What was so special in the Holocaust? I mean there were a lot of similarly dark points in history, both in terms of numbers (people killed) and cruelty, but still, it seems we always only care about the Holocaust (or at least it overshadows everything else).
I think we should remember other events too, more frequently.
Germany was a normal Western state—the Weimar Republic was in many ways at the forefront of liberalism and governance. It is unprecedented that by legal and popular politics, Germans created the political and lethal machinery to victimize so many other Germans.
The Holocaust was a civil war where innocents were murdered or forced into slavery.
Hitler was a fool. Germans were among the best educated in the world, but Hitler personally was without precedent Europe's worst governor. Nevermind the betrayal of his own people; his economy relied unsustainably on slavery, his theories were bunk, his cowardice was monumental... He benefited from the long-term gains of the Weimar Republic's governance while simultaneously killing or exiling Germany's greatest asset, its intellectuals.
The Holocaust was a vehicle of this, Hitler's personal madness, unlike any other genocide.
Collaboration, most of all, defines the Holocaust. Hitler found collaborators throughout the whole world, from Japan to Moscow. The Soviet Union, itself the most victimized by the war, was for five years allied with Germany. There were Poles who eagerly betrayed their neighbors. Hungarian fascists were condemning civilians to death not months before the end of the war. The French collaborated in the Holocaust. It is unprecedented that anti-Semitism was so pervasive as to infect all of Europe.
The Holocaust showed that Western civilization, not just Hitler's Germany, was eager to execute unprecedented crimes against humanity.
These are but a few ways the Holocaust is distinct from other genocides, from the experience of American slavery, from even North Korean concentration camps and Soviet gulags. It is not about numbers. It is about what our civilization turned out to be capable of.
Western governments did nothing about Hitler's rise, but to equate that with Western civilization as a whole eagerly executing these crimes seems a bit of a stretch.
One theory is that WW2 and the "holocaust" have a special role, because the weirdness of the period following it. Because of the fight against communism, the USA and West Germany nearly instantly became allies after WW2 and occupation with the horrors past became discouraged. For example Hans Globke, one of the authors of the Nuremberg race laws, was allowed to be a high ranking minister in the Adenauer administration and some believe he was the reason why Germany and the CIA were not very interested in finding and prosecuting Adolf Eichmann at the time.
That is why there was a certain time lag in considering the events of WW2. In Germany there were the student revolts around 1968 and in 1969 the German chancellor Kiesinger had to step down because of his "nazi past" - which in comparison to Hans Globke was totally harmless. In a similiar vein the word "holocaust" mainly comes from a US TV-Series in 1978, the preferred jewish term is the "shoah".
I guess we will have to wait until the 2030s or so,to see if it still overshadows everything else then.
1) It was deliberate extermination of ethnic groups. Not killings as part of fighting a war, but deliberate extermination.
2) It was enormous in scale and took place over just a few years. Sure there have been lots of atrocities throughout history, but not many rival the scale of the Holocaust.
3) It happened in Europe and was perpetrated by Europeans against Europeans.
4) It happened not that long ago, and people are still alive who remember.
5) The perpetrators lost so completely that there is no political risk in recognizing and condemning it. For example atrocities (like Katyn) were perpetrated by USSR but since they were allied, the other allied powers had to downplay it. Some countries (like Israel) does not recognize the Armenian Genocide because they would lose Turkey as an important ally.
6) The allied won the war, so recognizing the holocaust underlines the heroism and just fight of the allied powers. Other genocides like the Rwandan does not in that way reflect positively on western powers. To some extend the holocaust can also be used to downplay allied war crimes, since whatever the allied did of bad things, the Nazis were way, way worse.
7) Jews have big cultural influence in the western world through litteratur, movies and so on. Comparatively few Roma are in litterature and movie business for example, so their experience tends to be less visible in popular culture.
The part about "in the western world" is pretty significant, as people identify more with people that they perceive to be more like themselves. That's probably a big part of the reason why we don't hear as often about the large 20th century genocides in China & Africa for example.
Hitler famously reasoned that in 50 years nobody would care about the jews, as at that time, already few remembered the armen genocide.
Here is archival footage from Night and Fog of people very similar to you calmly waiting to board trains as if they were going on vacation. Look at what they're wearing. All are wearing nice clothing, their bags are packed with a week's worth of clothes. You can see them then being crammed into the cattle cars. Most of these people were gassed immediately upon arrival.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PH8Da7lxpk&t=4m56s
Is there anything else like that in history? Genuine question.
I feel all weirded out.