Initially the Nazis attempted to drive the Jewish population from Germany through pogroms, the destruction of Jewish communities, forced relocation to ghettos and labor camps, and forced emigration. Subsequently, Nazi leadership devised a "Final Solution" for the Jewish question, the use of liquidation squads and concentration camps as centers for mass murder. By World War II's end the Nazi regime had murdered over 6 million Jews.
In addition, the Nazis targeted other ethnic groups, nationalities, and persons considered social deviants: homosexuals, the mentally ill, and the physically disabled. Some sources have estimated that overall 3 million non-Jewish Poles, 500,000 Romani (gypsies), and thousands of those regarded as socially undesirable were killed in concentration camps. Poles not killed in the camps became forced laborers; many were sent to work in factories in Germany under conditions of extreme starvation and deprivation.
Defining Genocide
The term "genocide" was first used by Raphael Lemkin, an international law scholar, who had fled the Nazi occupation of Poland in 1939. Searching for a word to describe the organized destruction of racial, religious, or social groups, Lemkin coined the word genocide by combining the Greek genos (race or tribe) with the Latin-cide (killer or act of killing).
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