Why Do We Study the Holocaust?

There are a plethora of reasons to study the Holocaust. Not only does it benefit the students by opening their eyes to the atrocities committed by the Nazi Party in the 1930s and 1940s, but it also benefits the many people who don't know about the Holocaust and haven't learned enough to understand the terror faced by the "undesirables" and how far we, as the human race, must go to ensure that this does not happen again. First, however, we must learn how it all took place.

As a young child, Adolf Hitler was treated poorly by his father, who died while Adolf was very young. He was an artist, and though he applied to the Academy of Fine Arts twice, he was rejected both times. Though he was Austrian, he regarded the Germans very highly, and when World War I broke out, he applied to serve in the German Army. He was injured twice in the war, and while he was healing from his wounds, he learned of Germany's capitulation. He was angered by both this and the Treaty of Versailles. He began to believe that Jews and other groups were responsible for this disaster. He was so upset, he organized a military takeover, which failed. He was sentenced to 5 years in prison, but while serving this term, he wrote the book Mein Kamf, or My Struggle. People in Germany were so desperate to be a world power again, so they decided to listen what what Adolf Hitler had to say. Due to this new interest in him, Hitler served only nine months of his sentence.

During his confinement, Hitler became smarter and decided to work his way up through the government as a politician. Finally, in 1932, Adolf became Chancellor of Germany, the second in command. He got a law passed that said that once the leader died, there was no longer a need for that position, so the Ch...

... middle of paper ...

... do we study the Holocaust?" We study the Holocaust because we, as the human race, cannot allow the genocide of any group of people again. We learn about it for the same reason we learn about slavery in America, Apartheid in South Africa, British rule in India, and other inhumane disasters that evil humans have engineered since our beginning. This reason I am speaking of is the fact that when our conscience tells us to help, and our mind tells us we are not strong enough, we must always stand up for the minority and those being hurt. There is a quote by Edmund Burke that reads "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." No matter the situation, we can never allow an event like the Holocaust to occur again, and by learning about it, we can understand what is necessary and what can happen when those "good men" decide to stand up.