What's the Worst Event in History?

@ Alex; periphery.
I never said we should. I said I can understand why we do. So I wouldn't necessarily be disgusted by it because I understand what it's like to feel pain from a result of something that has happened in the past.

The Holocaust, because nothing as awful has ever been done with the same awareness, calculated methodology and callous intention.

I really don't think any event in history can be categorized as the 'worst'. Most of the events had horrible deep psychological effects on those targeted or effected, and the amount of pain and damage can not be measured.

Its true that the Holocaust affected and killed many people who Hitler thought were 'imperfect'.

But slavery affected and killed Africans, Indians, Native Americans, and African Americans.

The colonization of America wiped out more than half of the Native Americans.

And there are loads of more events that killed, and hurt different people, but can we really measure how much pain and damage was dealt?

iBleedSarcasm:

I really don't think any event in history can be categorized as the 'worst'. Most of the events had horrible deep psychological effects on those targeted or effected, and the amount of pain and damage can not be measured.

Its true that the Holocaust affected and killed many people who Hitler thought were 'imperfect'.

But slavery affected and killed Africans, Indians, Native Americans, and African Americans.

The colonization of America wiped out more than half of the Native Americans.

And there are loads of more events that killed, and hurt different people, but can we really measure how much pain and damage was dealt?

People too often assume the Holocaust is a singular event rather than one event part of a very, very long history of anti-semitism in the West because we don't want to recognize that anti-semitism still exists and that our complicity to it makes us complicit in the Holocaust. The first recorded pogroms against Jewish people in Europe date back to the 11th century and for hundreds of years (depending on the country and not continuously), Jewish people were not even, from a legal point of view, people - they were objects, the personal possessions of the king who could do anything he wanted with them. Even when they were not treated as objects / slaves, they were denied rights, not offered protection from hate crime, rejected by mainstream culture (during the Middle Ages / Renaissance, Christian theologians debated whether Jewish people have a soul the same way latter they'd debate whether POCs have a soul), etc etc.

Also, the Holocaust killed 2/3 of European Jews - and of the ones that managed to survive it, the vast majority lost family and were displaced after WWII (I was reading a memoir of a Jewish Polish American immigrant whose parents had managed to survive the Holocaust and at one point she says, very eerily, that she didn't understand what or who grandparents were when she was a child because none of her friends had grandparents, as almost all the old(er) Jewish people had been killed during the war*). We're not even sure how many Romani people it killed, but estimates are between 1/2 and 2/3 of the pre-WWII population. Not to mention that the Nazis' ultimate plan was to either kill, enslave or sent to Siberia almost every non-German person living in Central and Eastern Europe (see, Generalplan Ost).

*On that note, I think it's not accurate to say that nobody experiences the Holocaust 'first hand' any more - obviously, people are no longer put into camps etc and I don't mean to suggest that people living now have any kind of authority over Holocaust experiences, just to suggest that it's not a dead historical event, somewhere very, very far away, very removed from our daily lives - we (especially those of us who live in areas where the Holocaust occurred) still live with it, still have to deal with what happened in our countries / cities, what our grandparents did, what we continue to do as a culture / community in our attempts to remember the victims of the Holocaust etc.

kafka.:

*On that note, I think it's not accurate to say that nobody experiences the Holocaust 'first hand' any more - obviously, people are no longer put into camps etc and I don't mean to suggest that people living now have any kind of authority over Holocaust experiences, just to suggest that it's not a dead historical event, somewhere very, very far away, very removed from our daily lives - we (especially those of us who live in areas where the Holocaust occurred) still live with it, still have to deal with what happened in our countries / cities, what our grandparents did, what we continue to do as a culture / community in our attempts to remember the victims of the Holocaust etc.

O.o I never said any of that...

@ spacejunkie
Hm...................... I don't know how to say this without going through this same argument again because I've already been through it. But that seems to be the answer for a lot of people I know and I really disagree.

iBleedSarcasm:

But slavery affected and killed Africans, Indians, Native Americans, and African Americans.

The people in bold are the same; I just felt the need to point that out.

@ Ayana Sioux
I'm not saying that other things aren't equally callous and horrible, like slavery and the stolen generations in Australia, or genocide in Rwanda, but the Holocaust is unique in just how meticulous and inhumanely organised it was.

@ Ayana Sioux
Actually Africans are from Africa and African Americans are children of Africans and whites. Well that's my definition anyway.

@ iBleedSarcasm
I don't think so. I think it's called African American because they're Africans (by decent) that were born in America. But some African Americans have none or little white in them. I can't claim differently though, because the white in me is closely traceable. But I think that after a while, .00001% white isn't good enough to consider someone mixed with both because it's hardly a mix.

But yeah, that's my opinion also.

When I think of the worst event in history, I definitely think of the Holocaust first. But slavery also comes to mind and so does the Titanic sinking, as some of the bad ones. They don't measure up to the terrors of the Holocaust but human suffering is bad altogether.

In my opinion, the worst event in history is from the point when Africans were taken from their homes, forced into ships where they didn't even have room to breathe and where half of them died, forced into slavery where millions died and millions more worked for nothing, where many were torn apart from their families, to the point where the KKK killed tons of people, burning down black homes, churches, and buildings. The torture of black people was far worse, than the torture of the Jews and the holocaust. Blacks were tortured for more than 400 years while the Jews were tortured for less than 20. Don't get me wrong, I know that the holocaust was bad, but i think that slavery was worse. Jews still know who they are and their culture, but black people has lost the knowledge of themselves.

@ Obsessive Writing
That's what I try to get across to some people, but a lot of times I get judged for it.

The Holocaust is nothing unique. For one, Germany did another ethnic in German South-West Africa in the early 1900's with the Herero people. One of the most notorious generals, Lothar von Trotha, initiated Hitler into the Nazi party to fingerprint suspected Communists in Munich. Without von Trotha, Hitler may have never had hatred towards the Jewish population. Without the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany wouldn't have ever gained as much ground as they did.

It seems to me that most people claiming to be 'knowledgable' about the Holocaust understand next to nothing about its origins. Or why it's easy to argue that it follows the Structuralism model of World War II & the Holocaust.

There was a lot of other cases of genocide. Ones that were equally terrible. The armenian genocide, Rwanda, Cambodia, Sudan... they all happened. The only difference is that they're not publicized as much as the Holocaust was. Especially in the United States. The US is extremely influenced by respected survivors like Eli Weisel, and there are a billion movies surrounding world war II and the holocaust. These graphic movies show how terrible it was an whatnot, and people automatically assume it was the worst event in history. You guys should watch Hotel Rwanda. It's pretty sad.

Obsessive Writing:

Blacks were tortured for more than 400 years while the Jews were tortured for less than 20.

I mean this without any disrespect, but that's not true. The holocaust lasted less than 20 years, but anti-semitism goes all the way back to the medieval era. And example would be the Siege of Jerusalem in 1099. The holocaust is the most publicized, but not the only time Jews were murdered.

I still maintain that the worst event was the evolution of man/creation of man since all these events have one common factor- humans.

Let's face it, as a species? Humans are cruel dickheads. To say one part of their cruelty was worse than others is superficial.

I might say World War ll all together including the Russian invasion, the Holocaust, all of that. Yes, it was a cruel inhuman act towards society, but I honestly think the Trojan war was far more bloody, if you believe all of that happened which I do. Also in in the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries were cruel as well. Vlad the Impaler anyone?

@ JeremyTheThirteenth
I totally agree with you, after reading the novel "Night" by Elie Wiesel, (read it! it opens your eyes so much to what really happened) I have to say the Holocaust and World war II were one of the world's weakest moments.

I personally believe that Constantine pressing Christianity as Roman state law was one of the worst events in history. Though it was not the most violent event in history, had it not been for his actions, many of the most violent events in history would not have taken place. It led to a violent chain of events such as the Crusades, the witch trials, and even the Holocaust.

I'd have to say all of the ones posted about...I mean no one is worse than the other, they're both as bad, and plus there may be events that even we don't know about. There are so many small towns/villages/islands etc that we don't know about.