What is the significance of the Holocaust in Judaism?

Answer 1

To prove to the world what human beings are capable of. The mass murder of a people in unacceptable. Hitler was a nutcase. __ It is tempting to 'medicalize' evil, but there is no evidence that Hitler was mentally ill.

Answer 2

The Holocaust is significant because it killed millions of people because of racism.

Its history is important and it shows how hatred can become an obsession.

Among other things, the Holocaust is a devastating illustration of just how thin the veneer of civilization is. In the period from about 1820-1933 the German states (from 1871 on, Germany) were widely admired as a highly civilized country. Its music, architecture, painting, literature and craftsmanship were widely respected and admired. Germany had a reputation for having an outstanding education system at all levels. Especially from about 1880-1933 it was the world leader in scientific and academic research.

Yet, men acting on the orders of this country that carried out the genocide.

As far as one can tell, most of those who did the detailed planning and carried out the actual killings, most of those who saw the victims face to face, weren't psychopaths, but very ordinary people, in fact boringly ordinary in most cases. Most of them were family men, with wives and kids who, as far as one can tell, took their family duties seriously. Many of them were kind to animals. Hoess, the Commandant of Auschwitz from its foundation in 1940 till 1943, illustrates the type, so does Eichmann.

Then there were very ordinary policemen, from cities like Hamburg, who had previously been ordinary cops - also law abiding, married men with children for the most part; but when drafted into SD dead squads and sent to Russia they machine-gunned defenseless victims. What's more their commanders made it clear from the outset that this particular 'work' was voluntary, that they could refuse to do it without fear of any victimization, that they could go back home and return to their civilian work. A small number did in fact refuse and went home - and that was the end of the matter for them. Why so few? Many who have thought carefully about this have commented on the reluctance of many people to be different, to stand out, to stand up. Others have stressed the lack of moral courage ('moral fibre'), the tendency to do as we're told, the fear of trusting out own feelings, and so on.

The perpetrators illustrate what Hannah Arendt called 'the banality of evil' - that is, 'the ordinariness of evil'. They were 'extraordinary in their ordinariness', to quote the German writer Hermann Glaser.

To prove to the world what human beings are capable of.

Without trivializing the deaths in the Holocaust, or the groups that were targeted, men have been systematically slaughtering each other based on ethnicity, religion, nationality, race, and a host of other factors for several millenia. That Jews were the main target is sadly unremarkable.

Besides the scale of the slaughter (and, the relative short timeframe this slaughter was carried out), there are two really unique and interrelated characteristics which make the Holocaust stand out from all other genocides and mass-murders in history:

(1) The level of industrialized, mechanized, and automated death. Never before (and, really, never since) has a mass murder campaign been carried out with such precision and utilizing the full resources of the country. Complete systems of automated death were designed and used to maximum efficiency, with constant "improvements" and other hallmarks of the industrial revolution's manufacturing processes. Unlike all other genocides, the level of planning and execution mirrored that of an industrial assembly line process - effectively, the Holocaust manufactured mass death as a product, and sold it to its victims.

(2) The level of which the Holocaust was not just a formal policy of a nation-state, but the way that it was institutionalized and bureaucratized into the nation carrying out the campaign. The reason we know so much about the Holocaust's victims was, that unlike all other mass-murder campaigns, the Nazi's kept meticulous records of everything, just like any other government bureaucracy. A whole government ministry was set up to handle the killing, and did so like any other ministry - it competed with other ministries for funding, talent, and resources, had goals and projections and produced statistical reports, and had all the hallmarks of "ordinary" government ministries. No other genocide has ever had this level of organization and official recognition within an established government the way that the perpetrators of the Holocaust had.

These things are what truly differentiate the Holocaust from all other genocides: this industrialization of death. Other genocides had specifically targeted killed Jews, blacks, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, or any of a myriad of minority groups. Others had killed in massive numbers, and with terrible means. Others had even wiped out whole societies and civilizations. However, no one else has ever directed the entire means of modern industrial society and technology to the purpose of genocide. The efficiency and scale such industrialized means give is an ominous warning to be vigilant for anyone else looking to apply such "lessons" to evil purposes.

Answer 3

The word Holocaust is from the Greek word holo-kauston or "all burnt". The original sense, referring to a completely-burnt sacrifice is known today as the systematic killing mainly of six million Jews, but also of Gypsies, Slavs, homosexuals and other "undesirable" groups in Europe during World War II as part of the "Final Solution" or "Die Endlösung". It was a program of deliberate extermination planned and executed by the National Socialist German Worker's Party (NAZI) regime led by Adolf Hitler.

Although I believe the Third Reich's motivation of the "Final Solution" is certainly open for debate, It is widely accepted that the motivating reason for this atrocity according to the NAZI's was to purify the human race in response to rid the world of genetic criminal tendency. This of course was based on the fallacy that crime was a result of bad genetics and that Jews and other "undesirables" could not help themselves.

The significance of the Holocaust is that a anyone is capable of anything given the right circumstances. More to the point, a society can turn a blind eye to what they know is morally abhorrent by denying and/or ignoring the actions of there representatives without question or civil recourse. (Ref: The effects of the Treaty of Versailles on the Germany and its people)

Answer 4

There is no significance of the Holocaust. It's not good that over 10 millions Jews were killed.

Answer 5

The holocaust is an example of how bad a crime can be, which would help a criminologist to understand what people are capable of doing.