Holocaust

From Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia written in simple English for easy reading.

The word holocaust is used to mean 'complete destruction by fire'. The ancient Greeks would kill animals for their gods. This was called sacrifice. They believed some of the gods wanted every part of their sacrifices burnt, not just one part. This was a holocaust. Now, holocaust means 'the intentional death of a large number of people'.

With a capital 'h', The Holocaust usually means the holocaust of World War II, and this is the word's most used meaning today. There have been a lot of holocausts through history, including ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and the killing of large numbers of Aborigines in Australia by settlers. The mass killing of Native Americans by invading European forces is thought by some to have been a holocaust.

[edit] World War II

Main article: The Holocaust

The Genocide in Guatemala was similar to the holocaust. (Genocide is the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group.) The army and its paramilitary teams, including civil patrols of forcibly conscripted local men, attacked 626 villages. If the villagers didn't escape to become hunted refugees they were brutally murdered. Some villagers were forced to watch the murders and sometimes to take part. Buildings were vandalized and demolished, very little was allowed to remain.

When Japan invaded its neighbours, it committed many war crimes that were similar to the Nazis. The Asian holocaust killed many people, such as the 300,000 Chinese citizens in the Nanjing Massacre. The Japanese government also did horrible experiments on prisoners in north-east China, such as the Unit 731.

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