Similarities Between The Holocaust And Holodomor

1230 Words3 Pages

The intentional murder of an enormous group of people is near unthinkable in today’s society. In the first half of the twentieth century, however, numerous authoritarian regimes committed genocide to undesirables or others considered to be a threat. Two distinct and memorably horrific genocides were the Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany and the Holodomor by the Soviet Union. In the Holocaust, The Nazis attempted to eradicate all European Jews after Adolf Hitler blamed them for Germany’s hardship in recent years. During the Holodomor, Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union attempted to destroy any sense of Ukrainian nationalism by intentionally starving and murdering Ukrainian people. The two atrocities can be thoroughly compared and contrasted through the eight stages of genocide. The Holocaust and Holodomor shared many minor and distinct similarities under each stage of genocide, but were mainly similar to the methods of organization, preparation, and extermination, and mainly differed …show more content…

This stage is known as denial. During both the Holocaust and Holodomor, the Nazis and Soviet Union attempted to demolish many camps to destroy evidence of the two events. However, both sides have a significant difference. Many Nazis confessed to the Holocaust and modern day Germany takes responsibility for the Holocaust, but Soviets then and modern Russia now refuse to admit that the millions of deaths were intentional. The Russian government has only stated that the millions of deaths were a tragedy due to the Soviet famine of 1932 (Motyl 30). The Russian Federations denial that the Holodomor was intentional came soon after the Orange Revolution in Ukraine and the country’s policymakers voted on whether or not to consider the event a genocide. In 2006 the Ukrainian parliament formally declared the Holodomor a genocide (Motyl 27). The Russian government was appalled by this

Open Document