Holocaust Education resources drawn from a variety of local, national and international sources.
Local Holocaust Education Contributors
We work closely with individuals and various organizations in the Phoenix Metropolitan area that can assist you and provide you resources so that Holocaust Education is accessible to you.
Recommended National and International Resources
- Simon Wiesenthal Center
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
- Yad Vashem
- Generations of the Shoah International
- USC Shoah Foundation
- More Resources
A Brief Introduction of the Holocaust
The Holocaust, or Shoah*, was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million European Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators. Holocaust is a word of Greek origin meaning great destruction by fire. Shoah, the Hebrew word for "catastrophe," is sometimes the preferred term to refer to the near total destruction of European Jewry. (Some Yiddish speaking survivors of the Holocaust use the term Hurban or Churben.*)
Some scholars argue that other groups of people were targeted by Nazi Germany because of their perceived “racial inferiority” – Roma (Gypsies), the disabled, and some Slavs (Poles, Russians and others) should be included in the definition of the Holocaust. Other groups were persecuted on political, ideological, and behavioral bases, among them homosexuals, Communists, Socialists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Some people use the term Holocaust to describe the Nazi mass murders of some ten to eleven million civilians and prisoners of war.