by Aristotle

Created on: February 28, 2010

The Holocaust was an event in history that claimed the lives of 11 million people, 6 million of whom were Jews, the rest composed of Romas (Gypsies), homosexuals, communists, people with disabilities, and numerous other religious groups. Think about this number for a second...11 million individuals, think of that number as all the people in Los Angeles crowded together, all these people are then killed by methods as horrible as being gassed by poisonous toxins to death. Add another 2 million to the crowd and you have about the number of people killed in the Holocaust. Why were they killed, starved, and deprived of the most basic of human necessities?  Why were they dehumanized in such awful ways? Hitler called it the "final solution", a scapegoat for the severe inflation and huge debts that Germany had accumulated as a result of World War I. What this genocide was really intended to do was to "cleanse" Europe and eventually the world of humans that were not worthy of living. In essence Hitler and the Nazis were trying to create a super race, a race of perfect people so to speak.

The fact that people are even questioning about whether or not the Holocaust should be a required high school subject is quite shocking to me. By looking and studying history, students are able to think about events in the past, such as the Holocaust. The whole point of teaching them about the Holocaust is so that it is never repeated again! Sadly, the world's population does not learn from it's mistakes, take a look at Darfur, Sudan, or the Rwandan Genocide. Why have these genocides occurred, and will they continue to occur? These genocides have occurred because of numerous reasons, most of which stems from poor education, power, and governments shushing up these acts because it will not help them politically. For example, in the Holocaust, countries such as Austria and its native population welcomed the Nazis, gladly gave up the Jews in their country. Another example of Governments caring more about the votes they would receive then the people they would save is also in this time period. A ship loaded with some nine hundred refugees, most of whom are children, are refused entry into Cuba by the customs officers. The ship looks towards the United States for support but the United States also refuses entry and sends the ship back to war torn Europe. This happened in the Rwandan genocide as well, the Hutu are starting to kill the Tutsi people, so the U.N. sends in buses, and armed vehicles to Rwanda. Now, the thing that is quite disgusting is that the armed soldiers are only there to escort the foreigners who were in Rwanda at the time, not to stop the Genocide.

Is this even a question anymore of whether the Holocaust should be taught to high school students? These students should read important historical books related to the subject such as "The Diary of Anne Frank", analyze the Holocaust, and learn to appreciate on another better. If we do not learn to tolerate each others' beliefs, looks, or religion soon, this world will be headed for many more genocides and World Wars.

Learn more about this author, Aristotle.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.