The Outbreak of World War II and Anti-Jewish Policy

“There are in this part of the world [Eastern and Central Europe] 6,000,000 Jews… for whom the world is divided into places where they cannot live and places where they cannot enter.”

Chaim Weizmann

The beginning of World War II, on September 1, 1939, marked a new phase in German policy toward the Jews.

After the conquest of Poland, the Jews of Eastern Europe were concentrated in ghettos, while in Western Europe the Jews were registered and dispossessed of their property. Antisemitic racial legislation was passed in North Africa too. In South-Eastern European countries Jews were drafted into forced labor by collaborationist governments and tens of thousands of Jews there perished.

World War II transformed the face of Europe and the entire world, and resulted in the killing of millions of civilians of different nationalities and the evolution of a satanic scheme of genocide

The Conquest of Poland and the Beginnings of Jewish Persecution

On September 17, 1939, while the Poles were still attempting to stave off the German offensive, the Soviets invaded Poland and occupied the eastern part of the country, under the terms of an agreement concluded between the Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov and his German counterpart Ribbentrop. Within three weeks the Germans had defeated Poland and divided it into three regions: the western and northern...

Expansion of German Conquest and Policy Towards Jews

In less than two years – from the onset of their offensive against Poland in September 1939 to the beginning of the campaign against the Soviet Union in June 1941 – the Germans managed to conquer most of Europe. Norway, Denmark, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Yugoslavia and Greece fell after only brief military operations.After completing their immensely successful military campaign...

Western European Jewry During the First Years of the Nazi Conquest

The NetherlandsThe Germans invaded the Netherlands in May 1940. Although Queen Wilhelmina and her government fled to Britain, the bureaucracy continued to function under the occupying regime. At the time there were approximately 140,000 Jews living in the Netherlands, including refugees from Germany (Anne Frank’s family, for instance), Austria, and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Anti-Jewish...

The Fate of the Jews in South-Eastern Europe During the First Years of the War

HungaryWhen World War II broke out, approximately 500,000 Jews lived in Hungary. Antisemitic legislation had been passed in Hungary even before the outbreak of the war, and beginning in 1939, tens of thousands of Jewish men were enlisted in forced labor battalions, where 42,000 perished.The Fascist elements in Hungary enjoyed broad popular support and the dictatorial government of Miklos Horthy concluded...

North Africa and the Middle East

The occupation of France and the establishment of the antisemitic Vichy regime brought 415,000 North African Jews – most of the Jews on the subcontinent – into the orbit of persecution. Marshall Petain’s Nazi regime worsened the status of the Jews of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, after Vichy-style antisemitic legislation was imposed in those countries.In Morocco, where Jews had civil...

The Outbreak of World War II and Anti-Jewish Policy

The Conquest of Poland and the Beginnings of Jewish Persecution

Expansion of German Conquest and Policy Towards Jews

Western European Jewry During the First Years of the Nazi Conquest

The Fate of the Jews in South-Eastern Europe During the First Years of the War

North Africa and the Middle East

New Yad Vashem website redirection