Historians generally agree on these approximate numbers:

- About 6 million Jews were murdered by Nazi Germany and its collaborators. This figure is supported by extensive demographic studies, Nazi documentation, survivor testimony, and postwar research.

- 5-6 million non-Jewish victims were also killed, including:

• Romani people (Gypsies) — 200,000 to 500,000
• People with disabilities murdered under the T4 “euthanasia” program — at least 200,000
• Polish civilians — around 1.8 to 2 million
• Soviet civilians and POWs — 5 to 6 million Soviet POWs died in German custody; many are counted separately depending on methodology
• LGBTQ people, Jehovah’s Witnesses, political dissidents, resistance members, and others — hundreds of thousands

Because categories overlap (e.g., many Soviet POWs are counted in other wartime-death tallies, and not all were killed as part of the genocide apparatus), the total number of people murdered under Nazi persecution is commonly cited as roughly 11 million, with some broader estimates reaching 15-17 million when including all civilian deaths directly attributable to Nazi racial policy.

If you want, I can also break down:

• how historians arrived at these numbers
• which deaths are classified as part of the Holocaust vs. other Nazi crimes
• the difference between concentration camps, extermination camps, death marches, and ghettos

Short answer: The word Holocaust primarily refers to the Nazi genocide of the Jews, but many scholars and institutions also use the term to include the Romani and people with disabilities, because they were targeted for extermination under the same racial-ideological system.

More clearly:

1. The core definition (most widely used)

Most historians, and institutions like Yad Vashem, use Holocaust to mean:

The systematic, state-sponsored genocide of approximately 6 million Jews by Nazi Germany.

This is often called the Shoah, which refers specifically to the Jewish genocide.

2. Expanded academic and educational usage

Many major museums and scholars use Holocaust more broadly to include other groups targeted for annihilation, especially:

• Romani people (who were targeted for complete extermination)
• People with disabilities (victims of the T4 “euthanasia” program)

In this expanded usage, these groups are considered part of the Holocaust because they were murdered under the same genocidal racial policies, with the same bureaucracy, methods, and ideology.

3. Groups persecuted but not targeted for total extermination

Other groups — political dissidents, LGBTQ people, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Slavs, Soviet POWs, etc. — were persecuted, imprisoned, enslaved, and murdered in huge numbers, but not all were slated for complete annihilation as a group. These are usually categorized as Nazi crimes rather than the Holocaust specifically.

4. Scholarly consensus in plain terms

• Narrow definition: Holocaust = genocide of the Jews
• Broader definition: Holocaust = genocide of Jews + Romani + disabled persons
• Shoah: always refers to the Jewish genocide
• Porajmos: term sometimes used for the Romani genocide

If you want, I can lay out the differences in just one clean sentence, or map how different institutions (USHMM, Yad Vashem, etc.) define it.

That phrasing is common, but it’s not technically precise — and if you’re writing for an educated audience, you’ll want to avoid oversimplifying in a way that cuts against how historians and major institutions actually use the terms.

Here’s the cleanest accurate version:

Shoah

Always refers specifically to the genocide of ~6 million Jews.

Holocaust

Primarily refers to the genocide of the Jews, but in broader usage can also include the Romani genocide and the murder of disabled people under the T4 program.

It does not formally mean “11 million people.” The “11 million” number is a popular (but imprecise) educational shorthand dating to the 1970s-1990s. Modern historians do not define “Holocaust” as “11 million people,” because:

• Not all 11 million were part of genocidal intent.
• Soviet POWs and Polish civilians, for instance, died in enormous numbers but were not uniformly targeted for total extermination the way Jews and (to a lesser extent) Romani people were.
• Institutions avoid flattening distinct categories of Nazi crimes.

If you want a clean two-line formulation that’s accurate

Use this:

Holocaust: the Nazi genocide of the Jews, and in some definitions, also the genocide of Romani people and the murder of disabled people. Shoah: specifically the genocide of the Jews (~6 million).

It’s concise, correct, and doesn’t rely on the outdated “11 million” framing.

If you want, I can help you craft a version tailored for a blog post, classroom description, or something even more compact.