The Holocaust - Always Remember

Essay by nijo101High School, 10th gradeA, February 2008

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The Holocaust – we must always remember. We must always remember the tragedy of millions of Jews being eradicated from this world because they were perceived as racially inferior. We must always remember how Hitler convinced an entire army and country that Jews were less than human. We must always remember the Holocaust so this never happens again. By examining racism and more specifically the Holocaust, we can try to understand our need to remember this tragedy and look for ways to prevent the hatred and prejudice in our world today and for generations to come and for generations to come.

Racism is the hatred of one person by another – or the belief that another person is less than human – because of skin color, language, customs, and place of birth or any factor that supposedly reveals the basic nature of that person (ADL 3). It has existed as long as humans and has shaped our history.

It has influenced wars, slavery, and the formation of nations. One form of racism is anti-Semitism or the hatred of Jews. Jews are usually seen by anti-Semites as subhuman but also superhuman: devilishly cunning, skilled, and powerful, while blacks and others are seen by racists as merely subhuman, more like beasts than men (ADL 3). One way to differentiate racism and anti-Semitism is that racism is inferiority while anti-Semitism is evil. Anti-Semitism was always part of Nazism or German National Socialism (Racism 1). Sadly, this Nazi anti-Semitism and racism produced hatred and murder on an unprecedented scale during World War II.

World War II started in September of 1939 when Germany invaded Poland. It went on for six years until the Allied Forces liberated Germany and all the concentration camps. By this time, almost two out of every three Jews in Europe...