Argumentative Essay About The Holocaust

Can you believe that there are some people who don’t think the Holocaust was genocide Well, the UN thinks exactly that. The Holocaust was the mass killing of around 11,000,000 people, making it one of the largest genocides. Some say that because the Nazis didn’t kill all of their targets, it wasn’t genocide. However there are reasons that the Holocaust was an act of genocide, such as the fact that you don’t have to kill an entire group to commit genocide, the third stage of genocide, dehumanization, that was inflicted on the Nazis’ victims, and the seventh stage genocide extermination, that the Nazis’ used. One reason the Holocaust was an act of genocide is the definition of genocide. According to 8 Stages of Genocide by Gregory Stanton, genocide is, among other things, “Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part…” And killing is not the only punishable thing you can do, other acts include “Conspiracy to commit genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide, attempt to commit genocide, complicity in genocide…” (Stanton 1) What this means is that you don’t have to kill a whole group, or kill at all, to be guilty of genocide. You can be punished just for talking about committing genocide. Another reason the
There were two main ways the Nazis killed their victims, furnaces and gas chambers. “Not far from us, flames were leaping up from a ditch, gigantic flames. They were burning something. A lorry drew up at the pit and delivered its load–little children...” (Wiesel 20). At this point, it’s clear that the Jews and other victims of the Nazi regime were being massacred. However, some may say because not all of the Nazis’ targets were killed, the Holocaust cannot be considered an act of genocide. But, as mentioned before, you don’t have to kill an entire populous to commit