You can stop anyone on the street, ask them if they know about the Holocaust and they will probably know a lot about it. But why? Why do schools go to such great lengths to ensure their students learn about the horrors of the Holocaust and how this could happen under the leadership of a man named Adolf Hitler? How did someone like him become such a powerful figure and why did his supporters allow him to do such horrible things? Ultimately, the question is why do we learn so much about the Holocaust and what makes it so important? Let's start with Hitler's rise to power and how he wanted to achieve his "final solution." Hitler was born in Austria, but when he failed to get his way with the German government, he responded by attempting to overthrow the government and was thrown in prison for treason. While incarcerated, Hitler wrote a book roughly translated as "My Struggles" in which he talks about his plan to bring Germany back into the world as a leader after World War I (WWI) with what he calls his “final solution.” Hitler needed a scapegoat for Germany's defeat in World War I and created a list of people of color, handicapped people, mentally handicapped people, etc., with Jews at the top of his list. This list was called the Undesirable List. Hitler believed that if he killed all the undesirables, their genes could not be passed on, thus saving Germany. Hitler rounded up as many undesirables as he could and placed them in concentration/death/work camps where over eleven million people died because they couldn't help. You may wonder how people could allow Hitler to do such horrible things, but he was a very intelligent man in politics. He gave powerful and moving speeches and was a master of propaganda. It's unbelievable and frustrating... middle of paper ......compared to what Hitler did in Europe that still exists today. As we also learn about the Holocaust, we learn about discrimination and the terrible things that prejudice can lead to. We learn about the torture suffered by those held in camps and ghettos and it is very important to acknowledge the past and its tragedies, as terrible as they are. It is frustrating to think about the tragic events of the Holocaust and how the German people allowed such a horrible person to rise to power? Why didn't anyone stop him? And how could he do so many horrible things to so many people? These questions are still asked today without a clear answer, but I will end with two quotes from Edmund Bunke, an Irish philosopher. “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” and “Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it."