The Holocaust was the systematic extermination of Europe's Jewish population in the Second World War, during which time, up to six million Jews were murdered as part of Nazi Germany's "Final Solution to the Jewish Question". In the context of the Second World War, the term "Holocaust" is traditionally used to reference the genocide of Europe's Jews, although this coincided with the Nazi regime's genocide and ethnic cleansing of an additional eleven million people deemed "undesirable" due to their ethnicity, beliefs, disability or sexuality (among others). During the Holocaust, Poland's Jewish population suffered the largest number of fatalities, with approximately three million deaths. Additionally, at least one million Jews were murdered in the Soviet Union, while Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Yugoslavia also lost the majority of their respective pre-war Jewish populations. The Holocaust in Poland In the interwar period, Europe's Jewish population was concentrated in the east, with roughly one third living in Poland; this can be traced back to the Middle Ages, when thousands of Jews flocked to Eastern Europe to escape persecution. At the outbreak of the Second World War, it is estimated that there were 3.4 million Jews living in Poland, which was approximately ten percent of the total population. Following the German invasion of Poland, Nazi authorities then segregated Jews in ghettos across most large towns and cities, and expanded their network of concentration camps throughout the country. In the ghettos, civilians were deprived of food, and hundreds of thousands died due to disease and starvation; while prison labor was implemented under extreme conditions in concentration camps to fuel the German war effort. In Poland, six extermination camps were also operational between December 1941 and January 1945, which saw the mass extermination of approximately 2.7 million people over the next three years (including many non-Poles, imported from other regions of Europe). While concentration camps housed prisoners of all backgrounds, extermination camps were purpose-built for the elimination of the Jewish race, and over 90% of their victims were Jewish. The majority of the victims in these extermination camps were executed by poison gas, although disease, starvation and overworking were also common causes of death. In addition to the camps and ghettos, SS death squads (Einsatzgruppen) and local collaborators also committed widespread atrocities across Eastern Europe. While the majority of these atrocities took place in the Balkan, Baltic and Soviet regions, they were still prevalent in Poland (particularly during the liquidation of the ghettos), and the Einsatzgruppen alone are estimated to have killed up to 1.3 million Jews throughout the Holocaust. By early 1945, Soviet forces had largely expelled the German armies from Poland and liberated the concentration and extermination camps; by this time, Poland had lost roughly ninety percent of its pre-war Jewish population, and suffered approximately three million further civilian and military deaths. By 1991, Poland's Jewish population was estimated to be just 15 thousand people, while there were fewer than two thousand Jews recorded as living in Poland in 2018.

Between 1941 and early 1945, over 1.3 million people were deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp complex; approximately 1.1 million of these deportees were Jewish, and one million Jews were murdered. Auschwitz was the largest of six extermination camps constructed by the Nazi regime in Poland, as part of their "Final Solution to the Jewish Question", which sought to exterminate Europe's Jewish population.

The Holocaust in Hungary Of the 1.1 million Jews sent to Auschwitz, the most common country of origin was Hungary. Hungary had a sizeable Jewish population of around 445,000 people in 1930, but Hungary's territory grew significantly after it annexed parts of Slovakia, Romania, Ukraine, and Yugoslavia in the late-1930s, and the total Jewish population (including Christians with Jewish heritage) in the 1941 census was approximately 825,000. Compared to the Germans, Hungary's treatment of the Jews throughout the war had been much less restrictive, and its prime minister opposed deportations to concentration camps. German invasion and increasing number of deportations This changed, however, in March 1944; as the Axis forces were being pushed west out of Soviet territory; Germany then invaded Hungary to prevent them from negotiating a peace with the Allies. Thereafter, a puppet government was installed and authorities, under the leadership of Adolf Eichmann, began to round up and deport Jews to Poland. While the Nazi extermination of Jews began on a large scale in 1941, the majority of Hungary's victims were deported and murdered over an eight week period, between May and July 1944. 430,000 Jews were deported from Hungary to Auschwitz in this time; it is estimated that around 20 percent of these were selected for labor, and the remaining 80 percent were sent directly to the gas chambers. Arrivals from Hungary were so rapid that the crematoriums could not keep up with the rate of murder, and additional mass graves had to be dug while the number of trains was reduced. Eventually, as the Axis position deteriorated, Hungarian authorities ceased deportations under mounting pressure from the Allies in early July. Exact figures for Hungary's death toll in the Holocaust remain elusive, although it is estimated that over 560,000 Jews were killed from within Hungary's wartime borders (270,000 from pre-war territories), with 434,000 of these deaths taking place between May and July 1944, the majority of which at Auschwitz.

This study, designed and carried out by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies (ASARB), compiled data on the number of congregations and adherents for 236 religious groups in each county of the United States. Participants included 217 Christian denominations, associations, or communions (including Latter-day Saints, Messianic Jews, and Unitarian/Universalist groups); counts of Jain, Shinto, Sikh, Tao and National Spiritualist Association congregations, and counts of congregations and adherents from Bahá'ís, three Buddhist groupings, four Hindu groupings, four Jewish groupings, Muslims and Zoroastrians. The 236 groups reported a total of 344,894 congregations with 150,686,156 adherents, comprising 48.8 percent of the total U.S. population of 308,745,538 in 2010.

Visit the "/us-religion/sources-for-religious-congregations-membership-data" Target="_blank">frequently asked questions page for more information about the ARDA's religious congregation and membership data.

The Liverpool Jewish community was the earliest to be formed in the north of England (approximately 1745). Examination of this important minority community, from a religious, historical, demographic, sociological, and genealogical perspective has been severely hampered by the lack of a unified source of information about Jewish individuals and families resident in the area during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A searchable database of all Jewish persons with a documented connection with the Liverpool area, from the earliest times to 1881 has been produced. Jewish individuals were identified by a novel use of distinctive names, occupations and birth places in secular census and vital records and, in combination with extant records held within the Jewish community, have been used to produce a database of over 10,000 persons.

A key element is the linking of individuals into family groups, rather than simply producing a list of names, dates, and addresses. Those familiar with the format of a GEDCOM genealogical data file will recognise the use of FAM (family identification numbers), with FAMS numbers indicating the family identification number of the family in which the individual is a spouse, and FAMC numbers which link an individual to the family in which he or she is a child. These FAM numbers are built into the database.

In 2020, around 28.8 percent of the global population were identified as Christian. Around 25.6 percent of the global population identify as Muslims, followed by 14.9 percent of global populations as Hindu. The number of Muslims increased by 347 million, when compared to 2010 data, more than all other religions combined.

In the year 1800, the population of the region which makes up the present-day Netherlands was approximately two million people. The beginning of the 19th century was a tumultuous time in Dutch history, as the region had recently been annexed by Revolutionary France; however the United Kingdom of the Netherlands was eventually established in 1815 (which also included present-day Belgium and Luxembourg) and a period of economic growth, modernization and high quality of life followed. In spite of this economic prosperity, religious tensions between the predominantly Catholic south and Protestant north led to a split in the kingdom in 1839, where it was eventually partitioned into Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, along borders very similar to today's. Rapid modernization and liberalization continued throughout the 19th century, and in 1900 the population of the Netherlands was over five million people.

Early 20th century The Netherlands was free to continue economic expansion, both in the metropole and in its colonies, uninterrupted for much of the first half of the 20th century (partly facilitated by its neutrality in the First World War). This resulted in a steady rise in population, which doubled to ten million within half a century. Population growth would even continue throughout the Second World War, as the Netherlands would be spared from much of the casualty-heavy conflicts seen in neighboring countries; however, most estimates concur that approximately 210,000 Dutch people died as a result of the war, half of which were Jews murdered in the Holocaust. The war also saw the end of Dutch colonization in the East Indies, as Japan annexed the region of present-day Indonesia in 1942; although the Dutch tried to re-colonize the region after the war, Indonesia became an officially recognized independent nation in 1949.

Netherlands today Population growth in the Netherlands would continue largely uninterrupted in the post-war years, until the 1970s, when it began to slow as Western Europe experienced periods of recession and high unemployment. Improvements in contraceptives and education also saw birth rates fall at their fastest ever rates in the 1970s. Following the recovery of the Dutch economy in the 1990s, population growth would resume once more, continuing steadily into the 21th century. In 2020, the Netherlands is estimated to have a population of just over 17 million people, making it one of the most densely populated countries in the world. For its size, the Netherlands has one of the strongest economies globally, and often ranks among the highest in terms of development, freedom and quality of life.

In 2021, 53.3 percent of the total population in Canada were Christian, 4.9 percent were Muslim, but almost more than a third are not religious at all – with the rest stating they adhere to Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, the Jewish faith, and other Christian denominations. Canada’s religious pluralismCanada is not a very religious country in general. Canadians adhere to a wide variety of beliefs and faiths, with the majority following Christianity, followed by those who do not believe in any deity or religion at all. As with many Western countries, the younger generations are less inclined to identify with faith, and Christianity in particular is not as popular as it is among the older generations. Alternative worship for the younger generations?Canadian teenagers are no less enthusiastic about religion than their parents, and they are just as grounded in their faith as the older generations. They are, however, also just as indecisive when it comes to whether they would call themselves religious or not. Interestingly, they seem much more interested in traditional aboriginal spirituality than in the Judeo-Christian model. They also seem quite interested in another alternative to Christianity: Buddhism is quite popular among the younger generations. Whether this signifies a general trend away from Christianity and towards religious alternatives remains to be seen.