Jews in the context of "Holocaust in the Soviet Union"

Judaism (Hebrew: יַהֲדוּת, romanized: Yahăḏūṯ) is an Abrahamic, monotheistic, ethnic religion that comprises the collective spiritual, cultural, and legal traditions of the Jewish people. Religious Jews regard Judaism as their means of observing the Mosaic covenant, which they believe was established between God and the Jewish people. The religion is considered one of the earliest monotheistic religions.

Judaism as a religion and culture is founded upon a diverse body of texts, traditions, theologies, and worldviews. Among Judaism's core texts are the Torah (Biblical Hebrew: תּוֹרָה, lit. 'Teaching'), the Nevi'im (נְבִיאִים, 'Prophets'), and the Ketuvim (כְּתוּבִים, 'Writings'), which together compose the Hebrew Bible. In Modern Hebrew, the Hebrew Bible is often referred to as the Tanakh (תַּנַ׳׳ךּ, Tanaḵ)—an acronym of its constituent divisions—or the Miqra (מִקְרָא, Miqrāʾ, '[that which is] called out'). The Hebrew Bible has the same books as Protestant Christianity's Old Testament, with some differences in order and content.

The Armenian highlands (Armenian: Հայկական լեռնաշխարհ, romanized: Haykakan leṙnašxarh; also known as the Eastern Anatolian highlands, Armenian upland, Armenian plateau, or Armenian tableland) comprise the most central and the highest of the three plateaus that together form the northern sector of West Asia. Clockwise starting from the west, the Armenian highlands are bounded by the Anatolian plateau, the Caucasus, the Kura-Aras lowlands, the Iranian Plateau, and Mesopotamia. The highlands are divided into western and eastern regions, defined by the Ararat Valley where Mount Ararat is located. Since the turn of the 20th century, Western Armenia has been relabeled as "Eastern Anatolia" by Ottoman and Turkish authorities. Eastern Armenia is part of Lesser Caucasus, which was historically known by some as the Anti-Caucasus, meaning "opposite of the Caucasus".

During the Iron Age, the region was known by variations of the name Ararat (Urartu, Uruatri, Urashtu). Later, the Highlands were known as Armenia Major, a central region to the history of Armenians, and one of the four geopolitical regions associated with Armenians, the other three being Armenia Minor, Sophene, and Commagene. The highlands are primarily defined by the geographical dispersal of its native inhabitants, the Armenians. Prior to the appearance of nominally Armenian people in historical records, historians have hypothesized that the region must have been home to various ethnic groups who became homogenous when the Armenian language came to prominence. The population of the Armenian highlands has had a high level of regional genetic continuity for over 6,000 years. Recent studies indicate that the Armenian people descend from the indigenous people of the Armenian highlands and form a distinct genetic isolate in the region. The region was also inhabited during Antiquity by minorities such as Assyrians, Georgians, Greeks, Jews, and Iranians. During the Middle Ages, Arabs and particularly Turkmens and Kurds settled in large numbers in the Armenian highlands.

According to the Lithuanian census of 2021, the predominant religion in Lithuania is Christianity, with the largest confession being that of the Catholic Church (about 74% of the population). There are smaller groups of Orthodox Christians, Evangelical Lutherans, members of Reformed churches, other Protestants, Jews and Muslims as well as people of other religions.

Ancient Semitic-speaking peoples or Proto-Semitic people were speakers of Semitic languages who lived throughout the ancient Near East and North Africa, including the Levant, Mesopotamia, Anatolia, the Arabian Peninsula and Carthage from the 3rd millennium BC until the end of antiquity, with some, such as Arabs, Arameans, Assyrians, Jews, Mandaeans, and Samaritans having a historical continuum into the present day.

Their languages are usually divided into three branches: East, Central and South Semitic languages.the oldest attested forms of Semitic date to the early to mid-3rd millennium BC (the Early Bronze Age) in Mesopotamia, the northwest Levant and southeast Anatolia.

Second Temple Judaism is the Jewish religion as it developed during the Second Temple period, which began with the construction of the Second Temple around 516 BCE and ended with the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. This period was marked by the emergence of multiple religious currents as well as extensive cultural, religious, and political developments among Jews. It saw the progression of the Hebrew Bible canon, the synagogue, and Jewish eschatology. Additionally, the rise of Christianity began in the final years of the Second Temple period.

According to Jewish tradition, authentic prophecy (נְבוּאָה‎, Nevu'ah) ceased during the early years of the Second Temple period; this left Jews without their version of divine guidance at a time when they felt most in need of support and direction. Under Hellenistic rule, the growing Hellenization of Judaism became a source of resentment among Jewish traditionalists who clung to strict monotheistic beliefs. Opposition to Hellenistic influence on Jewish religious and cultural practices was a major catalyst for the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire. Following the establishment of the Hasmonean dynasty, traditional Judaism was reasserted by the Maccabees across the Land of Israel as they expanded their independent territory. The later years of the Second Temple period saw the development of several Jewish messianic ideas. From c. 170 BCE to 30 CE, five successive generations of the Zugot headed the Jews' spiritual affairs.

Jewish religious movements, sometimes called "denominations", include diverse groups within Judaism which have developed among Jews from ancient times. Samaritans are also considered ethnic Jews by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, although they are frequently classified by experts as a sister Hebrew people, who practice a separate branch of Israelite religion. Today in the West, the most prominent divisions are between traditionalist Orthodox movements (including Haredi ultratraditionalist and Modern Orthodox branches) and modernist movements such as Reform Judaism originating in late 18th century Europe, Conservative (Masorti) originating in 19th century Europe, and other smaller ones, including the Reconstructionist and Renewal movements which emerged later in the 20th century in the United States.

In Israel, variation is moderately similar, differing from the West in having roots in the Old Yishuv and pre-to-early-state Yemenite infusion, among other influences. For statistical and practical purposes, the distinctions there are based upon a person's attitude to religion. Most Jewish Israelis classify themselves as "secular" (hiloni), "traditional" (masortim), "religious" (dati) or ultra-religious (haredi).

In Jewish eschatology, the Messiah (Hebrew: מָשִׁיחַ, romanized: māšīaḥ) is a savior and liberator figure who is believed to be the future redeemer of the Jews. The concept of messianism originated in Judaism, and in the Hebrew Bible a messiah is a king or High Priest of Israel traditionally anointed with holy anointing oil.

However, messiahs were not exclusively Jewish, as the Hebrew Bible refers to Cyrus the Great, an Achaemenid emperor, as a messiah for his decree to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple.

Early Christianity, otherwise called the Early Church, describes the historical era of the Christian religion up to the First Council of Nicaea in 325. Christianity spread from the Levant, across the Roman Empire, and beyond. Originally, this progression was closely connected to already established Jewish centers in the Holy Land and the Jewish diaspora throughout the Eastern Mediterranean. The first followers of Christianity were Jews who had converted to the faith, i.e. Jewish Christians, as well as Phoenicians, i.e. Lebanese Christians. Early Christianity contains the Apostolic Age and is followed by, and substantially overlaps with, the Patristic era.

The Apostolic sees claim to have been founded by one or more of the apostles of Jesus, who are said to have dispersed from Jerusalem sometime after the crucifixion of Jesus, c. 26–33, perhaps following the Great Commission. Early Christians gathered in small private houses, known as house churches, but a city's whole Christian community would also be called a "church"—the Greek noun ἐκκλησία (ekklesia) literally means "assembly", "gathering", or "congregation" but is translated as "church" in most English translations of the New Testament.

The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, Northern America, Oceania, and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, English, is also the world's most widely spoken language with an estimated 2 billion speakers. All Germanic languages are derived from Proto-Germanic, spoken in Iron Age Scandinavia, Iron Age Northern Germany and along the North Sea and Baltic coasts.

The West Germanic languages include the three most widely spoken Germanic languages: English with around 360–400 million native speakers; German, with over 100 million native speakers; and Dutch, with 24 million native speakers. Other West Germanic languages include Afrikaans, an offshoot of Dutch originating from the Afrikaners of South Africa, with over 7.1 million native speakers; Low German, considered a separate collection of unstandardized dialects, with roughly 4.35–7.15 million native speakers and probably 6.7–10 million people who can understand it (at least 2.2 million in Germany (2016) and 2.15 million in the Netherlands (2003)); Yiddish, once used by approximately 13 million Jews in pre-World War II Europe, now with approximately 1.5 million native speakers; Scots, with 1.5 million native speakers; Limburgish varieties with roughly 1.3 million speakers along the Dutch–Belgian–German border; and the Frisian languages with over 500,000 native speakers in the Netherlands and Germany.

The history of the Jews in Turkey (Turkish: Türk Yahudileri or Türk Musevileri; Hebrew: יהודים טורקים, romanized: Yehudim Turkim; (Ladino: Djudios Turkos) covers the 2400 years that Jews have lived in what is now Turkey.

There have been Jewish communities in Anatolia since at least the beginning of the common era. Anatolia's Jewish population before Ottoman times primarily consisted of Greek-speaking Romaniote Jews, with a handful of dispersed Karaite communities. In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, many Sephardic Jews from Spain, Portugal and South Italy expelled by the Alhambra Decree found refuge across the Ottoman Empire, including in regions now part of Turkey. This influx played a pivotal role in shaping the predominant identity of Ottoman Jews.

Central Europe is a geographical region of Europe between Eastern, Southern, Western and Northern Europe. Central Europe is known for its cultural diversity; however, countries in this region also share certain historical and cultural similarities.

The region is variously defined but often includes Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Switzerland. Throughout much of the Early Modern period, the territories of Poland and Lithuania were part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Meanwhile, the Ottoman Empire came to occupy most of present-day Croatia and present-day Hungary, and southern parts of present-day Slovakia. The Archduchy of Austria, the Kingdom of Bohemia (Czech Republic), the Duchy of Carniola (part of present-day Slovenia), the various German Principalities and the Old Swiss Confederacy were within the Holy Roman Empire. During the 18th century, the Habsburg monarchy came to reign over the territories of Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia, alongside parts of Serbia, Germany, Italy and Switzerland. Bosnia and Herzegovina, however, was not under Habsburg control during the 18th century; it was occupied in 1878 following the Congress of Berlin and formally annexed in 1908. Between the early 18th and the early 20th centuries, Central Europe had a substantial Jewish population.

Bratislava (German: Pressburg; Hungarian: Pozsony) is the capital and largest city of the Slovak Republic and the fourth largest of all cities on the river Danube. Officially, the population of the city is about 475,000; however, some sources estimate the daily number of people moving around the city based on mobile phone SIM cards is more than 570,000. Bratislava is in southwestern Slovakia at the foot of the Little Carpathians, occupying both banks of the Danube and the left bank of the River Morava. The city is situated on the border of three countries—Slovakia, Austria, and Hungary—and is the only national capital to have land borders with two other sovereign states. Its geographic position places it exceptionally close to the Austrian capital Vienna, making them the closest pair of capital cities in Europe at just 50 kilometres (31 mi) apart.

The city's history has been influenced by people of many nations and religions, including Austrians, Bulgarians, Croats, Czechs, Germans, Hungarians, Jews and Slovaks. It was the coronation site and legislative center and capital of the Kingdom of Hungary from 1536 to 1783; eleven Hungarian kings and eight queens were crowned in St Martin's Cathedral. Most Hungarian parliament assemblies were held here from the 17th century until the Hungarian Reform Era, and the city has been home to many Hungarian, German, and Slovak historical figures.

Timișoara (UK: /ˌtɪmɪˈʃwɑːrə/, US: /ˌtiːmiː-/, Romanian: [timiˈʃo̯ara] ; see other names) is the capital city of Timiș County, Banat, and the main economic, social and cultural center in Western Romania. Located on the Bega River, Timișoara is considered the informal capital city of the historical Banat region. From 1848 to 1860 it was the capital of the Serbian Vojvodina and the Voivodeship of Serbia and Banat of Temeschwar. With 250,849 inhabitants at the 2021 census, Timișoara is the country's fifth most populous city. It is home to around 400,000 inhabitants in its metropolitan area, while the Timișoara–Arad metropolis concentrates more than 70% of the population of Timiș and Arad counties. Timișoara is a multicultural city, home to 21 ethnic groups and 18 religious denominations. Historically, the most numerous were the Swabian Germans, Jews and Hungarians, who still make up 6% of the population in Timișoara.

Conquered in 1716 by the Austrians from the Ottoman Turks, Timișoara developed in the following centuries behind the fortifications and in the urban nuclei located around them. During the second half of the 19th century, the fortress began to lose its usefulness, due to many developments in military technology. Former bastions and military spaces were demolished and replaced with new boulevards and neighborhoods. Timișoara was the first city in the Habsburg monarchy with street lighting (1760) and the first European city to be lit by electric street lamps in 1884. It opened the first public lending library in the Habsburg monarchy and built a municipal hospital 24 years ahead of Vienna. Also, in 1771 it published the first German newspaper in Southeast Europe (Temeswarer Nachrichten). In December 1989, Timișoara was the starting point of the Romanian Revolution.

Ethnic groups in the Middle East are ethnolinguistic groupings in the "transcontinental" region that is commonly a geopolitical term designating the intercontinental region comprising West Asia (including Cyprus) without the South Caucasus, and also comprising Egypt in North Africa. The Middle East has historically been a crossroad of different cultures and languages. Since the 1960s, the changes in political and economic factors (especially the enormous oil wealth in the region and conflicts) have significantly altered the ethnic composition of groups in the region. While some ethnic groups have been present in the region for millennia, others have arrived fairly recently through immigration. The largest ethnic groups in the region are Arabs, Turks, Persians, Kurds, and Azerbaijanis but there are dozens of other ethnic groups that have hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions of members.

Other indigenous, religious, or minority ethnic groups include: Antiochians, Armenians, Assyrians, Arameans in the Qalamoun Mountains, Baloch, Copts, Druze, Gilaks, Greeks (including Cypriots and Pontians), Jews, Kawliya, Laz, Lurs, Mandaeans, Maronites, Mazanderanis, Mhallami, Nawar, Samaritans, Shabaks, Talysh, Tats, Yazidis and Zazas.

The region of Palestine, also known as historic Palestine or land of Palestine, is a geographical area in West Asia. It includes the modern states of Israel and Palestine, and some definitions include parts of northwestern Jordan. Other names for the region include Canaan, the Promised Land, the Land of Israel, the Holy Land, and Judea.

The earliest written record referring to Palestine as a geographical region is in the Histories of Herodotus in the 5th century BCE, which calls the area Palaistine, referring to the territory previously held by Philistia, a state that existed in that area from the 12th to the 7th century BCE. The Roman Empire conquered the region in 63 BCE and appointed client kings to rule over it until Rome began directly ruling over the region and established a predominately-Jewish province named "Judaea" in 6 CE. The Roman Empire killed the vast majority of Jews in Judaea to suppress the Bar Kokhba revolt during 132-136 CE; shortly after the revolt, the Romans expelled and enslaved nearly all of the remaining Jews in the historical Judah region centered on Jerusalem, depopulating that area. Roman authorities renamed the province of Judaea to "Syria Palaestina" in c. 135 CE to punish Jews for the Bar Kokhba Revolt and permanently sever ties between Jews and the province. In 390, during the Byzantine period, the region was split into the provinces of Palaestina Prima, Palaestina Secunda, and Palaestina Tertia. Following the Muslim conquest of the Levant in the 630s, the military district of Jund Filastin was established. While Palestine's boundaries have changed throughout history, it has generally comprised the southern portion of the wider Syria or Levant region.

The term "Holy Land" is used to collectively denote areas of the Southern Levant that hold great significance in the Abrahamic religions, primarily because of their association with people and events featured in the Bible. It is traditionally synonymous with what is known as the Land of Israel (Zion) or the Promised Land in a biblical or religious context, or as Canaan or Palestine in a secular or geographic context—referring to a region that is mostly between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. Today, it chiefly overlaps with the combined territory of the modern states of Israel and Palestine. Most notable among the religions that tie substantial spiritual value to the Holy Land are Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

A considerable part of the Holy Land's importance derives from Jerusalem, which is regarded as extremely sacred in and of itself. It is the holiest city in Judaism and Christianity and the third-holiest city in Islam (behind Mecca and Medina in the Arabian Peninsula). The Temple in Jerusalem, referring to Solomon's Temple and the Second Temple, was the central place of worship for Israelites and Jews and serves as the namesake of the Temple Mount. According to the Bible, Jerusalem was made the capital city of the Kingdom of Israel and Judah under the House of David, thereafter being inherited by the Kingdom of Judah alone. Jesus of Nazareth, first brought to Jerusalem to be presented at the Second Temple shortly after his birth, was also highly active throughout the city during his life as a preacher. In Islamic belief, Isra' and Mi'raj refer to a night journey by Muhammad to the Holy Land, with the supernatural "Buraq" transporting him from Mecca's Masjid al-Haram to Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque, where he ascended to heaven and met God and past Islamic prophets and messengers; Jerusalem also served as the qibla (direction of Muslim prayers) prior to Mecca's Kaaba.