The Holocaust: KS3 History Explained Sensitively

The Holocaust was the systematic, state-organised murder of six million Jewish people by the Nazi German regime between 1933 and 1945. The Nazis also persecuted and killed millions more — Roma people, disabled people, gay men, and political opponents. Its study is a mandatory part of the KS3 history curriculum in England.

What did the Nazis believe?

To understand how the Holocaust happened, you need to understand the ideology behind it. Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, which came to power in Germany in January 1933, held a set of beliefs that are now recognised as criminal — but which many Germans accepted, at least partially, in the context of the 1930s.

The Nazis believed in a racial hierarchy, placing so-called "Aryan" Germans at the top and Jewish people at the bottom. This antisemitism — hatred and persecution of Jewish people — was not invented by the Nazis; it had deep roots in European history, including centuries of religious prejudice and discriminatory laws. What the Nazis added was a pseudo-scientific racial framing that depicted Jewish people as a biological threat to the German nation, and a totalitarian state apparatus capable of acting on that belief systematically.

The Nazis also blamed Jewish people for Germany's defeat in the First World War (a conspiracy theory completely unsupported by evidence, known as the "stab-in-the-back myth"), for the economic hardships of the Great Depression, and for virtually every other problem facing Germany. This scapegoating provided a simple but false explanation for complex events.

How did persecution escalate between 1933 and 1941?

The Holocaust did not begin with mass murder. It escalated over several years through increasingly severe persecution.

Period | Key events and measures
1933–1935 | Boycott of Jewish businesses; Jews excluded from civil service and professions; book burnings
1935 | Nuremberg Laws: Jews stripped of German citizenship; marriage between Jews and non-Jews banned
1938 | Kristallnacht (9–10 November): nationwide pogrom — Jewish synagogues, homes, and businesses destroyed; ~30,000 Jewish men arrested and sent to concentration camps
1939–1940 | Invasion of Poland; Polish Jews forced into overcrowded ghettos in major cities (Warsaw, Łódź, Kraków)
1941 | Invasion of the Soviet Union; mobile killing units (Einsatzgruppen) murder approximately 1.5 million Jewish people in mass shootings
1942 | Wannsee Conference (January); industrialised mass murder at extermination camps begins

The Wannsee Conference of January 1942 was a meeting of senior Nazi officials that co-ordinated the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" — the Nazi euphemism for the organised murder of all Jews under German control.

What were concentration camps and extermination camps?

These were not the same type of facility, though the terms are sometimes confused.

Concentration camps were used to detain, exploit, and terrorise political opponents, Jewish people, and other persecuted groups. The first, Dachau, opened in 1933. Prisoners were subjected to forced labour, starvation, brutal punishment, and murder. Conditions were designed to dehumanise and destroy people.

Extermination camps (also called death camps) were built from 1941–42 in occupied Poland specifically to murder people on an industrial scale. The largest was Auschwitz-Birkenau, where more than one million people — the great majority of them Jewish — were killed, primarily in gas chambers using a pesticide called Zyklon B. Other extermination camps included Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Chelmno, and Majdanek. The victims were transported from across German-occupied Europe by rail.

Who were the victims of the Holocaust?

Six million Jewish people were murdered — approximately two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe. The Holocaust was targeted most specifically at Jewish people, and historians use the Hebrew word Shoah (meaning "catastrophe") to describe this particular genocide.

The Nazis also murdered:

Roma and Sinti people: between 250,000 and 500,000 killed (the Porrajmos or Samudaripen)

Disabled people: approximately 200,000–250,000 killed under the "Aktion T4" euthanasia programme

Soviet prisoners of war: approximately 3.3 million died in German captivity, through shooting, starvation, and disease

Gay men: tens of thousands sent to concentration camps

Political opponents, Jehovah's Witnesses, and others

Total victims across all persecuted groups number at least 11 million people.

What happened to survivors?

The Holocaust ended with the defeat of Nazi Germany in May 1945. Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz on 27 January 1945 — a date now observed as Holocaust Memorial Day. British and American forces liberated other camps, including Bergen-Belsen, where they found thousands of survivors in horrific conditions.

Those who survived faced enormous challenges: physical illness, the loss of entire families and communities, and the destruction of the world they had known. Many tried to emigrate, including to Palestine (which became the State of Israel in 1948). Others rebuilt lives in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere. The testimony of survivors — recorded by institutions including the USC Shoah Foundation — is an irreplaceable historical record of what occurred.

Why is it important to study the Holocaust?

The Holocaust is studied not only as a historical event but because of the lessons it carries about human behaviour, about how societies can be led to commit atrocities, and about the responsibilities individuals and communities have to resist prejudice and discrimination.

The KS3 history curriculum specifically includes the Holocaust because it represents one of the most extreme examples of what can result when discrimination is allowed to escalate, when propaganda replaces truthful information, when individuals abandon their own moral judgement, and when international communities fail to act. The Holocaust did not begin with gas chambers; it began with words, laws, and the exclusion of people from normal society.

The Imperial War Museum in London holds a permanent Holocaust exhibition and provides educational resources for students and teachers across the United Kingdom.

Frequently asked questions

How should I approach learning about the Holocaust at KS3?

The Holocaust is a deeply painful subject, and it is natural to find it disturbing. It is important to remember that the figures — six million Jewish people murdered — represent individual human beings: children, parents, teachers, and friends. As you study it, try to understand both the historical causes and the human experience. Ask what allowed this to happen, who made choices to participate, who resisted, and what happened to those who tried to help. The aim is not to find it easy, but to understand it honestly.

Who was responsible for the Holocaust?

The Holocaust was planned and directed by the Nazi leadership, including Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler (who commanded the SS), and Reinhard Heydrich (who chaired the Wannsee Conference). However, it was carried out by hundreds of thousands of ordinary German soldiers, police officers, and bureaucrats, as well as collaborators in occupied countries. Historian Christopher Browning's study Ordinary Men (1992) examined how regular police officers became mass killers, finding that social pressure, ideology, and the structure of authority played key roles. Responsibility existed at every level, from the decision-makers at the top to those who followed orders and those who looked away.

Was the Holocaust unique in history?

The Holocaust is distinguished by its scale, the industrial methods used to implement it, and the explicitly ideological basis of a state determining to eliminate an entire people. Historians debate how to place it in relation to other genocides — including the Armenian Genocide (1915–16), the Rwandan Genocide (1994), and others. Most historians regard the Holocaust as a singular event while also recognising that genocide has occurred in other contexts. Studying it can help us recognise warning signs — the dehumanisation of a group, propaganda, the removal of legal protections — that can precede mass atrocity.

Where can I find reliable resources to learn more?

The Imperial War Museum (iwm.org.uk) provides carefully developed educational resources about the Holocaust, including survivor testimonies, photographs, and teacher guides. The Holocaust Educational Trust runs the "Lessons from Auschwitz" project that takes UK sixth-form students to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial, holds the world's largest collection of Holocaust documentation. When researching online, use established museum and educational sources rather than general websites, which may contain denial or distortion.

For thoughtful, evidence-based KS3 history practice — building understanding from primary sources — visit aitutors.me.