What Was the Holocaust?

Script:

The Holocaust is widely regarded as the greatest evil ever carried out by any government in history. Given the magnitude of this crime, it’s disturbing that so many people, especially those under 40, know little or nothing about it. According to a recent study, young people have a “worrying lack of basic Holocaust knowledge.”

So here are some facts everyone should know.

The Holocaust was a relatively recent event. It took place between 1939—when Germany invaded Poland, sparking World War II—and 1945 when Germany surrendered. During those years, the Nazi regime, headed by Adolf Hitler, set out to murder every Jew in the world, starting with every Jew in Europe.

One of the things that made Nazi antisemitism different from other forms of ethnic hatred was that Hitler drew no distinctions among Jews: He regarded every Jew as an enemy worthy of death: Jewish children no less than Jewish adults.

The SS, the Nazis’ elite troops, would line up Jewish children next to parents and grandparents, and have firing squads shoot them all. When the Nazis decided that murdering Jews by gunfire was too slow, they opened death camps in which they installed gas chambers.

The Nazi SS would force hundreds of Jews into these chambers and pipe in poisonous gas. After about fifteen minutes of hell, all the people inside would be dead—suffocated.

The Nazis then forced other Jews to extract the bodies from the gas chambers and, as a final indignity, examine the dead Jews’ mouths to pull out gold teeth. They would examine hands as well. When rings were too tight, they would simply cut off fingers. They would