Holocaust In reply to your note first it is unclear when the Holocaust started There was severe repression as soon as Hitler gained power but in 1933 Jews in Germany still had some freedom of movement and some notable ones were able to flee the country I feel that the repression and murder escalated dramatically after Kristallnacht and was going full force after the Wansee conference As to the applicability of the term Holocaust to other ethnicities or nationalities I note that Gypsies and Jehovah s Witnesses were also rounded up and exterminated and that orders went out for the extermination of Poles ad other slavs who were not Jewish and of whom several million were killed I understand that per Holocaust some Jewish organizations prefer the term Holocaust only refer to the mass killing of Jews I suggest Jewish Holocaust as a term specific to this which avoids the inference that the mass killing of Poles Romani or Jehovah s Witnesses was somehow not as bad as the mass killing of Jews Perhaps there is another term you could suggest for the mass killings of other groups