Hello, and thank you for joining me today.

I'm Mr. Marchant, and I'll be your history teacher, helping to guide you through all of our resources in today's lesson.

My top aim is to help you understand the content of this lesson and ensure that you can successfully meet today's learning objective.

Welcome to today's lesson, which is part of our unit on the Holocaust, where we're asking ourselves, what was the Holocaust? By the end of today's lesson, you'll be able to explain what was distinctive about the Holocaust.

There are five keywords which will help us navigate our way through today's lesson.

Three of those are genocide, holocaust, and collaborator.

Genocide refers to the intent to destroy in whole or in part a particular national, racial, ethnic, or religious group.

The Holocaust was the murder of 6 million Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators.

And a collaborator is a person or group who works together with others for a particular purpose.

Our other two keywords for today's lesson are mortal enemy and perpetrator.

A mortal enemy is very serious and dangerous person or group who oppose or want to harm you.

And a perpetrator is someone who has committed a crime or a violent or harmful act.

Today's lesson will be split into two parts, and we'll begin by thinking about genocide and the holocaust.

Genocides have occurred throughout history in different parts of the world.

The word "genocide" gains its meaning from ancient Greek and Latin.

So if we break down that word, the first part of it, geno refers to a race or kind of people.

And the second part of the word, the suffix, cide, refers to the act of killing.

And therefore, genocide refers to the act of killing races or kinds of people, groups of people.

Genocide is not the same as mass murder, though.

Genocide refers to very specific acts of violence, which are deliberately aimed at destroying in whole or in part a particular national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.

Mass murder may kill many people, but without the aim of eliminating a particular national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, it cannot be classified as genocide.

So let's check our understanding of what we've heard so far.

How are genocides different from mass murder? Is it that genocides aim at destroying in whole or impart a particular group of people? That genocides only occur during times of war or serious conflict? or that genocides involve a greater scale of death and destruction, killing millions? Pause a video here and press play when you're ready to see the right answer.

Okay, well done to everybody who said that the correct answer was A, genocides differ from mass murder, because genocides specifically aim at destroying in whole or in part a particular group of people.

Many groups have become victims of genocides in the past.

Since the mid 20th century, internationally recognised genocides have included the Cambodian genocide against Cambodian Viets and Cham people.

The Bosnian genocide against Bosnians, and the Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi people of that country.

The Holocaust was also a genocide perpetrated by the Nazis and their collaborators who regarded Jews as both racially inferior and as a threat.

During the Holocaust, Nazi Germany and its collaborators attempted to eliminate all of Europe's Jewish population.

So thinking about what we just heard, which group of people were murdered during the Holocaust? Pause the video here and press play when you're ready to check your answer.

Okay, well done to everybody who said that the correct answer was Jews.

Jews with a group of people targeted and murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Holocaust.

The Holocaust lasted from 1933 until 1945.

Around 6 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Holocaust.

These victims came from across Europe.

60% of the continent's Jews were murdered, including over 80% of those living in Greece, Lithuania, and Poland.

So let's reflect on what we've just heard.

We have a statement on the screen that reads, "The Holocaust occurred only in Germany." Is that statement true or false? Pause video here and press play when you're ready to see the right answer.

Okay, well done to everybody who said that that statement was false, but we need to be able to explain why.

So pause the video here and press play when you are ready to reflect on your own justification of why that statement was false.

Okay, well done to everybody who said that that statement was false, because the Holocaust led to the death of 6 million Jews from across Europe as they were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators in other countries, as well as in Germany.

The word "holocaust" comes from ancient Greek, and refer to the idea of a sacrifice by fire.

Some groups refer to the genocide of European Jews between 1933 and 1945 as the Shoah rather than as the Holocaust.

This is because in Hebrew, Shoah means catastrophe.

This emphasises the destructiveness of the genocide without the religious implications that some people might link to the idea of sacrifice.

So let's check our understanding of what we've just heard.

I want you to change one word to correct the following sentence.

Some groups prefer to call the genocide of European Jews the Holocaust, because this name does not give any implication of Jews being sacrificed.

So consider which word appears to be incorrect in that statement, and what should it be changed to.

Pause the video here and press play when you are ready to reflect on your response.

Okay, well done to everybody who said that the incorrect word in this sentence was Holocaust, and that it should be changed to show up.

Some groups prefer to call the genocide a European Jews, the Shoah, because this name does not give any implication of Jews being sacrificed.

Shoah means catastrophe in Hebrew, and this is used to really give that impression of just how devastating the genocide European Jews was.

So we are now in a good position to put all of our knowledge about genocide and the Holocaust into practise.

I want you to write a summary of what the Holocaust was.

You should try to include each of the following words as part of your summary.

Shoah, genocide, and Europe.

So pause video here and press play when you're ready to reflect on your answer.

Okay, well done for all of your effort on that task.

So I asked you to write a summary of what the Holocaust was.

I also asked you to try and include all three of the keywords I offered as part of your answer.

So your response may have included: The Holocaust was a genocide of around 6 million Jews committed by Nazi Germany and its collaborators.

It occurred between 1933 and 1945.

The victims of this genocide came from all across Europe as the Nazis aimed to completely eliminate them, meaning Jews, from the continent.

As the word Holocaust originally referred to a sacrifice by fire, some people prefer to call the genocide of European Jews in the mid-20th century, the Shoah, which is a Hebrew word for catastrophe.

So well done if your own response looks something like that model, especially if you manage to include all three of those keywords.

And so now, we're ready to move on to the second part of our lesson for today where we are going to ask ourselves, what was distinctive about the Holocaust? The Holocaust is not the only genocide to have occurred in the past.

The Jews were also not the only group of people killed on a large scale by the Nazis and their collaborators in the 1930s and 1940s.

Nevertheless, the Holocaust is regarded by historians as distinct from other violence, which occurred at the time, and other genocides which have taken place through history.

Many different groups suffered from persecution under the Nazis and their collaborators.

In addition to Jews, this included amongst others, Soviet prisoners of war, POWs, Poles, the Sinti and Roma, and the disabled.

For instance, after Germany's invasion of the USSR, when Soviet soldiers fell under Nazi control, they were often treated poorly over the course of World War II.

This poor treatment led to the deaths of around free millions Soviet prisoners of war.

In each of these cases, Nazi persecution was partly motivated by the idea that these groups were inferior to themselves.

Nevertheless, historians generally still consider the Jewish experience of the Holocaust as distinct from these other forms of persecution.

The Nazis did not only consider Jews to be racially inferior, they also saw them as mortal enemies who threatened the survival of Germany and Europe.

Therefore, in Nazi thinking, the threat posed by Jews had to be eliminated.

It was this belief which led the Nazis to plan for the complete destruction of Jews and Jewish culture.

Whilst millions of Poles and Soviets were murdered by the Nazis.

This was not part of an attempt to eliminate all members of those groups.

By contrast, the Nazis and their collaborators intended to kill every single Jew in Europe, and even made plans to kill Jews living in Palestine, a British colony located outside of Europe, had they been able to defeat Britain in the war.

In a similar way, the Holocaust was distinct from virtually all other genocides which had been perpetrated in the past.

In many other genocides, children from the group being targeted are abducted rather than killed.

These abductions allow the children to be raised as part of the perpetrator's culture, helping to eliminate the identity they previously belonged to.

For instance, during the Armenian genocide between 1915 and 1917, many children were abducted and forced to convert from Christianity to Islam.

However, whilst the Nazis followed a similar approach in their treatment of tens of thousands of Soviet and Polish children, they did not do so for Jewish children simply because of their birth and their identity.

Jewish children were still viewed by the Nazis as a mortal threat.

Therefore, as many as 1.

5 million of the victims of the Holocaust were Jewish children.

So let's reflect on everything that we've just heard.

I want you to identify two other groups other than Jews who were persecuted by the Nazis.

Pause a video here and press play when you're ready to check your answers.

Okay, well done to everybody who said any two of the following groups, Soviet prisoners of war, Poles, the Sinti and Roma, and the disabled alongside Jews.

All of these groups were persecuted by the Nazis.

And let's try another question.

This time, I want you to write the missing keywords from the following sentence.

The Nazis regarded Jews as, blank, blank, of Germany and Europe.

So what are the missing words? Pause the video here and press play when you're ready to check your answer.

Okay, well done to everybody who said that the missing keywords were mortal enemies.

The Nazis regarded Jews as mortal enemies of Germany and Europe.

In this sense, they saw Jews differently from other groups they persecuted.

Whilst they considered Jews, Poles, the disabled all as inferior group, it was only Jews who were considered mortal enemies, dangerous and eternal enemies, opponents of Germany and Europe.

And let's try another question.

This time, we have a statement on the screen that reads, "Nazis were willing to allow Jews who helped them to live." Is that statement true or false? Pause the video here and press play when you're ready to see the right answer.

Okay, well done to everybody who said that that statement was false, but we need to be able to justify our response.

Why is that statement false? Pause video here and press play when you're ready to reflect on your response.

Okay, well done to everybody who said that that statement was false because of their identity and regardless of their behaviour, age, or other factors, the Nazis regarded all Jews as mortal enemies who had to be eliminated for Germany to survive and succeed.

So well done if your own response looks something like that.

And let's try one final question.

How did perpetrators of the Armenian genocide often treat Armenian children? Was it that they abducted them and forced them to convert to Islam? That they forced them to fight in the perpetrator's armed forces? Or that they murdered them alongside their mothers and fathers? Pause video here and press play when you're ready to see the right answer.

Okay, well done to everybody who said that the correct answer was A.

During the Armenian genocide, Armenian children were often abducted and forced to convert to Islam.

This meant they were allowed to survive, but the action was still intended to destroy Armenian identity and culture.

In this way, the Holocaust differed from many other genocides where children, rather than being abducted by the Nazis and their collaborators, were still often killed just like adults, because they were seen as mortal enemies just as Jews of any age were.

And so now, we're in a good position to put all of our knowledge about the distinctiveness of the Holocaust into practise.

We're gonna split task B into two parts.

Firstly, I want you to explain one reason why the Holocaust has been considered distinct from the persecution of other groups by Nazi Germany and its collaborators.

And then secondly, I want you to explain one reason why the Holocaust has been considered distinct from other genocides.

So pause the video here and press play when you are ready to reflect on your responses.

Okay, well done for all of the effort which you've put into that task.

So firstly, I asked you to explain one reason why the Holocaust has been considered distinct from the persecution of other groups by Nazi Germany and its collaborators.

And your answers may have included: The Holocaust has been considered distinct from the persecution of other groups by Nazi Germany and its collaborators, because it attempted to eliminate all Jews in Europe.

Other groups were killed on a large scale at the same time as the Holocaust.

For example, around 3 million Soviet prisoners of war were killed once they were under Nazi control.

However, the Nazis did not aim to kill all Soviets, whereas they did aim to kill all Jews because Nazi ideology, the way that they fought, presented Jews not just as inferior, but also as a mortal enemy.

For this reason, the Nazis even planned to kill Jews in areas outside of Europe, including Palestine had they been able to defeat Britain in World War II.

So well done if your own response looks something like that model answer, which we've just seen.

And for the second part of task B, I asked you to explain one reason why the Holocaust has been considered distinct from other genocides.

And your answer may have included: The Holocaust has been considered distinct from other genocides, because of its focus on killing all Jews.

In many other genocides, while some children have been killed by the perpetrators, many others are abducted and forced into new cultures.

For instance, during the Armenian genocide, many children were abducted and forced to convert to Islam.

This practise helps to destroy the culture and identities which those children had belonged to.

However, because the Nazis viewed all Jews as a threat, regardless of age or other factors, they refused to abduct and try to change the identities of Jewish children.

Instead, 1.

5 million Jewish children were murdered.

So again, well done if your own response looks something like that model, which we've just seen.

And that means we've now reached the end of today's lesson, which puts us in a good position to summarise our learning about the context of the Holocaust.

We've seen that the Holocaust was a genocide during which 6 million Jews were murdered by Nazi Germany and its collaborators.

During the Holocaust, Jews from across Europe were murdered as the Nazis aimed to eliminate all Jews from the continent.

The Nazis considered Jews racially inferior, but also viewed them as mortal enemies who threatened Germany and Europe's survival.

And the Nazi's intention to kill all Jews, even regardless of age, made the Holocaust distinct from other forms of Nazi persecution and other historical genocides.

So really well done for all of your effort during today's lesson.

The Holocaust can be a difficult and challenging topic to study.

So I'd like to thank you for your maturity during this lesson, and I look forward to seeing you again in future as we continue to think about the Holocaust and what exactly it was.