Aim: What is Genocide? The Holocaust

The term “genocide” was coined by Raphael Lemkin in 1944. According to the United Nations Genocide Convention, the term denotes acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such.” More specifically, genocide includes “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”   

“Genocide” and “Holocaust” are not the same thing. “Holocaust” is a word of Greek origin meaning “sacrifice by fire.” Genocide was an element of the Holocaust, but the Holocaust involved much more than genocide. According to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, “The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators…The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were ‘racially superior’ and that the Jews, deemed ‘inferior,’ were ‘life unworthy of life.’” 

 Holocaust Power point

Holocaust Video 

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