THE HOLOCAUST
The Systematic Murder of 11 Million
"Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous
are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions."
-Primo Levi
After coming to power in 1933, Germany's Nazi Party, led by Adolf Hitler, implemented a highly organized strategy of persecution, murder and genocide aimed at ethnically "cleansing" Germany, a plan Hitler named the “Final Solution”. Six million Jews and five million Poles, gypsies, disabled, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and political and religious revolutionaries were killed during the Holocaust. Their systematic murder has left debris of proof throughout much of Eastern Europe. The ruins of the murderous concentration and death camps can almost immerse one's mind in the pain, the starvation, the immense grief, and in even the smell of death. The horrific images and accounts left over from the Holocaust alone can change one's mind entirely about mankind. Victims lost more than their lives, they lost their humanity.