Holocaust Case

"Hate and intolerance are the catalysts for the destruction of a family, of a culture, and a nation", by Werner Gellert, chair of The New Mexico Holocaust and Intolerance Museum and Study Center. (history:www.nmholocaustmuseum.com) It is vital to remember and pass to a new generation the history and lessons of the Holocaust since over 5.7 million Jewish people had their lives taken away by a man who was intolerant of their religion. The largest numbers of victims of the Holocaust were Polish citizens. Adolf Hitler tried to destroy a nation by destroying families who were targeted because of their religion and culture.

George Santayana said, "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it." (history: quoteland.com) This quote explains why the lessons and history of the Holocaust need to be passed on to student's today and future generations of students. Students need to clearly understand why Hitler wanted to rid Europe of the Jewish people, what was done to them in the concentration camps, how the families were split apart, and how he tried to destroy the Jewish religion and culture.

The Holocaust plays an important role in world history. The word genocide was developed after events in Europe, between 1933 and 1945, called for a legal concept to be used to describe the "deliberate destruction of a larger group." Genocide became a crime punishable under international law. (Genocide: britannica.com) The United Nations had difficulty defining the term "war crime", but after the events of World War II three categories against the law of nations became generally accepted as such. The first, "crimes against peace," involves preparing for or initiating a war of aggression; the second, "war crimes," includes murder, ill treatment, or deportation of the civilian population of occupied territory; and the third, "crimes against humanity," includes political, racial, or religious persecution against the civilian population, either before or during a war, and is understood to include genocide." (War crimes: britannica.com) The Nuremberg Trials were held in Germany in 1945 to 1946 where former Nazi leaders were indicted and tried as war criminals by the International Military Tribunal. These Nazi leaders were indicted on 4 counts: crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, war crimes and a conspiracy to commit the first three charges. During the recent war in Iraq, news reports talked about the Republican Guard shutting off the electricity and water to Baghdad citizens, which under the United Nations Resolution passed in 1945, by the Nuremberg Tribunal, would be considered a "war crime" since it deprives people of their basic survival needs.

Many people believe genocide happens but a majority of them don't think it exists today when in all actuality it happened three times in the past 13 years. In 1991, Saddam Hussein murdered 5,000 plus Kurds because they were not Shite Muslims and they refused to serve in Saddam's army. From 1992-1995 the Serbs of Bosnia-Herzagovina began a civil war with the Muslims of the same country and the three year war resulted in over 200,000 deaths, 3,500 of which were children in Sarajevo. In 1994, the country of Rwanda, in Central Africa, was plagued by civil war for 100 days where the Hutu militia killed approximately 800,000 Tutsis'. The Tutsis' made up only 10 percent of the population of almost 7 million people but they were the aristocracy of Rwanda and they governed the Hutu's since the Belgian occupancy of the colonial days. (Genocide in the 20th Century: historyplace.com) In a short survey that I recently conducted, a person said that genocide doesn't exist today and doesn't happen today but said that genocide never ends. I believe that this person did not fully understand or didn't care about the topic of the survey. This would lead me to believe he is one of the people that condone Hitler's actions against the Jews. He isn't concerned that there are people in today's world that are capable of murdering others just because they are different and then the person can still sleep