The Holocaust is singular. Nothing in history equals it.
A modern, industrialized European state decided that every single Jew on earth (man, woman, infant, elderly, disabled, convert, atheist, even war heroes) must be hunted down and murdered for the sole crime of existing.
Not for land.
Not for resources.
Not for political control.
Not as a byproduct of war.
The annihilation of the Jews was the point.
Even while the Germans were being crushed on the Eastern Front and the Allies pushed in from the West, the Nazis kept diverting trains, fuel, manpower, and industrial capacity away from the battlefield just to keep the gas chambers running.
Mere traces of Jewish ancestry were enough for a death sentence. Conversion didn't save you. Assimilation didn't save you. Intermarriage or loyalty to Germany didn't save you. Jewish blood itself was treated as a permanent, irreversible stain.
This extermination of Europeâs Jews was planned and carried out by university professors, engineers, architects, chemists, and bureaucrats. Ordinary, educated citizens of one of the most advanced societies on earth. They clocked in, murdered with industrial efficiency all day, then went home to listen to Beethoven and read Goethe.
No other atrocity combined all of these elements at once: (1) total biological targeting of an entire people with no exemptions; (2) industrial-scale factory killing; (3) continent-wide reach; and (4) a sophisticated modern state treating murder of a people as a war aim equal to military victory.
The crime was so unprecedented that Raphael Lemkin had to invent a new word for it: genocide.
That word has since been stretched, emptied, and turned into a political weapon against the very people who actually experienced it.
The Holocaust stands alone.
Dalia GrybauskaitÄ, former President of Lithuania:
I was surprised by stupidity of Russia when they invaded Ukraine. They donât need territories, they already have a lot.
Just to humiliate nation? To make Ukrainian nation an enemy forever? Forever.
To create Ukrainian identity so strong that it has never been before? Now they will become enemy for centuries.
I call it stupidity. There's no sense in doing it and turning your friends into enemies, your historic allies.
A Slavic nation that's practically very close to you historically. Pure humiliation, pure ambition, which is absolutely silly.
I was also surprised by reaction of the West. How cowardly, how afraid West has been, what lack of leadership we demonstrated.
Nie dostali jedzenia, nie dostali wody, zorientowali siÄ, ĆŒe z Ceuty nie dostanÄ siÄ na kontynent. WracajÄ do Maroka pod kontrolÄ hiszpaĆskiej armii?
Tylko dlaczego prawie nikt tego nikt nie pokazuje? ZwĆaszcza ci, ktĂłrzy wieszczyli koniec Europy? JakoĆ tacy cicho sÄ dzisiaj.