38: whats the holocaust?

*!*eyes widen*.....*looks down*...The Holocaust is generally regarded as the systematic slaughter of not only 6 million Jews, (two-thirds of the total European Jewish population), the primary victims, but also 5 million others, approximately 11 million individuals wiped off the Earth by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. It is hard to grasp the idea that it isn't just 11 million deaths, but 11 million people whose lives were cut off because of racism and hate, all in a period of 11 years (1933-1945). There are actually two main phases to the Holocaust, the period between 1933 and 1939, the Nazi rise, and the period between 1939 and 1945, the period of war, or more specifically, World War II. The first concentration camp opened in January 1933, when the Nazis came to power, and continued to run until the end of the war and the Third Reich: May 8, 1945.
The idea that the Holocaust represents 11 million lives that abruptly ended is a difficult concept, but this is an important point, and one this site hopes to help bring across. The Holocaust was the extermination of people not for who they were but for what they were. Groups such as handicaps, Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Catholics, Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, political dissidents and others were persecuted by the Nazis because of their religious/political beliefs, physical defects, or failure to fall into the "Aryan" ideal.

The unfortunate truth is that the Holocaust is a subject whose gravity is obvious, but it is easy to become almost numb to it. As Elie Wiesel, Nobel Laureate and famous Holocaust survivor has said, "the essense of this tragedy is that it can never be fully conveyed." When viewing this site, think about the individual people in the images you see. Remember that the Holocaust is something that we should all learn about so that we never let such a terrible crime against mankind happen again. One of the reasons you can listen to survivors is that it helps to show that every one of those 11 million has a story, but they aren't alive to tell it......*crying by the end of it*