The annihilation of about 6 million people by
the Hitler regime 1933-45 in numerous
concentration and extermination camps, most
notably Auschwitz, Sobibor, Treblinka, and
Maidanek in Poland, and Belsen, Buchenwald,
and Dachau in Germany. Most of the victims
were Jews but several million Russian
civilians and prisoners-of-war, gypsies,
socialists, homosexuals, and others were also
imprisoned and/or exterminated. The history
of the Holocaust is usually deemed to have
started in 1933 with the appointment of Adolf
Hitler as Chancellor of Germany. While there
were measures taken against Jews and other
racial groups in Germany from 1933 onwards,
the point at which this became a deliberate
policy directed towards the ultimate
extermination of these people is still the
subject of scholarly debate.