Was the Holocaust the worst thing to have ever happened?

Yeah almost deliciously absurd... seriously... it reminded me of something out of a dark comedy of some kind. I've got to admit the mate of mine that told me about did so in a conspiratorial fashion... if I didn't know better... I'd say he'd half bought into the theory... which needless to say made him the recipient of a big fat cup of wake da fug up!
 
Years of being told that the Jews were sub-human and repetition. I'm sure the guards felt queasy the first time, after a couple of thousand it would have been much easier.
 
Honestly the Holocaust was just one piece of one great big bad thing. It was a sad part of that war but overall I would say the war (including the holocaust) was worse.

As far as the worst thing as someone already said it is subjective.

Slavery (this would depend on what era Atlantic slave trade/ Roman slave trade, etc..)

Holocaust- probably from the jewish perspective if they forget ancient history this was the worse

The Black death

The Spanish Inquisition

The Crusades - avery bad time depending on ones point of view

The sacking of Rome by the barbarian tribes - try to tell an ancient roman that was not the end of the world

Boy George - I mean come on that guy was horrible

See entirely subjective.
 
ahhh yeah that's the one... my mate is on Skype at the moment... he explained that all over Switzerland this poster has been defaced... the white sheep have had Swastikas drawn on them and the black sheep has had a star of David drawn on it...

crazy.

edit:
This poster is apparently from the far right in the Swiss governments. There are something like seven parties in the Swiss government. So it's not unilateral. But the Swiss Peoples Party spared no expense to post these all over Switzerland... in French, German, Italian and Romansch languages.
 
One of the worst things I can think of would be the wiping out of much of the Native American culture by white Europeans that came to the North America.
 
The writing on the poster reads "For more secruity".Followed by My home- Our Switzerland to the right of the logo and underneath the logo it says, "For a strong Switzerland, for those of you who can't read French.

Is the poster saying what I think it's saying? Is it that openly racist or am I missing the actual meaning?
 
Slip,

It's not an issue of size, but of purpose.

There have been many genocides on the same scale, before and since, yet most of those were perpetrated within a country, and for power. Without dismissing any of the others, what makes the Holocaust stand out was the determination of one individual to cross borders to slaughter, indeed build an infrastructure just for that purpose, a people. And in terms of relative population, it exterminated 2/3 of Europe's and 1/2 of the world's Jewish population. It has taken us 60 years to rebuild, and we still feel the effects.

Was it the worst? Objectively, no. But it does stand out as unique.

And I'd have to agree that Celine Dion is up there somewhere.
 
The text left of the logo reads: My house=Our Swizterland.
The red text on the logo reads: Swiss Quality
The testunder the logo reads: For a strong Swizterland

It's openely racist.
 
We are conditioned from birth to be obedient, and are willing to inflict all manner of atrocity on our fellow human beings, for the simple fact that someone has told us to do so.

See the Milgram experiments, or the Folsom Prison experiments for more details on this phenomenon.

The Milgram experiments, wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
 
Yeah, that one's pretty high on the list too. Not only the genocide and cultural murder, but the ill effects of that, that have lasted until modern times. Last I checked, Native Americans were the most disadvantaged minority with the highest suicide rates, lowest education rates, highest poverty rates, but you don't hear peep one from the Natives about affirmative action or redress. There was some mild rebellion in the 70's/80's, but we haven't heard anything from them since.
 
A lot of people never seem to mention Hiroshima or Nagasaki when they talk about disasters or the worst things to happen in history. Yeah the Holocaust was worst but the US killed 100,000+ Japanese people just because the Japanese military refused to back down in something they weren't originally involved with.

Fighting fire with fire is all well and good but not when the majority of pain and suffering is done by innocent civilians.
 
Most of the people that died were innocent civilians before the war started, I don't see how a soldiers life is worth any less than his loved ones back home.
The allied forces didn't want to be fighting, they had to.
 
That's true but I'm not one for getting into a debate about it. Unless soldiers were conscripted (I'm unsure) a lot more innocent lives we're lost by people who may or may have not been against the war and we're simply leading normal working lives. It did ensure their surrender without too many deaths (140,000+ as opposed to millions) but it still seems morally unjustified. Just how the world works sometimes I guess.
 
Sorry you lost me... are you referring to Japanese civilians killed in the two A-bomb blasts?



This particular point has really not ever been decisively concluded to be honest... you have very strong arguments on both sides of the issue. Both those who believe that the Japanese given their militaristic culture would have fought a bloody war to the last man had the Americans had to land on the mainland of Japan and thusly resulted in astronomical casulties to the Americans and then there are those that believed that the Japanese would have been taken without massive losses by the Americans due the incredibly strained resources of the Japanese at that point in the war.
 
The A-bombs were no worse than conventional bombing throughout the war.



As far as all recent history goes - I'd say the purges in the USSR 'win'.

But the exact numbers involved are a matter for debate, for reasons of Soviet secrecy, obviously.
 
Japanese atrocities in china in WWII would come close, as would Mao's purges. Dont really know who killed more of their own people, Communist Russia or Communist China.
 
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