The Contemporary Relevance of the Holocaust. History Essay

The Contemporary Relevance of the Holocaust
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Introduction
The term Holocaust is derived from the Greek word "holos" which means whole and was used when referring to a sacrificial offering that is offered at an altar. However, this word took a different meaning during the Second World War between 1939 and 1945 when millions of men, women, and children belonging to the Jewish community were murdered.These killings were perpetrated by Adolf Hitler, leader of Germany's Nazi party. The literature evaluates lessons offered by the Holocaust, methods used in maintaining awareness about the Holocaust in different countries, and examines its collapse in the West and prevalence in other parts of the world.
State-Sponsored
The Holocaust was associated with the systematic state-sponsored killing of over six million Jews by the Nazi regime as well as their allies and associates from other states. It is important to comprehend that the Nazis who ascended to the power in the early 1930s, held the views that the Germans were racially superior while the Jews were believed to have been inferior and that they posed a huge threat to the German racial community. The Germany authorities were also determined in targeting other racially inferior groups such as Gypsies, homosexuals, socialists, and the disabled. When looked at from a different perspective, it was more of a combination of political and ethnic cleansing endeavor.[Anti-Defamation League. (2012). Overview of the Holocaust: 1933–1945. Retrieved from /sites/default/files/documents/assets/pdf/education-outreach/Overview-of-the-Holocaust-NYLM-Guide.pdf]
The Nazi regime had constructed the concentration camps where individuals and members of the community who were thought of as opponents were detained. Later, militarized battalions would be used in carrying out mass-murder operations as well as killing millions of Jews; this mostly happened in extermination camps during an operation known as the final solution. At the same time, other countries such as Romania and Slovakia also executed the Nazi policy of persecution, and this increased the deaths of Jews. Through propaganda, the Jews were comprehensively labeled and taken as the embodiment of the source of all problems affecting those societies at that time.
Assessment of what sort of lessons the Holocaust continues to offer the world
There are numerous lessons that the Holocaust has provided and continues to give to the world. It is necessary noting that young people from different parts of the world are growing up at a time when the urge and need for having individuals who support the right politics are on the rise. Various countries in Europe such as Sweden and Austria have faced increased growth of right-wing groups which offer other possibilities to the disengaged young people. Additionally, there are influential leaders in the world who have openly shown intolerance to other minority groups. There have been various cases of minority groups being persecuted and killed, all over the world.[Richards, M., Bussu, A. & Leadbetter, P. (2018, January 26). Why we still need to teach young people about the Holocaust. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/why-we-still-need-to-teach-young-people-about-t...