The Holocaust was the most earthshattering, inexplicable event of the twentieth century. In Hebrew it is called Shoah , which means destruction by fire. The Holocaust involved the deliberate, systematic murder of more than 11 million innocent people: 6 million Jews and over 5 million others, including Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and political prisoners died at the hands of the Germans. The Jewish population was the largest group targeted for death, and was, for the first time, identified and defined by the Nazis as a race, not a religious group.

Genocide is the systematic murder of a whole group of people because of their race, religion, or nationality. The Nazi plan for genocide was carried out by the German government in the years before and during World War II, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler. His regime was committed to killing all of the...