The Final Solution or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question was a Nazi plan for the genocide of individuals they defined as Jews during World War II. The "Final Solution to the Jewish question" was the official code name for the murder of all Jews within reach, which was not restricted to the European continent. This policy of deliberate and systematic genocide starting across German-occupied Europe was formulated in procedural and geopolitical terms by Nazi leadership in January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference held near Berlin, and culminated in the Holocaust, which saw the murder of 90% of Polish Jews, and two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe.
The history of Poland from 1939 to 1945 encompasses primarily the period from the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union to the end of World War II. Following the German–Soviet non-aggression pact, Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany on 1 September 1939 and by the Soviet Union on 17 September. The campaigns ended in early October with Germany and the Soviet Union dividing and annexing the whole of Poland. After the Axis attack on the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, the entirety of Poland was occupied by Germany, which proceeded to advance its racial and genocidal policies across Poland.
The Reichskommissariat Ostland was established by Nazi Germany in 1941 during World War II. It became the civilian occupation regime in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and the western part of Byelorussian SSR. German planning documents initially referred to an equivalent Reichskommissariat Baltenland. The political organization for this territory – after an initial period of military administration before its establishment – involved a German civilian administration, nominally under the authority of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories led by Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg, but actually controlled by the Nazi official Hinrich Lohse, its appointed Reichskommissar.
Slutsk is a town in Minsk Region, Belarus. It serves as the administrative center of Slutsk District, and is located on the Sluch River 105 km (65 mi) south of the capital Minsk. As of 2024, it has a population of 60,056.
Olyka is a rural settlement in Lutsk Raion, Volyn Oblast, western Ukraine. It is located east of Lutsk on the Putylivka Rriver. Its population is 3,032.
The history of the Jews during World War II is almost synonymous with the persecution and murder of Jews which was committed on an unprecedented scale in Europe and European North Africa. The massive scale of the Holocaust which happened during World War II greatly affected the Jewish people and world public opinion, which only understood the dimensions of the Final Solution after the war. The genocide, known as HaShoah in Hebrew, aimed at the elimination of the Jewish people on the European continent. It was a broadly organized operation led by Nazi Germany, in which approximately six million Jews were murdered methodically and with horrifying cruelty. Although the Holocaust was organized by the highest levels of the Nazi German government, the vast majority of Jews murdered were not German, but were instead residents of countries invaded by the Nazis after 1938. Of the approximately 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis, approximately 160,000 to 180,000 were German Jews. During the Holocaust in occupied Poland, more than one million Jews were murdered in gas chambers of the Auschwitz concentration camp alone. The murder of the Jews of Europe affected Jewish communities in Albania, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Channel Islands, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Libya, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Moldova, the Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, and Ukraine.
Ukrainian collaboration with Nazi Germany took place during the occupation of Poland and the Ukrainian SSR, USSR, by Nazi Germany during the Second World War.
Trochenbrod or Trohinbrod, also in Polish: Zofiówka, or in Russian: Софиевка (Sofievka), in Ukrainian: Трохимбрід (Trokhymbrid), Hebrew: טרוכנברוד, was an exclusively Jewish shtetl – a small town, with an area of 1,728 acres (6.99 km2) – located in the gmina Silno, powiat Łuck of the Wołyń Voivodeship, in the Second Polish Republic and would now be located in Kivertsi Raion of Volyn Oblast in Ukraine. Following the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939, Zofiówka was renamed in Russian and incorporated into the new Volyn Oblast of the UkSSR. Two years later, at the start of Operation Barbarossa in 1941, it was annexed by Nazi Germany into the Reichskommissariat Ukraine under a new Germanized name. Trochenbrod (Zofiówka) was completely eradicated in the course of German occupation and the ensuing Holocaust. The town used to be situated about 30 kilometres (19 mi) northeast of Lutsk. The nearest villages of today are Yaromel (Яромель) and Klubochyn (Клубочин).
The Ponary massacre, or the Paneriai massacre, was the mass murder of up to 100,000 people, mostly Jews, Poles, and Russians, by German SD and SS and the Lithuanian Ypatingasis būrys killing squads, during World War II and the Holocaust in the Generalbezirk Litauen of Reichskommissariat Ostland. The murders took place between July 1941 and August 1944 near the railway station at Ponary, a suburb of today's Vilnius, Lithuania. 70,000 Jews were murdered at Ponary, along with up to 2,000 Poles, 8,000 Soviet POWs, most of them from nearby Vilnius, and its newly formed Vilna Ghetto. Along with 90 LTDF officers who refused to carry orders by the Germans after the Battle of Murowana Oszmianka.
Subdivision of Polish territories during World War II can be divided into several phases. The territories of the Second Polish Republic were first administered first by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, then in their entirety by Nazi Germany, and finally by the Soviet Union again. In 1946, administrative control of the areas not annexed by the Soviet Union was returned to Poland.
Bialystok District was an administrative unit of Nazi Germany created during the World War II invasion of the Soviet Union. It was to the south-east of East Prussia, in present-day northeastern Poland as well as in smaller sections of adjacent present-day Belarus and Lithuania. It was sometimes also referred to by the designation South East Prussia along with the Regierungsbezirk Zichenau, although in contrast to the latter, it was not incorporated into, but merely attached to East Prussia.
The Holocaust in Belarus refers to the systematic extermination of Jews living in the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic during its occupation by Nazi Germany in World War II. It is estimated that roughly 800,000 Belarusian Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. However, other estimates place the number of Jews killed between 500,000 and 550,000.
The Holocaust in Ukraine was the systematic mass murder of Jews in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine, the General Government, the Crimean General Government and some areas which were located to the East of Reichskommissariat Ukraine, in the Transnistria Governorate and Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina and the Hertsa region and Carpathian Ruthenia during World War II. The listed areas are currently parts of Ukraine.
Olyka Castle is a fortified palace in Olyka, Ukraine. Constructed in 1564, it became the principal seat of the Radziwiłł family in Volhynia, once part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and now Ukraine. The Radziwiłłs hold the castle for almost four hundred years, since the last owner, Janusz Radziwiłł, owned the castle till 1945. After 1945, it was confiscated and changed into a psychiatric hospital. In 2021, it was transferred to the Volyn museum and is now open for the public.
The military occupation of Lithuania by Nazi Germany lasted from the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, to the end of the Battle of Memel on January 28, 1945. At first the Germans were welcomed as liberators from the repressive Soviet regime which had occupied Lithuania. In hopes of re-establishing independence or regaining some autonomy, Lithuanians had organized a Provisional Government. It lasted six weeks.
ŁachwaGhetto was a Nazi ghetto in Łachwa, Poland during World War II. The ghetto was created with the aim of persecution and exploitation of the local Jews. The ghetto existed until September 1942. One of the first Jewish ghetto uprisings had happened there.
The Brześć Ghetto or the Ghetto in Brest on the Bug, also: Brześć nad Bugiem Ghetto, and Brest-Litovsk Ghetto was a Nazi ghetto created in occupied Western Belarus in December 1941, six months after the German troops had invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. Less than a year after the creation of the ghetto, around October 15–18, 1942, most of approximately 20,000 Jewish inhabitants of Brest (Brześć) were murdered; over 5,000 were executed locally at the Brest Fortress on the orders of Karl Eberhard Schöngarth; the rest in the secluded forest of the Bronna Góra extermination site, sent there aboard Holocaust trains under the guise of 'resettlement'.
The Pińsk Ghetto was a Nazi ghetto created by Nazi Germany for the confinement of Jews living in the city of Pińsk, Western Belarus. Pińsk, located in eastern Poland, was occupied by the Red Army in 1939 and incorporated into the Byelorussian SSR. The city was captured by the Wehrmacht in Operation Barbarossa in July 1941; it was incorporated into the German Reichskommissariat Ukraine in autumn of 1941.
Bronna Góra is the name of a secluded area in present-day Belarus where mass killings of Polish Jews were carried out by Nazi Germany during World War II. The location was part of the eastern half of occupied Poland, which had been invaded by the Soviet Union in 1939 in agreement with Germany, and two years later captured by the Wehrmacht in Operation Barbarossa. It is estimated that from May 1942 until November of that year, during the most deadly phase of the Holocaust in Poland, some 50,000 Jews were murdered at Bronna Góra forest in death pits. The victims were transported there in Holocaust trains from Nazi ghettos, including from the Brześć Ghetto and the Pińsk Ghetto, and from the ghettos in the surrounding area, as well as from Reichskommissariat Ostland.
Generalbezirk Weißruthenien was one of the four administrative subdivisions of Reichskommissariat Ostland, the 1941–1945 civilian occupation regime established by Nazi Germany for the administration of the three Baltic countries and the western part of the Byelorussian SSR.
