On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in what has been called a “war of annihilation” in Hitler’s quest for world domination and Jewish extermination. This week commemorated the Holocaust of World War II with an examination of this tragic invasion, in which hundreds of thousands of lives were lost. Millions of victims, including over 6 million Jews, were murdered by the Nazi regime during the Holocaust. The commemoration featured a keynote address by Peter Black, chief historian at the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington, D. C.