What are the reasons for the Holocaust being significant?

Answer 1

The Holocaust was so significant in WW2 because 15 million people died in the concentration camps and half of them were Jews alone.

To be clear, the broader definition of the Holocaust - which includes not just Jews, but other racial groups, such as the Roma and Poles, and also the extermination of gays and mentally ill - does NOT include those merely "mistreated" to death (e.g. Russian POWs and those sent to the camps for political reasons). The Holocaust is concerned with the intentional systematic attempt to exterminate all segments of a specific group, identifiable by certain "racial" or "inherent" traits. Merely being killed as an "enemy of the state" does not qualify one as being a victim of the Holocaust. As such, the broad definition of the Holocaust encompasses a total death toll around 9 million. Additional deaths of Soviet POWs and civilians, Jehovah's Witnesses, Catholics, anti-Nazi politicians and activists, and communists are certainly victims of Nazi persecution (and number between 5-10 million), but aren't really part of the systematic, intentional policy of racial "cleansing" which is the root of the Holocaust.

Besides the sheer numbers of deaths involved, the other historically significant marker of the Holocaust is that it was the first time (and, so far, the last time) that an industrialized nation attempted a genocide using the full organization and industry of the state itself. Both before and after, genocides have been committed by mostly unorganized forces, generally at the encouragement of the government. In the cases where the genocidal forces were actually well-organized, they were nonetheless never officially recognized or supported by the government. That is, the unique characteristic of the Nazi-run Holocaust was that the genocide was not only incredibly well organized and committed by official government forces, but that it was both official government policy AND a part of the actual government bureaucracy. The terror here is that this level of official recognition and organization leads to an almost unimaginable level of concentrated violence against the victims; a systematic extermination (in terms of deaths, timeframe, and geographic area) unreachable by any other prior (or subsequent) genocide.

As to the actual effects of the Holocaust and how they are significant, here is a short (and incomplete) list of how all those Holocaust deaths have impacted the world since:

• Polish Jewish culture was effectively exterminated. almost 99% of all Jews in Poland were killed, and the remainder mostly emigrated. Out of a pre-1939 population of over 3 million Jews in Poland, as of 2011, there are fewer than 5,000 remaining. Normal population growth should assume a 2011 population of 6-8 million.
• It has poisoned relations between much of Europe (and the US) and Switzerland, for over half a century, as much property seized (or more properly, stolen) from the Jews by the Nazis was moved to Switzerland, and the Swiss have been slow to recognize (and return) this stolen property to the rightful owners (or heirs).
• The world is much more attentive to the possibility of genocide, and at least tries to stop them. Not that the international community has been that successful, but it's at least become a major point in international relations, while before, it was effectively treated as an internal affair of nations, and ignored.
• To go with the prior point, Genocide is now an internationally-recognized crime, and is one of the founding pillars of the new area of International Law. Genocide has been defined as a concern for all of humanity, and not just an internal nation-state's business.
• The Holocaust effectively resulted in the post-war creation of the State of Israel, and all the attendant problems therein.
• It established the American Jewish community as being the world leader of the Jewish movement (even after the creation of Israel), since there were effectively no Jews left anywhere else.
• The collective social guilt enforced on the German population by the Allies has greatly shaped post-war German foreign policy, as well as many internal German laws and social customs, all in an attempt to insure that Germany never again attempts such a thing.
• Anti-Semetism is now a very significant social stigma in most of the world, and most countries are very conscious of any attempts to play upon such anti-semetic feelings by demagogues. Before the Holocaust, anti-Semetism was endemic (and, at least tolerated) by most countries in the world. Now, it is mostly shunned or officially surpressed by most countries.

Answer 2

Over 6 million people were murdered. In 1933 approximately 9.5 million Jews lived in Europe comprising 1.7% of the total European population. This number represents more than 60% of the World's Jewish population at that time of an estimated 15.3 million. The majority of Jews in prewar Europe lived in Eastern Europe. The largest was Poland with about 3,000,000 Jews. In Central Europe the largest Jewish population was in Germany with about 525,000 people and Western Europe the largest population was in Great Britain with 300,000. Before the Nazi seizure in 1933 Europe had a diverse set of Jewish cultures. In less than a decade two out of every three Jews would be dead. It was not only Jews but others who were seen as inferior races. The philosophy came from an false idea Germans were the superior race and meant to dominate the world. The Nazi took a combination of Norse legends and historical evidence and turned it on it's head. Himmler added superstition and occult philosophy to it making a mixture that was deadly. Had Hitler won the war he would have started to kill Christians. They all ready were rewriting The Bible before the war ended.