Holocaust!

I was not surprised when i found out that the term "genocide" was coined during Holocaust. Holocaust or the Shoah - Nazi regime's ruthless oppression at its high point; and it turns out that this was poor Non-Aryan German's worst nightmare.
Vikram Seth's "Two Lives" makes for a wonderful reading. Having not been a great enthusiast of History, I had very little exposure to German history. The protagonist of the book being German, the author delves into her life in detail. This is where i gained an insight into the state of family lives during the Nazi Regime. Reading all about concentration camps and extreme hostile environment that the Jews faced during this tyrannical rule, it was not hard to understand the emotional trauma that they were subject to.
One of the most horrific things i read was about the Auschwitz concentration camp. People who were taken to this camp were initially checked for a certain amount of fitness. If they were qualified fit to work, they would be used up as slaves for menial work near the marshy camps or otherwise. The others who did not get past this test on the affirmative were directly taken to be killed. I could not help but imagine the plight of these helpless people and put myself in their shoes. Even the very thought of it scares me. Nobody was spared this torture. No reprieve, no matter what! What probably was the most shocking thing to discern was that the Nazi's considered disabled people as a burden. But then, there is a better explanation to this. Nazis believed that Aryans were a perfect race!
While terror was unleashed in the most inhumane forms on innocent lives, it is difficult to understand what mindset one would have to perform such barbaric acts!