Before the infamous genocidal events that would soon be named the Holocaust, the Jewish people of Europe had already been facing anti-Semitism for centuries. From such ridiculous rumors of kidnapping and murdering Christian children for ritual sacrifices to people blaming Jewish people for poisoning wells during the black plague. Centuries before Hitler would name Jewish people as the sole reason for Germany's defeat during the First World War, the Jewish people were already named a scapegoat ten times over. But it was not until the end of World War I that the most heinous nature of Europe had towards its Jewish population would be shown to the world.

The tipping point for the Jewish population would happen on November 9-10 in 1938. During the night, called Kristallnacht by the Nazis, about 100 Jewish people were murdered, and thousands of synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses were destroyed. The murders were just the beginning on that night of injustice, there were also 26,000 arrests of Jewish people without any other crime other than the fact that they were Jewish. By September 193 9 half of Germany's Jewish population had already fled their home country.

With the start of the next World War, many of the German-occupied countries had already killed tens of thousands of Jews just by holding them within camps, but the Nazis still did not have a systematic way of solving of their "Jewish problem." The solution to this problem was placing all the now-displaced Jewish communities into ghettos and eventually into work camps and then finally into death camps. 500,000 Polish Jews died in the first two years after the start of the war within the ghettos and work camps. On top of all these camps and ghettos, there were the Einsatzgruppen, soldiers who, along with many other police forces, would hold mass shootings of Jewish communities. The death tolls in the camps were in the hundreds of thousands: in Treblinka, 800,000; Belzec, 500,000; Sobibor, 260,000; Majdanek, 130,000. But the deaths of millions of Jewish people did not pass without a fight.

Throughout the war, there were many uprisings and revolts that the Jewish people would participate in. One of the most notable would have to be the hiding and continuing of the Jewish traditions and knowledge of the religion. The Holocaust was more than just the killing of a people, it was about the total annihilation of a people's history and culture. One of the most famous uprisings was the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising during April- May 1943, during the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto. Before German troops could finish the liquidation of the ghetto, they were confronted by 750 Jews with smuggled-in guns. The fighting started on April 19, 1943 and the Germans finally put out the rebellion May 16. This uprising was one of the most successful uprisings of the Holocaust and inspired many others to resist the oppression of the Nazis. But there were also organized uprisings within in the camps. Treblinka and Sobibor and Auschwitz all had organized attacks in the camps. But these attacks held a much higher death toll for the Jewish communities within the camps. The best and most successful form of resistance that the Jewish community did during this time was holding secret religious and political meetings. It was the best way that the Jewish people held onto their hope, their culture, and one day their freedom.

Text by Matias Perez