History of the United States II / Unit 12 USH2 1691 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
The Holocaust
The idea
The Holocaust, in the anchor's words Hitler's plan to kill the Jews of Europe, began as early as nineteen thirty-three with Dachau, first in a system of more than forty thousand camps for imprisonment, forced labour and extermination. The Yawp calls it the systematic murder of eleven million civilians, including six million Jews.
In practice
Camps for imprisonment, forced labour and killing.
Where people slip
The numbers must be stated with care. Six million of the dead were Jews, murdered because they were Jews; the anchor's figure of some eleven million who died in the camps counts other victims too, among them Roma, gay men and lesbians, and political prisoners. An account that gives only eleven million erases whom the Holocaust set out to destroy. The Yawp says knowledge of the full extent came slowly to Americans.
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