The Holocaust refers to the systemic destruction of the Jewish community of Europe which took place during World War II. From about the year 1941 to 1945, over six-million Jews across Europe were murdered, either by mass-shootings, gassings, or being herded into concentration, labour, or death camps, by the Nazi regime. During the Holocaust, about one-third of world Jewry was murdered. 

While facilitating the Holocaust, Hitler and his Nazi regime drew up maps to identify the number of Jews living in every country in the world, not just Europe. Their goal was to eradicate Jews from the world. In this way, the Holocaust, differs from what happened to other racial groups in Europe.

Yes –  homosexuals, blacks, Gypsies, political dissidents, the handicapped, and others were targeted to be murdered by the Nazis during WWII. This was all part of a decision to Aryanize those countries that Hitler conquered, to make more space for ethnic Germans. It was only the Jews, however, who Hitler targeted overseas, and who were intended to be wiped out, as an “extinct race.” For this reason, the term Holocaust (Greek for “total burning”) applies only to the murder of the six-million Jews at the hands of the Nazis, and not all those who were killed by the Nazis between the years 1939 and 1945. 

Israel was not established because of the Holocaust. There was certainly sympathy for the establishment of the Jewish state after the horrors of the Holocaust were revealed at the end of the war. This sympathy, and the awareness that the Jews needed a homeland to protect their interests, was bolstered by the facts of the Holocaust. However, there has always been an indigenous Jewish community in Israel, and for almost 60 years before the start of WWII, there was a movement to establish a political Jewish home in Palestine. The establishment of Israel was the culmination of 2,000 years of yearning for the re-establishment of a Jewish homeland in Israel.