Total Domination

I believe that there is not a single adult in the world today that has never heard of the Holocaust. When first learning about it myself, I was disgusted. First, I thought I was being lied to. Why? At the age I was at the time and even now I still find it unfathomable that any human being could subject another human being to the torment, humiliation and injustice that the Jewish people were subjected to during the Holocaust. I am convinced now that the horrible things that I was told and read about actually happened to these innocent people. Even today, as an African American, I have been discriminated against simply because of my race. And the ideology that someone can create such an enormous lie based off of racial superiority and forever change the history of an entire race for the worst is extremely scary, especially being a minority. When reading this, I was kinda scared by something Hitler stated "to be successful, a lie must be enormous" (Arendt 91). In a sense, I took that as meaning if someone were to come up with a lie that was so big, no matted how outrageous, it could be accomplished simply because out of fear no one would question it. And for me, that explains the role of terror in a totalitarian state. Not enough people came to question what was happening and why.
And this was understandable during the particular time that these events happened, but at the same time just knowing that this happened leaves my mind in awe because if it happened once, whose to say it can't happen again. Have we really evolved as a a human race to value every human life as if it were our own? No!

Arendt, Hannah. "Total Domination." A World of Ideas: Essential Readings for College Writers. Ed. Lee A. Jacobus. 7th ed. New York: Bedford/St. Martins. 2006. pp. 88-96.