The Holocaust is a story of people and a story of geography: a series of events that spanned the entire continent and beyond, reshaping Europe in devastating ways. It wiped out whole communities, displaced millions from their homes, and created new landscapes of suffering.
The Holocaust – or the Shoah - was the attempt to murder the entire Jewish population of Europe and destroy everything Jewish. The anti-Jewish measures that began when the Nazis assumed power in Germany in 1933, evolved over time, culminating in a policy of systematic mass murder of all Jews during the Second World War, at a time when large parts of Europe occupied by German forces. These crimes went hand in hand with other mass crimes against other groups, most notably the persecution and genocide of the Roma and Sinti.
The Holocaust took different forms across regions, countries, and communities. What happened in one place was deeply connected to what happened elsewhere: deportations organised in Western Europe usually led to death camps in Eastern Europe. Local ghettos, deportation centres, transit camps, internment camps, forced labour camps, concentration camps, and death camps were bound into a continent-wide system of control and destruction. Killing sites were scattered across the forests and fields of Europe. Though varying in form and function, these sites operated as a unified network, constituting the machinery of the Holocaust.
The ESHEM project, which supports custodians working at historical Holocaust sites, reflects the geographical diversity of sites that remain central to Holocaust remembrance in Europe today.
The Historical Framework for our Work
Following the introduction of anti-Jewish measures after the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, persecution intensified and ultimately culminated in the systematic mass murder of Jews during the Second World War in German-occupied Europe. It was implemented and supported by a variety of social, national and administrative groups, as well as individuals within and outside Germany, encompassing a vast number of people and German-allied governments.
In the course of the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, those whom the Nazis defined as being Jewish were killed in mass shootings in the immediate vicinity of their homes. At the same time, Jews from most other countries in German-occupied Europe - often by way of transit camps - were deported to death camps in occupied Poland and killed through asphyxiation by poison gas.
Before the war ended in 1945, approximately 6 million Jewish men, women, and children were killed on the orders of the German Nazi government and by collaborationist governments and authorities, by Nazis, their collaborators, and accomplices.
Traces of these crimes are still present in Europe's landscape today. There are former concentration and labour camp sites, some of them very famous, some of them virtually unknown. There are railway stations, provisional transfer camps, the ghettos, places of forced labour, hiding places, and escape routes. They tell stories of suffering, pain or death, as well as resilience, courage, rescue and survival, and many of them are sacred burial sites holding the remains of hundreds of people. These sites demand our respect and our enduring care.
Numerous initiatives across Europe have documented these experiences. They provide tools for education, commemoration, and research, enabling communities, scholars, and educators to engage with the Holocaust in more comprehensive and meaningful ways.
The list of key online resources below supports further exploration, understanding, and deepening of knowledge.