These include racial prejudice against Poles and persons of Polish descent, ethnically-based discrimination, and state-sponsored mistreatment of Poles and the Polish diaspora.[3] This prejudice led to mass killings and genocide or it was used to justify atrocities[7] both during and after World War II, most notably by the German Nazis, Ukrainian nationalists and Soviet communists. Nazi Germany's Directive No.1306 stated: "Polishness equals subhumanity. Poles, Jews and gypsies are on the same inferior level."[8] Nazi Germany killed an estimated 1.9 million ethnic Poles, of which over 70,000 where murdered in Auschwitz.[9]