History UsefulNotes / TheHolocaust

* "The Final Solution" by ''Music/{{Sabaton}}''.

-->-- '''Heinrich Himmler''', chief of the SS, speaking at 4/10/43 meeting of SS leaders in Posen/Poznań, the Warthegau, Greater Germany [[note]] notarised in '''Nuremberg Document PS-1919''', translation conducted for ed. by Noakes, Jeremy, and Pridham, Geoffrey, ''Nazism 1919-1945, vol. 3: Foreign Policy, War and Racial Extermination'' (Exeter, 1988) pp.919-21 and 1199-1200 [[/note]]

* The USA charged 1857 Germans and freed them all by 1952 after having sentenced 450 to death (but not executed them), sentenced 219 to Life in Prison, sentenced 889 to five years in prison or less, and acquitted 1416.

* ''Literature/IfThisIsAMan'': Written by Primo Levi, an Italian Jew who survived Auschwitz. Adapted into the one-man teleplay ''Primo'' by Antony Sher, broadcast on Creator{{/HBO}} and Creator/TheBBC.

* The Soviets, who also acted on behalf of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. They sought justice for the enslavement and execution of millions of their citizens, and wished to discredit [[UsefulNotes/PoliticalIdeologies the ideology of Fascism]]. They pressed for the greatest possible number of trials and harshest punishments. They wanted to publicly condemn and punish the perpetrators, but were less concerned with determining the perpetrators' motivations and intentions. They were willing to accept miscarriages of justice if it meant that no war criminals went unpunished.[note]Another major controversy regarding the USSR's participation in the IMT trials is that they (mostly unsuccessfully) tried to use them to blame Nazi Germany for the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre mass killings of Polish military, political and cultural figures]] that they had committed following their own invasion of Eastern Poland.[/note]

* The Soviets, who also acted on behalf of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. They sought justice for the enslavement and execution of millions of their citizens, and wished to discredit [[UsefulNotes/PoliticalIdeologies the ideology of Fascism]]. They pressed for the greatest possible number of trials and harshest punishments. They wanted to publicly condemn and punish the perpetrators, but were less concerned with determining the perpetrators' motivations and intentions. They were willing to accept miscarriages of justice if it meant that no war criminals went unpunished.

* ''Series/Nuremberg''

Like the rest of the world, Europe had ancient traditions of in-group promotion and out-group destruction which were strengthened and radicalised by the European "New Imperialism" period. By the time Europe entered the modern era, its major in-group out-group distinctions had crystalised into the concepts of Religion/Ideology, Nation, and Race.

Like the rest of the world, Europe had ancient traditions of in-group promotion and out-group destruction which were strengthened and radicalised by the European "New Imperialism" period. By the time Europe entered the modern era, its major in-group out-group distinctions had crystalised into the concepts of Religion/Ideology, Nation, and Race.\\
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Since antiquity, Christians' relationship with Jews had been marked by an unstable dichotomy of inferiority/superiority, with some rare instances of tolerance. Hatred of Jews, which was later termed 'Anti-semitism', had at the very least been part of Christian culture since TheMiddleAges between UsefulNotes/TheCrusades and the Black Death (11th-13th centuries). At that time, Europe's largest Jewish community in the Rhineland was expelled by the UsefulNotes/HolyRomanEmpire and fled to The Kingdom of Poland (their language, Rhineland-German, becoming known as 'Yiddish'). This mentality faded over time and in the wake of the UsefulNotes/ThirtyYearsWar and UsefulNotes/TheEnlightenment, religion, while important, was no longer the ''sole'' cause of anti-semitism. This pre-modern state of affairs was filled with instances of persecution and violence, but for the most part, the medieval era was characterised by acceptance and favour, albeit as second-class citizens constantly pressured — or even coerced — into conversion.

Like the rest of the world, Europe had ancient traditions of in-group promotion and out-group destruction which were strengthened and radicalised by the European "New Imperialism" period. By the time Europe entered the modern era, its major in-group out-group distinctions had crystalised into the concepts of Religion/Ideology, Nation, and Race.

Ever since the 1878-9 Russo-Turkish War, the European powers had promoted religious-ethno-national dissent in the Ottoman Empire as a way of creating conflicts which required outside mediation. This was done to secure concessions from the Ottoman government, which agreed to trade terms and the establishment of government offices supervised and staffed by foreigners. These religious and ethnic conflicts instilled increasing paranoia and fear in the Ottoman Empire's Turkish minority as their Christian citizens rebelled against them, instituted religious and ethnic cleansing to create homogeneous nation-states, and sought to liberate and cleanse yet more territory from the Ottomans and one another. With their ultimate defeat in the Balkan Wars of 1912-13, the Ottomans lost virtually all of their European territory — and the capital of Istanbul and the Turkish homelands themselves were under threat. The Greek minorities on the Ottomans' Mediterranean coastline gave them claims over that region, the eastern borderlands of Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) were as infested with Kurds and Armenians, and the Syrian and Palestinian territories were almost completely devoid of ethnic Turks. In an age of religious and ethnic exclusivity, the pluralistic Ottoman Empire, it seemed, was doomed.

Even after they abolished formal slavery, both democracies continued to use laws to ''de facto'' enslave 'non-white' citizens through the prison system[[note]]The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which bans slavery, specifically grants an exemption saying slavery ''can'' be imposed as punishment for a crime[[/note]] (USA) and creation of nominally independent 'ethnic homelands' ('Bantustans', South Africa) economically dependent upon the motherland and restrict them to lesser (and vote-less) categories of citizenship. The USA 'officially' provided equal protection under the law with the 14th Amendment (1868), but serious efforts to enforce that mandate did not begin until the post-World War II era. South Africa repealed Apartheid following a Referendum in 1990.

* ''Charnel Houses of Europe: the Shoah'', a supplement for ''TabletopGame/WraithTheOblivion'', outlines the Holocaust and describes its effects on the realms of the dead.

* ''ComicBook/XMen'': [[ComicBook/{{Magneto}} Erik Lehnsherr / Magneto]] is famously a Holocaust survivor and several issues by Creator/ChrisClaremont deal with his memories in the camps. Despite being an AntiVillain, Magneto ''[[EvenEvilHasStandards detests]]'' Nazism and loathes the Red Skull.

* ''ComicBook/XMen'': [[ComicBook/{{Magneto}} Erik Lehnsherr / Magneto]] is famously a Holocaust survivor and several issues by Creator/ChrisClaremont deal with his memories in the camps. Despite being an AntiVillain, Magneto ''detests'' Nazism and loathes the Red Skull.
** The Holocaust shapes Erik Lehnsherr's personality in the ''[[Film/XMenFilmSeries X-Men]]'' film series as well, fueling his hatred of mankind. Both the first ''Film/XMen1'' and ''Film/XMenFirstClass'' open in 1944 with him being deported to Auschwitz with his family, with his metal-controlling powers starting to manifest as he is separated from his parents. ''First Class'' expands this part of his backstory as it is a Nazi scientist and mutant, Dr. Klaus Schmidt/Sebastian Shaw, who kills his mother, triggering his thirst of revenge. In ''Film/XMenApocalypse'', Apocalypse transports adult Erik to the empty camp in the 1980s to convince him to join his side. Erik ends up ''destroying'' the camp when his powers are amplified by Apocalypse.

* ''ComicBook/Block109'': In this AlternateHistory comic book, due to [[AlternateHistoryNaziVictory Nazi Germany surviving longer than it did in real life]], Jewish presence has been totally wiped out from Europe. Hochmeister Zytek, one of Hitler's successors at the head of the state, has all the main Nazi leaders gathered in a room [[spoiler:and has them machine-gunned for planning and allowing the genocide, as well as for the countless other real life war crimes the comics turned UpToEleven.]]

* ''Film/MarathonMan''