Holocaust

What should the world take away from the Holocaust?

The Holocaust was one of the most horrifying events of the twentieth century. It was very hard to study as each new information we learned revealed it to be more terrifying then before. Its very difficult for me to understand how anyone could do the things they did and justify it to themselves. The events of the Holocaust are extremely disturbing and sometimes so cruel its sureal. Yet the Holocaust was very real and it is only by studying it and attempting to fix the mistakes that were made that we can make sure it didn't all happen in vain.

One thing we can take from the Holocaust is a better appreciation for human ethics. When the Nazis experiments were discovered, the world was horrified. The Nuremberg Code was developed soon after these discoveries to protect human rights during experiments. Before this code it was assumed that most of these rights were considered common decency and it was taken for granted that they would be followed. The Holocaust proved this assumption wrong. The experiments showed a new level of human disregard as the scientist were so influenced by prejudices and hatred that they could test people like they tested animals.

Another thing we must take away from the Holocaust is that thousands of innocent people were targeted and died for no reason simply because of their religion or because they looked different from the norm. We must study this unfairness as it puts our own prejudices and stereotypes into perspective. It's scary to see how so many countries spew hate for each other for reasons not much better than Hitler's. Its easy to see now that the Holocaust was wrong and inhuman. However, atrocities such as this still occur today, for eample the genocide in Rewanda. It is important for us to look for the similarities between indviduals and appreciate our differences as it is only by doing this can we assure that the Holocaust will never be repeated.