Country-by-country breakdown reveals stark toll of the Holocaust
As the world marks Yom HaShoah, Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, a sobering visualization by The World in Maps brings renewed clarity to the scope of one of history’s most devastating genocides.
The map displays Holocaust victim counts by country, revealing the disproportionate scale of loss across Europe and the human cost of state-sponsored antisemitism, war, and complicity.
Poland and the Soviet Union: Epicentres of the Holocaust
With a staggering 3 million Jewish lives lost, Poland bore the heaviest burden of the Holocaust. This is no accident of geography alone—Poland had the largest Jewish population in Europe before World War II and became the hub of the Nazi extermination machinery. Camps like Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Sobibor, all situated in occupied Polish territory, were central to the Nazi regime’s “Final Solution”.
The Soviet Union follows with 1.34 million victims, reflecting mass executions, forced deportations, and systemic annihilation campaigns particularly in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. Many were killed during the German invasion of the USSR in 1941, when mobile killing squads known as Einsatzgruppen swept across Eastern Europe, leaving countless mass graves in their wake.
Hungary, Germany, and Romania: State collaboration and timelines of death
Hungary’s toll—564,507 victims—speaks to the tragic speed and efficiency of Nazi deportations in 1944, following years of growing antisemitic legislation. Once Germany occupied the country, over 400,000 Jews were deported to Auschwitz in just eight weeks—one of the fastest mass extermination operations of the Holocaust.
Germany, the perpetrator nation, accounted for 165,200 deaths. Despite being the epicentre of Nazi ideology, the number appears lower than in Eastern territories due to early emigration, assimilation, and differing timelines. German Jews faced legal and economic persecution long before mass deportations began.
Romania, another Axis-aligned state, saw 260,000 Jews killed, particularly in regions like Bessarabia and Bukovina. Local forces were responsible for several massacres, notably the Iași pogrom in 1941, emphasising that the Holocaust wasn’t perpetrated by Nazis alone but often with local collaboration.
Western Europe: A mixed record of resistance and tragedy
While France (74,000), the Netherlands (102,000), and Belgium (24,387) lost tens of thousands, the outcomes varied significantly by national policy, public resistance, and geography. The Netherlands had one of the highest Jewish death rates in Western Europe—approximately 75%—despite a robust civil society, reflecting the swift and brutal efficiency of Nazi occupation.
In contrast, Denmark—with only 116 Jews killed—is often cited as a rare example of widespread civic resistance. In 1943, Danish citizens and resistance fighters evacuated over 7,000 Jews to Sweden, a coordinated effort that remains one of the Holocaust’s few stories of collective rescue.
Southern and Northern Europe: Fewer numbers, not less suffering
Countries like Italy (7,858) and Greece (65,000) reflect the Holocaust’s spread into southern Europe, often under German occupation despite initial resistance or complicity by local governments. Albania, with only 100 reported victims, is another exception; most Jews were hidden by Muslim communities in acts of quiet defiance and solidarity.
In Scandinavia, Norway (758) and Sweden (unaffected due to neutrality) reveal minimal victim counts, again illustrating how geography, policy, and public sentiment shaped survival.
