The Holocaust in German-occupied Poland involved the implementation of German Nazi policy of systematic and mostly successful destruction of the indigenous Polish Jewish population , whom the Nazis regarded as " subhuman " ( '' Untermenschen '' ) . Between the 1939 invasion of Poland , and the end of World War II , over 90 % of Polish Jewry perished . Six extermination camps ( Auschwitz , Belzec , Chełmno , Majdanek , Sobibor and Treblinka ) were established in which the mass murder of millions of Polish Jews and various other groups , was carried out between 1942 and 1944 . The camps were designed and operated by Nazi Germans and there were no Polish guards at any of them . Of Poland 's prewar Jewish population of 3,500,000 , only about 50,000 – 120,000 Jews survived the war
The Holocaust
The Holocaust
Nazi crimes against the Polish nation