Systematic destruction of European Jews, as well as some other groups including homosexuals and Communists, by Nazi Germany. Oppression of Jews began with the rise of the Third Reich in 1933, but 1938's Kristallnacht, in which all German synagogues were burned and thousands of Jews were arrested, is generally viewed as the onset of the actual Holocaust. The Holocaust ended in 1945 with the end of World War II and the liberation of the concentration camps.