Many people know the Holocaust as the worst act of inhumanity ever committed. What some people don't realize is that similar events have happened throughout history. Genocide, as the Collins Gage Dictionary puts it, is “the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group,” and that is exactly what happens. Hitler's Holocaust was not entirely unique: during Hitler's rise to power, Stalin committed his own genocide, which in itself was not so different from Hitler's. Therefore, one could argue that Hitler's reign of terror was not the worst act of genocide that ever took place. When Hitler took power over Germany and declared himself sole dictator in 1933, all political parties except the Nazis were banned. (HB) From the beginning of his reign as dictator, Hitler slowly began to revoke all civil liberties for Jews that came with being citizens of the country in which they lived. This continued until Jews were considered second-class citizens. The mistreatment of Jews did not stop there: Jews began to be beaten in the streets and Jewish businesses were vandalized. At the start of World War II, Jews were sent to ghettos where they remained until they were transferred to either a labor camp or a death camp. (WS) The conditions in these camps were atrocious, the smell of death lingered in the air, and these smells came from the incinerators and gas chambers used to kill Jews. The poor people who were sent to these gas chambers never knew what they were walking into, they were often told they were going to take a shower, but once the chamber doors were closed, deadly gas was released (usually gas ZyclonB). The victims slowly suffocate... middle of paper ...... the big difference between the imposed methods is that Hitler used gas chambers to mass murder the occupants of these camps. "The deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group." If we looked at every major event throughout history and fit it into this definition, we would notice that Hitler's Holocaust is not unique. For example, the Rwandan genocide and the Armenian genocide, all happened in the 20th century and there are many others (over 30, some worse than others). have been part of human culture for centuries, but as the Holocaust shows, some of these genocides receive more media/historical coverage than others On this basis, we can say that the Holocaust, which. was a genocide, was not a unique event in history..