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[Coop and Dino singing]

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All right, guys, we’re gonna take a break from being our usual silly selves for a second [People playing around in a meeting room]

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because we have to talk about something pretty serious.

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Unfortunately, human history has some very dark chapters, when people did incredibly

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horrible things to each other.

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One of the worst chapters in our history was the Holocaust.

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The Holocaust was a mass genocide -- a deliberate killing of a large group of people -- [Coop discussing the history of the holocaust]

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that took place between 1934 and 1945.

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The man primarily responsible was Adolf Hitler.

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He believed that non-Jewish Germans were "a superior race" and that Jewish people were [Coop discussing Hitler's philosophy]

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the enemies of the rest of the Germans, so he developed and carried out a plan that was

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meant to kill all Jews.

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In 1933, Hitler was the leader of the Nazi party, which had become an important force in German politics. [Girl watching video of Germany Army soldiers]

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That year, Paul von Hindenburg was re-elected as President of Germany. Hindenburg wanted

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nothing to do with the Nazi party…or Hitler… but he gave in to rising pressures and appointed

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Hitler as chancellor of Germany.

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Great time to cave, buddy.

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When Hindenburg died in 1934, Hitler claimed the presidency and the Nazis became the ruling [Nazi army marching on a TV]

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political party in Germany until the end of World War II in 1945.

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During their rule, the Nazis imprisoned millions of Jewish people and anyone else they considered [Jewish people holding their hands up]

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inferior, including homosexuals, Gypsies, and the disabled.

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Hitler called his plan "The Final Solution to the Jewish Question."

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He organized the extermination of the Jewish people in Germany, Poland, and other Eastern

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European countries, shipping many to concentration camps.

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Millions of Jews and other minorities were imprisoned in these camps, where they were [Photographs of concentration camps]

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starved, tortured, and murdered.

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People imprisoned in concentration camps usually didn't last a year. Some only lived for a

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few days or weeks. Over ten million men, women, and children were killed during this period.

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The Nazis were highly organized and feared. Still, the behavior of the rest of the German [Woman walks up to fence of a concentration camp]

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population is a mystery. Why didn't they try and stop the mass killings?

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After World War II, many German people said that they didn't even know what Hitler was doing.

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Nazi soldiers in charge of the imprisonment, deportation, and murder of the concentration

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camp victims said that they were forced to do what they did, and would have been murdered [Nazi leader shouts at Nazi soldiers]

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themselves if they disobeyed. Meaning…they were kinda prisoners themselves.

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Although the Holocaust is long over, the questions about why it happened are still very much

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worth asking, if just to make sure an event like it never happens again. [Human history book closes]

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