ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book demonstrates that the Holocaust in many crucial respects is an unparalleled or singular event. The time has come to fix the place of the Nazi-engineered Holocaust against the Jews, Gypsies, and millions of others so that it may be accurately integrated into the mainstream of recorded history. The term Holocaust usually refers to what the Nazis called the "Final Solution to the Jewish question", namely, the deliberate, systematic extermination of all Jewish people. It also encompasses the relentless persecution, enslavement, and murder of many millions more: Gypsies, Poles, Slavs, gays, the mentally ill, the handicapped, and political dissidents. Of these non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust, numbering some 5.5 million people, it is clear that the fate of the Gypsies is generally accepted as being nearest to that of the Jews in the Nazi vision of a future "world without Jews" and Judaism.
