What does the term "Holocaust" mean?

The consequences of the deliberate Nazi policy designed to liquidate Europe's Jews and other races considered sub-human.

Although the Nazis persecuted the Jews as soon as they came to power in 1933, mass murder began with the invasion Poland in 1939 and the subsequent invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941.

Mass shootings took place but at Wannsee in January 1942 a meeting was held which co-ordinated the systematic transport and extermination of Jews throughout Nazi occupied Europe.

Approximately 6 million Jews were killed, but millions of others were also killed in the Holocaust. They included any group of people which did not conform to the Nazi racial, social or political ideal. These included Slavs Soviet prisoners of war, gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses and Freemasons.