Lecture Content Paralells

This is just a side note that I was thinking about after our last lecture.

In the past week, three of my classes have talked about World War Two. I love to learn about the events of World War II and the Holocaust. Both were grueling events that have served as a reminder to our world that cruelty still exists even in our industrialized age. For my sociology class we were asked to visit the St. Pete's Holocaust Museum before March. Of course I jumped on the opportunity as soon as possible and I visited the museum last Saturday.

I've read countless books on the Holocaust and watched so many documentaries. There is so much information because the Holocaust affected so many people. 5 million Jews were killed during the war and an additional 6 million disabled, mentally ill, and homosexuals were killed in either concentration camps or ghettos. The Nazi's killed 11 million innocent people in addition to all of the soldiers lost during the war. They stressed the idea of a superior race that they called the Aryan race. Hitler convinced his political party and followers that it was the Jews fault for the condition of Germany at the time.

The fact that all of these people could turn a blind eye and even help the Nazi's exterminate others is absolutely despicable. Anyone who says that a human life is no valuable really needs to check their moral system and codes. It's important to look back upon the past in order to make sure that the future doesn't repeat the past. The mass genocide of 11 million people will never be forgotten. Now it's up to the generations to come to make sure that something like this will never happen again.

We are incredibly fortunate today to have the technology that we have. It allows us to preserve history especially those stories of survivors of the Holocaust that are dying off.

The anniversary for the Holocaust remembrance day was this past Monday and the anniversary for the liberation of the deadliest concentration camp Auschwitz was this past Tuesday. It's important to take time and appreciate and educate ourselves about this kind of event that effected so many people.

I've been really fortunate because I've gotten to travel all over Europe. I actually got to go see an actual concentration camp which was called Dachau. During the war it served as a concentration camp that political enemies were kept. Actually being able to be there was incredibly sobering and bone chilling.