Die Todesmühlen

I suppose the scariest thing one can take away from the holocaust is that it's perpetrators felt justified in what they had done, they saw themselves as the good guys, they saw themselves as heroes.

Perception is a really powerful thing, the fact that we can look at the same object and see different things is scary. Some might say that what the nazis did was unprecedented but is it really? Sure maybe in its efficiency but genocide wasn't a nazi innovation. Genocide is a human innovation it had occurred long before ww2. Think of the Circassian Genocide, Armenian Genocide and the much more recent Rwandan genocide and those are just the tiny few we're know of and are allowed to call genocides. Some of the most powerful nations today have committed genocides and other horrendous acts against other humans but we can't call their atrocities genocides because they in control, they won and still hold power.

Some of the perpetrators of these genocides are seen as heroes and have statues and monuments dedicated to them. Some people often ask "how could the Nazis think they could get it?" They thought they could get away with it because they learnt from history that others have gotten away with it. Ask yourself had the nazis won do you think we'd have had any idea of what went on? Or would it have been covered up like so many have been through out history?

Perhaps humanity is just an aspiration.