It’s hard to describe on paper exactly how disheartened I feel about the Holocaust. How can I possibly explain my immense feelings of sorrow towards those who suffered during the years of the Holocaust with just mere words? Even today, when I hear the word "Holocaust" I still shutter. The word just seems to have a permanent coldness about it that sends chills up and down my spine every time it is mentioned in my presence. However, by taking this class I feel I am doing my part by educating myself so that I may never succumb to a corrupt power such as Hitler and another Holocaust will never occur.

The deeds done by Hitler and his soulless followers can only be portrayed as horrendous. When reading the true stories of such authors such as Anne Frank, Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel I was captured by their touching words. These people lived year after year through agonizing threats and treatment. I can hardly imagine what it must have been like for the Jews during the Holocaust. They were forced to remain silent as they watched their neighbors, friends and loved ones alike all carried away to death’s icy hands by the Nazis.

Concentration camps were ghastly places of death and torture. These camps were found scattered throughout Germany, Poland and the rest of Europe. I was utterly shocked to find out how cruel and demeaning people could be towards each other. Doesn’t every man have good buried somewhere deep inside of him? Not the members of the Nazi party obviously. They were trained death machines, ready and willing to kill anyone at anytime. In a way the Nazis were almost non prejudice, after all they killed men, women, children and even new born babies. I was revolted to hear stories of SS officers who threw Jewish babies up into the air and shot at them as if they were toys. Actions like these clearly show that the Nazi people had absolutely no respect for human life. The Nazis’ way of thinking was extremely radical and irrational. They didn’t have to have a reason to kill besides the fact that some people were Jews. How can you murder people just for believing in something different? What did these people do that made them deserve such deranged treatment? My open ended questions may never be answered, perhaps because there is no rational reasoning behind any of these questions, and even if there was I believe that nothing could surpass the underlying brutality of it all.

I hope that the world has learned a lesson from the Holocaust. I hope that everyone from China to Portugal, Sudan to Oregon can find the good in them to see that we are all created equal. There is no one person who is better than another and no one person who has the right to condemn another to death. It’s hard to believe this sadistic incident only happened forty –five years ago. Has society really changed that much since forty – five year ago? We can only pray and hope. History must not repeat itself. Not like this, we must educate ourselves and learn from history for it is our greatest way to predict the future. So I end this with a prayer, that no one will ever have to suffer the way the Jews once did in a land faraway in a time not so long ago.