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The Holocaust
The debate about the uniqueness of the attempts by the Nazis and their affiliates to
eradicate the European Jewry has been around for many years. Mass atrocities, war crimes,
crimes against humanity, genocides and Holocaust are some of the popular terms that are
frequently mentioned at the hearts of these discussions. Many historians, depending on their
racial inclination, have advanced vast arguments in literature as to which historical mass killing
recorded was the worst ever. By far, most people seems to agree that Hitlers final solution to
Jewish problem in Germany stands out as the worst animosity against humanity ever document,
perhaps because of the wide attention it received internationally. It should however be noted that
there are several other genocides whose perpetration bears close semblance to infamous
Holocaust and should not just be relegated to a list of other mass atrocities.
It should be noted that before Hitlers final solution, the Jewish community, as a result
of their self-proclaimed religious domination had attracted several enemies including Christians
and Romans- who though not a religious group, were willing to play them against one other their
selfish supremacy ambitions. The Jews who primarily practiced Judaism were persecuted utterly
by their Christian counterparts for their religious beliefs and forced to flee to other regions
including Europe. This scenario is not far from the massacre of the Armenian Christians by the
Turks in medieval Ottoman Empire between the years 1905 and 1916. The Muslim Turks

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slaughtered, the Christians and the Greeks with an intention of emptying the Ottoman Empire
and the Turkish Empire of its Christian population.
The event that constituted the Holocaust is directly associated with the German Nazis and
Hitlers collaborators. Adolf Hitler was determined to rid Germany and its colonies of the Jewish
inferior race. Anyone who bore allegiance to the doctrine of sanctity of life as decreed in the
Jewish and Christian monotheism had to be purged. According to Hitler, they were the reason for
their defeat in the First World War, and by far the economic recession that followed. Much as
Christians were given a second chance at a life by denouncing their faith, Jews whom he
considered incurable carriers to the inferior blood, had no such provisions. From this angle,
the Nazis anti-Semitism was therefore racist and not faith based. A quality which makes the
Holocaust in many ways similar to the Native-American killings by the European colonialist.
The new U.S. government through its policy of Manifest Destiny, continued to kill, maim and
torture the Red Indians because of their race which was considered savage and inferior.
Stalin, ruler of the Soviet Union during this era, was a very aggressive man who bullied,
terrorized and killed his own people who dared oppose him to enforce his authority. Unlike
Hitler who was more of a demagogue and often exploited his subjects emotions to help him
exert his desires, Stalin was authoritative and even instigated the onslaught of five million of his
subjects with an intention of purging those who threatened his power. Though this genocides
were not aimed at a particular cultural group, it resembled the Holocaust in many fashions. The
number of casualties is estimated to be almost equal to the infamous Jewish massacre. Besides,
like the Holocaust, Stalin gassed, bombed and forced his rebels into death matches across
deserts.

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Works Cited
Gellately, Robert. The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective. Cambridge
[u.a.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2006. Print.
Katz, Steven T. The Holocaust in Historical Context: The holocaust and mass death before the
modern age. Vol. 1. Oxford University Press, USA, 1994.