In 1933 , with the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in Germany , the Jewish situation became more severe . Economic crises , racial anti-Semitic laws , and a fear of an upcoming war led many Jews to flee from Europe to Palestine , to the United States and to the Soviet Union . In 1939 World War II began and until 1941 Hitler occupied almost all of Europe , including Poland — where millions of Jews were living at that time — and France . In 1941 , following the invasion of the Soviet Union , the Final Solution began , an extensive organized operation on an unprecedented scale , aimed at the annihilation of the Jewish people , and resulting in the persecution and murder of Jews in political Europe , inclusive of European North Africa ( pro-Nazi Vichy-North Africa and Italian Libya ) . This genocide , in which approximately six million Jews were methodically exterminated , is known as The Holocaust or '' Shoah '' ( Hebrew term ) . In Poland , three million Jews were killed in gas chambers in all concentration camps combined , with one million at the Auschwitz camp complex alone
The Holocaust
The Holocaust
Jewish history