in unoccupied territory. The losses occurred within the 1946–1991 borders of the USSR, and include territories annexed in 1939–40.<ref>The Russian Academy of Science Rossiiskaia Akademiia nauk. Liudskie poteri SSSR v period vtoroi mirovoi voiny:sbornik statei. Sankt-Peterburg 1995 {{ISBN|5-86789-023-6}}</ref> The deaths of 8.2 million Soviet civilians, including Jews, were documented by the Soviet [[Extraordinary State Commission]].<ref>''A Mosaic of Victims: Non-Jews Persecuted and Murdered by the Nazis''. Ed. by Michael Berenbaum. New York University Press, 1990. {{ISBN|1-85043-251-1}}.</ref>

===Romani people===
{{Main|Romani Holocaust}}
[[File:Bundesarchiv R 165 Bild-244-52, Asperg, Deportation von Sinti und Roma.jpg|thumb|German police round up Romani in Asperg, Germany in May 1940]]
The Nazi genocide of the [[Romani people]] was ignored by scholars until the 1980s, and opinions continue to differ on its details. According to historians Donald Niewyk and Francis Nicosia, the genocide of the Romani began later than that of the Jews and a smaller percentage was murdered.<ref>The Columbia guide to the Holocaust By Donald L. Niewyk, [[Francis R. Nicosia]], pp. 50–52, Columbia University Press, 2000</ref> Hitler's genocidal campaign against Europe's Romani population involved the application of Nazi "[[racial hygiene]]" ([[selective breeding]] applied to humans). Despite [[discrimination|discriminatory]] measures, some Romani (including some of Germany's [[Sinti]] and [[Lalleri]]) were spared deportation and death, with the remaining Romani groups suffering a fate similar to that of the Jews. Romani were deported to the Jewish ghettos, were shot by SS ''Einsatzgruppen'' in their villages, or deported and gassed in Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka.
[[File:Bundesarchiv R 165 Bild-244-71, Dr. Robert Ritter mit alter Frau und Polizist.jpg|thumb|Romani woman with German police officer and Nazi psychologist Dr. [[Robert Ritter]]]]
Estimates of the number of Romani victims range from 250,000 to 500,000.<ref name=":0" /> The Romani genocide was formally recognized by [[West Germany]] in 1982 and by [[Poland]] in 2011.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://2august.eu/the-roma-genocide/recognition/ |title=Archived copy |access-date=2019-07-25 |archive-date=2019-04-20 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190420130314/http://2august.eu/the-roma-genocide/recognition/ |url-status=dead }}</ref>

===Non-Europeans===
{{Main|Racial policy of Nazi Germany}}
[[File:German nazi rasist propaganda.jpg|thumb|Nazi propaganda about the differences between German Aryans and blacks]]

==== Black people ====
The Nazis promoted [[xenophobia]] and [[racism]] against all "non-Aryan" races. [[History of Blacks in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust|African]] (black) residents of Germany and [[History of Blacks in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust|black prisoners of war]], such as [[French colonies#Africa|French colonial]] troops and [[Military history of African Americans#World War II|African Americans]], were also victims of Nazi racial policy.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005479|work=[[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]]|title=Blacks during the Holocaust|quote=Black soldiers of the American, French, and British armies were worked to death on construction projects or died as a result of mistreatment in concentration or prisoner-of-war camps.}}</ref> When the Nazis came to power, hundreds of African-German children, the offspring of German mothers and African soldiers brought in during the French occupation, lived in the [[Rhineland]].<ref name="fcit.usf.edu victims">{{cite web|url=http://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/people/victims.htm|title=A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust|website=fcit.usf.edu |access-date= 28 June 2014}}</ref> In ''[[Mein Kampf]]'', Hitler described the children of marriages to African occupation troops as a contamination of the white race "by [[Negro]] blood on the Rhine in the heart of Europe"<ref>Robert B. Downs, ''Books That Changed the World'' (Signet Classic, 2004), p. 325.</ref> who were "bastardising the European continent at its core".<ref name="fcit.usf.edu victims"/> According to Hitler, "Jews were responsible for bringing Negroes into the Rhineland, with the ultimate idea of bastardising the white race which they hate and thus lowering its cultural and political level so that the Jew might dominate".<ref>Adolf Hitler, [http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200601.txt ''Mein Kampf'' (translated by James Murphy, February, 1939)] Vol. I, Chapter XI (A [[Project Gutenberg]] of [[Australia]] [[eBook]])</ref>

==== Asian and Turkic peoples ====
Japan signed the [[Tripartite Pact]] with Germany and [[Kingdom of Italy|Italy]] on 27 September 1940, and was part of the Axis. No [[Japanese people]] were deliberately imprisoned or killed, since they were considered "[[honorary Aryan]]s". The same applied to Turks and all other "Ural-Altaic" peoples.<ref>Ihrig, Stefan. Atatürk in the Nazi Imagination. Harvard University Press, 2014. Pages 128-9.</ref>
In his political testament, Hitler wrote:

{{blockquote| I have never regarded the Chinese or the Japanese as being inferior to ourselves. [...] and I admit freely that their past history is superior to our own. They have the right to be proud of their past, just as we have the right to be proud of the civilisation to which we belong.<ref>''The Political Testament of Adolf Hitler'', Note #5, (February - April 1945)</ref>{{unreliable source?|date=May 2017}}}}

==People with disabilities==
{{Main|Nazi eugenics}}
According to their [[eugenics]] policy, the Nazis believed that the disabled were a burden to society because they needed care and were considered an affront to their notion of a society composed of a perfect race. About 375,000 people were [[compulsory sterilization|sterilized against their will]] due to their disabilities.<ref>{{Cite book|editor-link2=John S. Schuchman|editor1=Donna F. Ryan|editor2=John S. Schuchman|year=2002|title=Deaf people in Hitler's Europe|publisher=Gallaudet Univ. Press in association with [[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]]|isbn=978-1-56368-132-5|url=https://archive.org/details/deafpeopleinhitl00donn |url-access=registration |access-date=2011-11-03|page=[https://archive.org/details/deafpeopleinhitl00donn/page/4 4]|quote=Horst Biesold estimates that approximately 16,000 deaf people were among the 375,000 forcibly sterilized people with disabilities.}}</ref>

Those with disabilities were among the first to be murdered by the Nazis; according to the U.S.&nbsp;Holocaust Memorial Museum, the [[T-4 Euthanasia Program|T-4 Program]] (established in 1939) was the model for future Nazi exterminations and it set a precedent for the genocide of what they described as the Jewish race.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ushmm.org/outreach/euthan.htm |archive-date=29 April 1999 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/19990429211345/https://www.ushmm.org/outreach/euthan.htm|title=The Murder of the Handicapped|work=[[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]]|quote=At the beginning of World War II, individuals who were mentally retarded, physically handicapped, or mentally ill were targeted for murder in what the Nazis called the "T-4," or "euthanasia," program.<br />The T-4 program became the model for the mass murder of Jews, Roma (Gypsies), and others}}</ref> The program attempted to maintain the "purity" of the Aryan race by systematically murdering children and adults with physical deformities or suffering from [[mental illness]], using [[gas chamber]]s for the first time. Although Hitler formally halted the program in late August 1941, the killings secretly continued until the end of the war and an estimated 275,000 people with congenital disabilities were murdered.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ushmm.org/research/library/bibliography/?lang=en&content=people_with_disabilities|title=Bibliographies|publisher=[[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]] |access-date=2011-11-03}}</ref>

== Homosexual men ==
{{Main|Persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany}}
Homosexual men were also targets of Nazi Germany, since male [[homosexuality]] was deemed incompatible with [[Nazism]]. The Nazis believed that gay men were weak, effeminate and unable to fight for the German nation; homosexuals were unlikely to produce children and increase the German birthrate. According to the Nazis, "inferior races" produced more children than Aryans, so anything which diminished Germany's reproductive potential was considered a racial danger.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005261|title=Persecution of Homosexuals in the Third Reich|publisher=[[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]] |access-date= 27 June 2014}}</ref> Homosexuality was also thought to be contagious by the Nazis.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-feb-23-ca-28995-story.html|work=Los Angeles Times|title=Poignant Documentary Recalls Nazis' Gay Victims|date=23 February 2001 |access-date=27 June 2014}}</ref> By 1936, Heinrich Himmler was leading efforts to persecute gay men under existing and new anti-homosexual laws. More than one million gay Germans were targeted, of whom at least 100,000 were arrested and 50,000 were convicted and imprisoned.<ref name=NPoH>{{cite web|url=http://www.ushmm.org/exhibition/persecution-of-homosexuals/|title=Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals|publisher=[[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]] |access-date=2011-02-20 |url-status=live |archive-date=24 September 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130924234530/https://www.ushmm.org/exhibition/persecution-of-homosexuals/|quote=Analyses of fragmentary records suggest that between 5,000 and 15,000 homosexual men were imprisoned in concentration camps, where many died from starvation, disease, exhaustion, beatings, and murder.}}</ref> An unknown number were institutionalized in state-run mental hospitals. Hundreds of European gay men living under Nazi occupation were [[castration|chemically castrated]] by court order.<ref name=NPoH/> While an estimated 5,000 to 15,000 gay men were imprisoned in concentration camps,<ref name=NPoH/> it is thought that hundreds (or perhaps thousands) were killed.<ref name=":4" /><ref name=":3">{{cite web |title=Non-Jewish Victims of Persecution in Germany |url=https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/about/nazi-germany-1933-39/non-jewish-victims.html |url-status= |archive-url= |archive-date= |access-date= |website=Yad Vashem: The World Holocaust Remembrance Center |publisher= |quote=Approximately 15,000 homosexuals were imprisoned in camps and thousands perished.}}</ref> According to Austrian survivor [[Heinz Heger]], gay men "suffered a higher mortality rate than other relatively small victim groups, such as Jehovah's Witnesses and political prisoners".<ref>Heinz Heger, ''Men with the Pink Triangle'', Alyson Publishing: 1994</ref> Gay men in Nazi concentration camps were identified by a pink triangle on their shirts, along with men convicted of [[sexually assaulting children]] and [[bestiality]].<ref>Plant, ''The Pink Triangle''.</ref> According to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's website, "Nazi Germany did not seek to kill all homosexuals. Nevertheless, the Nazi state, through active persecution, attempted to terrorise German homosexuals into sexual and social [[conformity]], leaving thousands dead and shattering the lives of many more."<ref name=NPoH/>

=== Post-Nazi persecution ===
Many homosexuals who were liberated from the concentration camps were persecuted in postwar Germany. Survivors were subject to prosecution under [[Paragraph 175]] (which forbade "lewdness between men"), with time served in the concentration camps deducted from their sentences. This contrasted with the treatment of other groups persecuted by Nazi Germany, who were compensated for the loss of family members and educational opportunities.<ref>{{cite web|last=Oswald|first=Lewis|title=Homocaust: Remembering the gay victims of the Holocaust|url=http://www.homocaust.org/|url-status=usurped|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051103032721/http://homocaust.org/|archive-date=3 November 2005|access-date=28 June 2014|website=Homocaust.org}}</ref>

=={{anchor|Political criteria}}Political groups==
=== Anti-Nazi dissidents in Germany ===
Another large group of victims was composed of German and foreign civilian [[activist]]s from across the political spectrum who opposed the Nazi regime, captured [[Resistance during World War II|resistance]] fighters (many of whom were executed during—or immediately after—their [[interrogation]], particularly in occupied [[Poland]] and [[France]]) and, sometimes, their families. German [[political prisoner]]s were a substantial proportion of the first inmates at [[Dachau concentration camp|Dachau]] (the prototypical Nazi concentration camp). The political [[People's Court (German)|People's Court]] was notorious for the number of its [[death sentence]]s.<ref>Frei, Norbert (1993) ''National Socialist Rule in Germany: The Führer State 1933-1945'' Translated by Simon B. Steyne. Oxford: Blackwell. pp. 147, 212 n.43 {{isbn|0-631-18507-0}}</ref><ref>[[Richard J. Evans|Rvans, Richard J.]] (2005) ''[[The Third Reich in Power]]'' New York: Penguin Books. pp.69-70. {{isbn|0-14-303790-0}}</ref>

===Republicans of Spain===
Thousands of Spanish Republican refugees were living in France at the time of its occupation by [[Nazi Germany]] in 1940; 15,000 were detained in concentration camps, including 7,000 in [[Mauthausen-Gusen]]. Around 3,500 were murdered in the camp.<ref name=":1" />

=== {{anchor|Political leftists}}Communists and other leftists ===
[[File:Nazi SA guard shut-down trade union headquarters, Berlin.jpg|thumb|upright=1.1|Nazi SA guard shut-down trade union headquarters in Berlin, 2 May 1933]]
German [[communists]] were among the first to be imprisoned in concentration camps.<ref name=MNN>{{cite journal|title=Ein Konzentrationslager für politische Gefangene In der Nähe von Dachau|url=http://www.holocaust-history.org/dachau-gas-chambers/photo.cgi?02|journal=Münchner Neueste Nachrichten ("The Munich Latest News")|date=21 March 1933|publisher=The Holocaust History Project|language=de|quote=The Munich Chief of Police, Himmler, has issued the following press announcement: On Wednesday the first concentration camp is to be opened in Dachau with an accommodation for 5000 persons. 'All Communists and—where necessary—Reichsbanner and Social Democratic functionaries who endanger state security are to be concentrated here, as in the long run it is not possible to keep individual functionaries in the state prisons without overburdening these prisons, and on the other hand these people cannot be released because attempts have shown that they persist in their efforts to agitate and organise as soon as they are released.'|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130506090957/http://www.holocaust-history.org/dachau-gas-chambers/photo.cgi?02|archive-date=2013-05-06|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/timeline/camps.htm|title=Holocaust Timeline: Camps|publisher=The History Place |access-date=2012-01-30}}</ref> Their ties to the [[Soviet Union|USSR]] concerned Hitler, and the Nazi Party was intractably opposed to communism. Rumors of communist violence were spread by the Nazis to justify the [[Enabling Act of 1933]], which gave Hitler his first dictatorial powers. [[Hermann Göring]] testified at [[Nuremberg trials|Nuremberg]] that Nazi willingness to repress German Communists prompted Hindenburg and the old elite to cooperate with them. Hitler and the Nazis also despised German leftists because of their resistance to Nazi racism. Hitler referred to Marxism and "Bolshevism" as means for "the international Jew" to undermine "racial purity", stir up [[Social class|class]] tension and mobilize [[trade union]]s against the government and business. When the Nazis occupied a territory, communists, socialists and anarchists were usually among the first to be repressed; this included summary executions. An example is Hitler's [[Commissar Order]], in which he demanded the summary execution of all Soviet troops who were political commissars who offered resistance or were captured in battle.<ref name=CO>{{cite web|url=http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007454|title=Commissar Order|work=[[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]] |access-date=27 September 2015|quote=The Commissar Order read: "The originators of barbaric, Asiatic methods of warfare are the political commissars. ... Therefore, when captured either in battle or offering resistance, they are to be shot on principle."}}</ref>

===Citizens of the Allied powers===
Thousands of people, primarily diplomats, of nationalities associated with the [[Allies of World War II|Allies]] ([[Taiwan|China]] and [[Mexico]], for example) and [[Spanish Civil War]] [[refugee]]s in occupied France were interned or executed. After [[Armistice between Italy and Allied armed forces|Italy's 1943 surrender]], many [[Italians|Italian nationals]] (including [[Italian resistance movement|partisans]] and [[Kingdom of Italy#Civil war (1943–1945)|Italian soldiers disarmed by the Germans]]) were sent to concentration camps.

==== Western Allied POWs ====
On rare occasions, POWs from Western Allied armies were sent to concentration camps, including 350 Americans{{snd}}some chosen for being Jewish, but mostly for looking Jewish or for being troublemakers or otherwise 'undesirable'. Some captured in the [[Battle of the Bulge]] were forced into slave labor at the [[Berga concentration camp]], a subcamp of [[Buchenwald concentration camp|Buchenwald]]; over 70 were killed by the conditions there.<ref>{{cite news |last=Drash |first=Wayne |date=October 28, 2010 |title='You don't forget': Medic's Holocaust diary tells story of hell |url=https://edition.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/10/28/acevedo.holocaust.soldier/ |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180308103814/http://edition.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/10/28/acevedo.holocaust.soldier/ |archive-date=8 March 2018 |work=CNN}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=Drash |first1=Wayne |last2=Gutierrez |first2=Thelma |last3=Weisfeldt |first3=Sara |date=11 November 2008 |title=Acevedo: WW II vet held in Nazi slave camp breaks silence |url=https://edition.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/11/11/acevedo.pow/index.html |work=[[CNN.com]]}}</ref> The "[[KLB Club]]" was a group of 168 Allied airmen{{snd}}mainly American, British, and Canadian{{snd}}considered ''Terrorfliegers'' ("terror fliers"), denied POW status, and held at Buchenwald for two months until a German officer arranged their transfer to a standard POW camp, a week before their scheduled execution.

==Religious groups==
{{Further|Kirchenkampf}}
The Nazis also targeted religious groups for political and ideological reasons.

===Jehovah's Witnesses===
{{Further|Persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses in Nazi Germany}}
Historian Detlef Garbe, director of the [[Neuengamme concentration camp#Memorial|Neuengamme Memorial]] in Hamburg, wrote about [[Persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses|Jehovah's Witnesses]]: "No other religious movement resisted the pressure to conform to National Socialism [Nazism] with comparable unanimity and steadfastness".<ref name="Garbe, Detlef 2001 p.251">Garbe, Detlef (2001). In Hans Hesse. ''Persecution and Resistance of Jehovah's Witnesses During the Nazi-Regime 1933–1945''. Bremen: Edition Temmen. p.251</ref> Between 2,500 and 5,000 Jehovah's Witnesses were murdered in the concentration camps;<ref name="Shulman, William L 1939" /> unwilling to fight for any cause, they refused to serve in the army.<ref name="www.bbc.co.uk 2racialreligiouspolicy2">{{cite web|url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/tch_wjec/germany19291947/2racialreligiouspolicy2.shtml|title=''Changing life for the German people - What effect did the Nazis' racial and religious policy have on life in Germany?''|publisher=BBC Bitesize |access-date=27 June 2014}}</ref>

===Catholics===
{{Further|Nazi persecution of the Catholic Church in Germany}}

The Nazis persecuted the Catholic Church,<ref>Theodore S. Hamerow; ''On the Road to the Wolf's Lair: German Resistance to Hitler''; Belknap Press of Harvard University Press; 1997; {{ISBN|0-674-63680-5}}; p. 136</ref> with the Nazi leadership hoping to gradually de-Christianize Germany. According to the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, "By the latter part of the decade of the Thirties, church officials were well aware that the ultimate aim of Hitler and other Nazis was the total elimination of Catholicism and of the Christian religion."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/education/courses/life_lessons/pdfs/lesson8_4.pdf|title=The Response of the German Catholic Church to National Socialism|last=Phayer|first=Michael|publisher=Yad Vashem|quote=By the latter part of the decade of the Thirties church officials were well aware that the ultimate aim of Hitler and other Nazis was the total elimination of Catholicism and of the Christian religion. Since the overwhelming majority of Germans were either Catholic or Protestant, this goal had to be a long-term rather than a short-term Nazi objective.|access-date=2015-07-11|archive-date=2019-01-20|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190120033233/https://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/education/courses/life_lessons/pdfs/lesson8_4.pdf|url-status=dead}}</ref> Hitler vehemently despised Christianity, calling it the enemy of National Socialism. According to historian William Shirer, "under the leadership of Rosenberg, Bormann and Himmler—backed by Hitler—the Nazi regime intended to destroy [[Christianity]] in [[Germany]], if it could, and substitute the old paganism of the early tribal Germanic gods and the new paganism of the Nazi extremists".<ref>{{cite book|last=Shirer|first=William L.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sY8svb-MNUwC|title=Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany|page=240|publisher=Simon and Schuster|date=1990|quote=under the leadership of Rosenberg, Bormann and Himmler—backed by Hitler—the Nazi regime intended to destroy [[Christianity]] in [[Germany]], if it could, and substitute the old paganism of the early tribal Germanic gods and the new paganism of the Nazi extremists|isbn=9780671728687}}</ref> He also wrote that Hitler "inveighed against political [[Catholicism]] in ''[[Mein Kampf]]'' and attacked both of the Christian Churches for their failure to recognise the racial problem...". As reported in ''The New York Times'', Hitler's forces wished to de-Christianize Germany after "the final victory" and destroy Christianity.<ref>{{cite news |last=Sharkey|first=Joe |date=13 January 2002|title=Word for Word/The Case Against the Nazis; How Hitler's Forces Planned to Destroy German Christianity |newspaper=The New York Times |url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE0DB1F39F930A25752C0A9649C8B63}}</ref> According to historian Alan Bullock, "Once the war was over, [Hitler] promised himself, he would root out and destroy the influence of the Christian Churches, but until then he would be circumspect."<ref>{{cite book |last=Bullock |first=Alan |year=1991 |title=Hitler: A Study in Tyranny |url=https://archive.org/details/hitlerstudyintyr00bull |url-access=registration |publisher=HarperPerennial |page=[https://archive.org/details/hitlerstudyintyr00bull/page/219 219] |isbn=9780060920203 |quote=Once the war was over, [Hitler] promised himself, he would root out and destroy the influence of the Christian Churches, but until then he would be circumspect}}</ref><ref>
* [[Anton Gill|Gill, Anton]] (1995). ''An Honourable Defeat: A History of the German Resistance to Hitler''. Heinemann Mandarin. Paperback. pp. 14–15. {{ISBN|978-0-434-29276-9}}. "[the Nazis planned to] de-Christianise Germany after the final victory".
* [[Richard J. Evans]]; ''The Third Reich at War''; Penguin Press; New York 2009, p. 547
* Ian Kershaw; Hitler a Biography; 2008 Edn; WW Norton & Company; London p661
* Ian Kershaw; ''The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation''; 4th Edn; Oxford University Press; New York; 2000"; pp. 173–74
* [[Roger Griffin|Griffin, Roger]] ''Fascism's relation to religion'' in Blamires, Cyprian, [https://books.google.com/books?id=nvD2rZSVau4C&dq ''World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia'', Volume 1], p. 10, ABC-CLIO, 2006: "There is no doubt that in the long run Nazi leaders such as Hitler and Himmler intended to eradicate Christianity just as ruthlessly as any other rival ideology, even if in the short term they had to be content to make compromises with it."
* [[George Lachmann Mosse|Mosse, George Lachmann]], [https://books.google.com/books?id=_cyR3QyuSdIC&dq ''Nazi Culture: Intellectual, Cultural and Social Life in the Third Reich''], p. 240, Univ of Wisconsin Press, 2003: "Had the Nazis won the war their ecclesiastical policies would have gone beyond those of the German Christians, to the utter destruction of both the Protestant and the Catholic Church."
* [[Jack Fischel|Fischel, Jack R.]], [https://books.google.com/books?id=EzBZP92xwUUC&dq ''Historical Dictionary of the Holocaust''], p. 123, Scarecrow Press, 2010: "The objective was to either destroy Christianity and restore the German gods of antiquity or to turn Jesus into an Aryan."
* Dill, Marshall, [https://books.google.com/books?id=xRrGP7L9_hEC&dq ''Germany: A Modern History''], p. 365, University of Michigan Press, 1970: "It seems no exaggeration to insist that the greatest challenge the Nazis had to face was their effort to eradicate Christianity in Germany or at least to subjugate it to their general world outlook."
* Wheaton, Eliot Barculo [https://books.google.com/books?ei=Nu-6TrqBLOaTiQKL5dy2Dg&ct ''The Nazi Revolution, 1933–1935: Prelude to Calamity: with a background survey of the Weimar era''], p. 290, 363, Doubleday 1968: The Nazis sought "to eradicate Christianity in Germany root and branch."
* Bendersky, Joseph W., [https://books.google.com/books?id=ATCXucbTYX0C&dq A concise history of Nazi Germany], p. 147, Rowman & Littlefield, 2007: "Consequently, it was Hitler's long range goal to eliminate the churches once he had consolidated control over his European empire."</ref> [[Political Catholicism]] was a target of Hitler's 1934 [[Night of the Long Knives]].<ref name="Peter Hoffmann p 25">Peter Hoffmann; The History of the German Resistance 1933–1945; 3rd Edn (First English Edn); McDonald & Jane's; London; 1977; p 25</ref><ref>John S. Conway; The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 1933–1945; Regent College Publishing; 2001; {{ISBN|1-57383-080-1}} (USA); p.&nbsp;90–92</ref><ref name="Lewis, Brenda Ralph 2000 p. 45">Lewis, Brenda Ralph (2000); ''Hitler Youth: the Hitlerjugend in War and Peace 1933–1945''; MBI Publishing; {{ISBN|0-7603-0946-9}}; p. 45</ref> German clergy, nuns and lay leaders were also targeted after the Nazi takeover, leading to thousands of arrests over the following years.<ref name="William L. Shirer p234-5">[[William L. Shirer|Shirer, William L.]], ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=sY8svb-MNUwC&dq Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany]'', pp. 234–235, Simon and Schuster, 1990</ref> Priests who were part of the [[Catholic resistance to Nazi Germany|Catholic resistance]] were killed. Hitler's invasion of Catholic Poland in 1939 began World War II, and the Nazis targeted clergy, monks and nuns in their campaign to destroy Polish culture.

[[File:KZ Dachau Todesangst-Christi-Kapelle.jpg|thumb|upright|alt=Round stone chapel|The Mortal Agony of Christ Chapel at Dachau commemorates the clergy who were imprisoned there.]]
In 1940, the [[Priest Barracks of Dachau Concentration Camp]] was established.<ref>Paul Berben; ''Dachau: The Official History 1933–1945''; Norfolk Press; London; 1975; {{ISBN|0-85211-009-X}}; p.143</ref> Of 2,720 clergy imprisoned at Dachau, the overwhelming majority (94.88 percent) were Catholic.<ref>Paul Berben; ''Dachau: The Official History 1933–1945''; Norfolk Press; London; 1975; {{ISBN|0-85211-009-X}}; pp.276–277</ref> According to Ian Kershaw, about 400 German priests were sent to the camp.{{sfn|Kershaw|2000|pp=210–211}} Although the [[Holy See]] concluded a 1933 [[Reichskonkordat|concordat]] with Germany to protect Catholicism during Nazi rule, the Nazis frequently violated the pact in their ''[[Kirchenkampf]]'' ("struggle with the churches").<ref name="Bundle 2">
* Evans, 2008, pp. 245–246
* Shirer, 1990, pp. 234–35
* Hamerow, 1997, p. 136
* Gill, 1994, p. 57
* Kershaw, 2008, p. 332
* Paul O'Shea; ''A Cross Too Heavy''; Rosenberg Publishing; p. 234–5 {{ISBN|978-1-877058-71-4}}
* {{cite book|author=Ian Kershaw|title=The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation|edition=4th|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=New York|year=2000|pages=210–11|ref={{harvid|Kershaw|2000}}}}
* Peter Hoffmann; ''The History of the German Resistance 1933–1945''; 3rd ed. (first English ed.); McDonald & Jane's; London; 1977; p. 14</ref> They shut down the Catholic press, schools, political parties and youth groups in Germany amid murder and mass arrests.<ref>Fred Taylor; ''The Goebbells Diaries 1939–1941''; Hamish Hamilton Ltd; London; 1982 pp. 278 & 294</ref><ref name="Evans, Richard J. 2005 pp. 245-246">Evans, Richard J. (2005). The Third Reich in Power. New York: Penguin. {{ISBN|978-0-14-303790-3}}; pp.&nbsp;245–246</ref><ref>William L. Shirer; ''The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich''; Secker & Warburg; London; 1960; p. 201</ref> In March 1937, [[Pope Pius XI]] issued his ''[[Mit brennender Sorge]]'' encyclical accusing the Nazi government of violating the 1933 concordat and sowing the "[[Lolium|tares]] of suspicion, discord, hatred, calumny, of secret and open fundamental hostility to Christ and His Church".<ref name="William L. Shirer p234-5"/>

The church was especially harshly treated in annexed regions, such as Austria. [[Vienna|Viennese]] ''[[Gauleiter]]'' [[Odilo Globocnik]] confiscated property, closed Catholic organizations and sent many priests to Dachau. In the [[Czech lands]], religious orders were suppressed, schools closed, religious instruction forbidden and priests sent to concentration camps.<ref name="Hitler pp.51-52">[[Mark Mazower]]; ''Hitler's Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe''; Penguin; 2008; {{ISBN|978-0-7139-9681-4}}; pp.&nbsp;51–52</ref>  Catholic [[bishop]]s, clergy, nuns and laypeople protested and attacked Nazi policies in occupied territories; in 1942, the Dutch bishops protested the mistreatment of Jews.<ref name="ncregister.com">{{cite news|last=Lehner|first=Ulrich L.|url=http://www.ncregister.com/site/article/the_bishops_who_defied_the_nazis/|title=The Bishops Who Defied the Nazis|publisher=[[National Catholic Register]]|access-date=2013-11-06|archive-date=2013-10-05|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131005020558/http://www.ncregister.com/site/article/the_bishops_who_defied_the_nazis/|url-status=dead}}</ref> When Archbishop [[Johannes de Jong]] refused to yield to Nazi threats, the Gestapo rounded up Catholic "Jews" and sent 92 to Auschwitz.<ref name="Richard_a">Richard J. Evans; ''The Third Reich at War''; Penguin Press; New York 2009, p.385</ref> One Catholic abducted in this manner was nun [[Edith Stein]], who was murdered at Auschwitz along with Poland's [[Maximilian Kolbe]]. Other Catholic victims of Nazi Germany have been [[Beatification|beatified]], including Poland's [[108 Martyrs of World War II]], the [[Martyrs of Nowogródek]], Dutch theologian [[Titus Brandsma]] and Germany's [[Lübeck martyrs]] and [[Bernhard Lichtenberg]].

==== In occupied Poland ====
{{Further|Nazi persecution of the Catholic Church in Poland}}
{{Further|Nazi crimes against ethnic Poles}}
[[File:Fr.Maximilian Kolbe 1939.jpg|thumb|upright|alt=Priest wearing round-rimmed glasses| Polish [[Franciscan]] [[Maximilian Kolbe]] was murdered at Auschwitz.]]
According to [[Norman Davies]], the Nazi terror was "much fiercer and more protracted in Poland than anywhere in Europe."<ref name="ReferenceB">Graml, Mommsen, Reichhardt & Wolf; The German Resistance to Hitler; B. T. Batsford Ltd; London; 1970; p. 225</ref> The Nazis murdered millions of Polish Catholics. Nazi ideology viewed ethnic Poles—the mainly Catholic ethnic majority of Poland—as subhuman. After their 1939 invasion of Poland, the Nazis instituted a policy of murdering (or suppressing) the ethnic-Polish elite (including Catholic religious leaders).<ref name="Poles">{{cite web|title=Poles|url=http://www.ushmm.org/education/resource/poles/poles.pdf|publisher=[[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]]|access-date=24 May 2013 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121011014249/http://www.ushmm.org/education/resource/poles/poles.pdf |archive-date=11 October 2012}}</ref> The Nazi plan for Poland was the nation's destruction, which necessitated attacking the [[Roman Catholicism in Poland|Polish Church]], (particularly in areas annexed by Germany).<ref name=Garlinski>{{cite book|first=Jozef|last=Garlinski|title=Poland and the Second World War|publisher=Macmillan Press|year=1985|page=60}}</ref> About the brief period of military control from 1 September to 25 October 1939, Davies wrote: "According to one source, 714 mass executions were carried out, and 6,376 people, mainly Catholics, were shot. Others put the death toll in one town alone at 20,000. It was a taste of things to come."<ref>Norman Davies; Rising '44: the Battle for Warsaw; Viking; 2003; pp. 85–6</ref>

In [[Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany]], severe persecution began. The Nazis systematically dismantled the church, arresting its leaders, exiling its clergy and closing its churches, monasteries and convents. Germanization of the annexed regions began in December 1939, with deportations of men, women and children.<ref>Richard J. Evans; The Third Reich at War; Penguin Press New York; 2009; pp.&nbsp;28–29</ref> According to [[Richard J. Evans]], in the [[Reichsgau Wartheland]] "numerous clergy, monks, diocesan administrators and officials of the Church were arrested, deported to the General Government, taken off to a concentration camp in the Reich, or simply shot. Altogether some 1700 Polish priests ended up at Dachau: half of them did not survive their imprisonment."<ref>Richard J. Evans; The Third Reich at War; Penguin Press New York; 2009; p.&nbsp;33–34</ref> Among the clergy who were murdered at Dachau were many of the 108 Polish Martyrs of World War II.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://saints.sqpn.com/108-martyrs-of-world-war-ii/|title=108 Martyrs of World War II|work=Saints.SQPN.com |access-date=2013-11-06}}</ref>

Hans Frank said in 1940, "Poles may have only one master—a German. Two masters cannot exist side by side, and this is why all members of the Polish intelligentsia must be killed."<ref name="Poles"/> Thomas J. Craughwell wrote that from 1939 to 1945, an estimated 3,000 members of the Polish clergy (18 percent) were murdered; of these, 1,992 were murdered in concentration camps.<ref name="Craughwell">Craughwell, Thomas J., [http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=472 The Gentile Holocaust] Catholic Culture, Accessed July 18, 2008</ref> According to the ''[[Encyclopædia Britannica]]'', 1,811 Polish priests were murdered in Nazi concentration camps.<ref name="Encyclopædia Britannica Inc 2013">Encyclopædia Britannica Online - ''[[Stefan Wyszyński]]'';  Encyclopædia Britannica Inc; 2013. Web. 14 Apr. 2013.</ref> Among the persecuted resisters was [[Irena Sendlerowa]], head of the children's section of [[Żegota]], who placed more than 2,500 Jewish children in convents, orphanages, schools, hospitals, and homes. Captured by the Gestapo in 1943, Sendlerowa was crippled by torture.<ref>Martin Gilbert; The Righteous - The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust; Doubleday; 2002; {{ISBN|0-385-60100-X}}; p.122</ref>

===Protestants===
{{Further|Protestant Reich Church|Confessing Church}}
The Nazis attempted to deal with Protestant dissent with their ideology by creating the Reich Church, a union of 28 existing Protestant groups espousing [[Positive Christianity]] (a doctrine compatible with [[Nazism]]). Non-Aryan ministers were suspended and church members called themselves [[German Christians (movement)|German Christians]], with "the [[swastika]] on their chest and the [[Christian cross|cross]] in their heart."<ref name="www.bbc.co.uk 2racialreligiouspolicy2"/><ref name="georgetown1"/> The [[Protestant]] opposition to the Nazis established the [[Confessing Church]], a rival [[umbrella organization]] of independent German regional churches which was persecuted.<ref name="georgetown1">{{cite web|url=http://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/resources/countries/germany|title=Germany|publisher=[[Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs]] |access-date=2011-12-29 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131012004817/http://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/resources/countries/germany |archive-date=2013-10-12 |url-status=dead}} See drop-down essay on "Unification, World Wars, and Nazism"</ref>

=== Freemasons ===
{{see also|Suppression of Freemasonry|Freemasonry#The Holocaust}}
The Nazis claimed that high-degree [[Freemasonry|Masons]] were willing members of "the Jewish conspiracy" and Freemasonry was a cause of Germany's defeat in [[World War I]].<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |year=1990 |encyclopedia=The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust |url=https://archive.org/details/encyclopediaofho0000unse_l4l4/page/ |last=Katz |editor=Israel Gutman |page=[https://archive.org/details/encyclopediaofho0000unse_l4l4/page/ vol. 2, p. 531] |isbn=978-0-02-897166-7 |oclc=20594356 |article=Jews and Freemasons in Europe}}</ref> [[Reich Security Main Office]] (''Reichssicherheitshauptamt'', or RSHA) records indicate the persecution of Freemasons during the Holocaust.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://mill-valley.freemasonry.biz/persecution.htm|title=World War II Documents showing the persecution of Freemasonry|publisher=Mill Valley Lodge #356 | access-date = 2006-05-21 | url-status = dead | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20121210071945/http://mill-valley.freemasonry.biz/persecution.htm | archive-date = 2012-12-10}}</ref> RSHA Amt VII (written records), overseen by [[Franz Six]], was responsible for "ideological" tasks: the creation of antisemitic and anti-Masonic propaganda. Although the exact number is unknown, an estimated 80,000 to 200,000 Freemasons were murdered as a result of Hitler's December 1941 ''[[Nacht und Nebel]]'' directive.<ref name="holocaust" /> 

Small blue [[forget-me-not]]s were first used by the Zur Sonne Grand Lodge in 1926 as a Masonic emblem at its annual convention in [[Bremen]]. In 1938, a forget-me-not badge made by the factory which produced the Masonic badge was chosen for the annual Nazi ''[[Winterhilfswerk]]'', the charity drive of the [[National Socialist People's Welfare]] (the party's welfare branch). The coincidence enabled Freemasons to wear the forget-me-not badge as a secret sign of Masonic membership.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.internetloge.de/arst/forgetd.htm|title=Das Vergißmeinnicht-Abzeichen und die Freimaurerei, Die wahre Geschichte|language=de|publisher=Internetloge.de | access-date = 2006-07-08}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.freemasons-freemasonry.com/bernheim3.html|first=Alain|last=Bernheim|title=The Blue Forget-Me-Not: Another Side Of The Story|work=Pietre-Stones Review of Freemasonry|date=10 September 2004 | access-date = 2006-07-08}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|title=Die Freimaurer-Logen Deutschlands und deren Grosslogen 1737–1972|first=Karl Heinz|last=Francke|author2=Ernst-Günther Geppert|location=Bayreuth|publisher=Quatuor Coronati|year=1974|language=de|edition=Second rev.}}Also in: {{Cite book|title=Die Freimaurer-Logen Deutschlands und deren Grosslogen 1737 – 1985 : Matrikel und Stammbuch; Nachschlagewerk über 248 Jahre Geschichte der Freimaurerei in Deutschland|first=Karl Heinz|last=Francke|author2=Ernst-Günther Geppert|location=Bayreuth|publisher=Quatuor Coronati|year=1988|language=de|isbn=978-3-925749-05-6|oclc=75446479}}</ref>

After the war, the forget-me-not was again used as a Masonic emblem at the first annual [[United Grand Lodges of Germany]] convention in 1948.<ref name=":2">{{Cite web |title=Collections Search - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |url=https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn520526 |archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20250204040027/https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn520526 |archive-date=2025-02-04 |access-date=2025-02-23 |website=collections.ushmm.org |language=en}}</ref> The badge is worn on the [[lapel]]s of Masons worldwide in remembrance of those who have suffered in the name of Freemasonry, particularly during the Nazi era.<ref name=":2" />

== Other groups ==

=== Civilians engaged in non-violent resistance ===
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1970-043-52, Russland, bei Minsk, tote Zivilisten.jpg|thumb|Dead Soviet civilians near [[Minsk]], [[Belarus]], 1943]]
The SS and police conducted mass actions against civilians with alleged links to resistance movements, their families, and villages or city districts. Notorious killings occurred in [[Lidice massacre|Lidice]], [[Khatyn]], [[Kragujevac massacre|Kragujevac]], [[Sant'Anna di Stazzema massacre|Sant'Anna]] and [[Oradour-sur-Glane massacre|Oradour-sur-Glane]], and a district of Warsaw was [[Wola massacre|obliterated]]. In occupied Poland, Nazi Germany imposed the death penalty on those found sheltering (or aiding) Jews.

=== Petty criminals and "social deviants" ===
"Social deviants"—[[Prostitution|prostitutes]], [[Vagrancy (people)|vagrants]], [[Alcoholism|alcoholics]], [[Drug addiction|drug addicts]], open dissidents, [[pacifism|pacifists]], [[Conscription|draft resisters]] and common [[crime|criminals]]—were also imprisoned in concentration camps. The common criminals frequently became [[Kapo (concentration camp)|Kapos]], inmate guards of fellow prisoners.

Some Germans and Austrians who had lived abroad for much of their lives were considered to have had too much exposure to foreign ideas, and were sent to concentration camps. These prisoners, known as "emigrants", each wore a blue triangle.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/h-dach-early.htm|title=Holocaust Timeline: Nazis Open Dachau Concentration Camp|publisher=The History Place |access-date=2011-02-20}}</ref>{{better source needed|reason=German-language chart is too small to be legible, and no verification exists in text.|date=October 2015}}

==See also==
* [[List of genocides]]
* [[Genocides in history (World War I through World War II)]]
* [[World War II casualties]]
* [[World War II casualties of the Soviet Union]]

==Notes==
{{Notelist}}

==Citations==
{{reflist}}

'''Bibliography'''
* {{Cite book|last=Berenbaum|first=Michael |author-link=Michael Berenbaum|year=2005|title=The World Must Know: The History of the Holocaust as Told in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum|publisher=[[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]], [[Johns Hopkins University Press]]|isbn=978-0801883583|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iqMWAQAAIAAJ}}

==Further reading==
* {{Cite book |last=Benz |first1=Wolfgang |date=2015 |author-link=Wolfgang Benz |title=Dimension des Völkermords: Die Zahl der jüdischen Opfer des Nationalsozialismus |trans-title=Dimension of the Genocide: The Number of Jewish Victims of Nazism |language=de |publisher=Walter de Gruyter |isbn=978-3-486-70833-2 |oclc=1480773860}}

==External links==
* [http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/about/01/non_jews_persecution.asp?WT.mc_id=wiki Non-Jewish Victims of Persecution in Nazi Germany] on the [[Yad Vashem]] website
* [http://db.yadvashem.org/names/search.html The Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names]
* Stills from Soviet documentary "The Atrocities committed by German Fascists in the USSR" ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-w5GLwBwN-0&index=94&list=PL06DE3D4B636D50C9 (1)]; [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_4WoQfz-N0&index=95&list=PL06DE3D4B636D50C9 (2)]; [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knCKIny5NPU&index=96&list=PL06DE3D4B636D50C9 (3)])
* Slide show [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmHR4P5FeuA&index=97&list=PL06DE3D4B636D50C9 "Nazi Crimes in the USSR (Graphic images!)"]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20160817115459/http://www.yahadinunum.org/?lang=en Yahad in Nunum on Shoah victiums]
* [http://www.chroniclesofterror.pl/dlibra# 'Chronicles of Terror' testimony database]

{{The Holocaust}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Holocaust Victims}}
[[Category:People who died in the Holocaust| ]]
[[Category:Victimology]]