How do Jews view the Holocaust?

Answer 1

It depends on their background: Ashkenazi Jews view it as the "quintessential tragedy of the 20th century."

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For many Jews the Holocaust has become a central and integral part of Jewish identity: they have become, so to speak, 'the People of the Holocaust', though this expression is not used. It may be the case that this is felt more strongly by secular (that is, non-religious) Jews than by practising religious Jews.

The Holocaust raises a number of difficult theological questions, and not only for Judaism.

Answer 2

The official governmental position in Iran is that the Holocaust did happen, but that it was orders of magnitude smaller than what empirical evidence and most historians claim. (They usually cite a randomly-generated number between 50,000-200,000, like 100,000 deaths.) The Iranian government has also argued that the Holocaust was a conspiracy by Jewish Zionists to murder Jews with the express purpose of providing an excuse for the creation of the State of Israel. Of course, if the Iranian government wished to confront the mountains of evidence against these claims, they are more than welcome. However, they typically take the position that any who disagree with them are "bought and paid for by Zionists".

Even some Iranian Apologists have denounced the regime for its stance on this issue including Reza Aslan and Hooman Majd.

Another rebuttal to the official Iranian view comes from Muslims who note that the Holocaust was not only dedicated to the Jews it was also eradicated to many other races including the Arabs and Muslims. Some scholars argue that the mass murder of the Romani and people with disabilities should be included in the definition, and some use the common noun "holocaust" to describe other Nazi mass murders, including those of Soviet prisoners of war, Polish and Soviet civilians, and homosexuals. Recent estimates, based on figures obtained since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, indicate some ten to eleven million civilians and prisoners of war were intentionally murdered by the Nazi regime.