promote and reinforce Holocaust education. They say that ‘teaching about mass suffering
only began after the Second World War, or to be specific, after the Holocaust’. 6 It has been
suggested that when the horrors of the Holocaust were revealed internationally, the world,
after it had just been involved in a six-year war, believed it had to then educate the next
generation. The Holocaust is clear proof of how easy it is for a mass killing on that scale to
occur. It can start from the point where there are divisions within a society.
The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust (HMDT), a charity that was set up in 2005 to
support Holocaust Memorial Day, argues that there are ‘ten Stages of Genocide’. They show
just how paramount it is to spread awareness about mass slaughter, for the sake of the next
generation. The HMDT states that they begin with the ‘Classification’. These are the
stereotypes of certain groups within a society. The HMDT writes ‘there’s a division of “us”
and “them”’. ‘Symbolism’ follows this. The Yellow Star of David was the symbol that Jewish
people were forced to wear. It was a ‘visual manifestation of hatred’. This then alienates an
entire group. This is accompanied by the next two steps: ‘Discrimination’ and
‘Dehumanisation’. This is where certain rights are denied to the alienated group of people
(Jews were stripped of their German citizenship) and their dignity is removed. Jews were
likened to rats. As the HMDT states under the fifth stage of ge nocide, ‘Organisation’,
‘Genocides are always planned. Regimes of hatred often train those who go on to carry out
the destruction of a people’. 7 This is how brutal events like Kristallnacht took place. The
violence was organised by an influential leader.
6 International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, The Holocaust and Other Genocides (2022), <https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/resources/educational-materials/holocaust-and-other-genocides> [Accessed 05/12/2022], para. 2 7 Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, The Ten Stages of Genocide (2019), <https://www.hmd.org.uk/learn-about- the-holocaust-and-genocides/what-is-genocide/the-ten-stages-of-genocide/> [Accessed 05/12/2022]
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