Dan Stone , a specialist in Holocaust historiography , defines the Holocaust as the genocide of the Jews , whom the Nazis regarded not as racially inferior , deviant , or enemy nationals , as they did other groups , but as a " '' Gegenrasse '' : a ' counter-race ' , that is to say , not really human at all " . But he writes that the Holocaust can only be understood as part of the " ' Nazi empire ' with its grandiose demographic plans " . Donald Niewyk and Francis Nicosia , in '' The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust '' ( 2000 ) , favor a definition that focuses on the Jews , Roma , and Aktion T4 victims : " The Holocaust — that is , Nazi genocide — was the systematic , state-sponsored murder of entire groups determined by heredity . This applied to Jews , Gypsies , and the handicapped . " The logistics of the mass murder turned Germany into what Michael Berenbaum called a " genocidal state " . Eberhard Jäckel wrote in 1986 that it was the first time a state had thrown its power behind the idea that an entire people should be wiped out . Anyone with three or four Jewish grandparents was to be exterminated , and complex rules were devised to deal with '' Mischlinge '' ( " mixed breeds " : half and quarter Jews ) . Bureaucrats identified who was a Jew , confiscated property , and scheduled trains to deport them . Companies fired Jews and later used them as slave labor . Universities dismissed Jewish faculty and students . German pharmaceutical companies tested drugs on camp prisoners ; other companies built the crematoria . As prisoners entered the death camps , they were ordered to surrender all personal property , which was catalogued and tagged before being sent to Germany for reuse or recycling . Through a concealed account , the German National Bank helped launder valuables stolen from the victims
Roma
Romani genocide
The Holocaust