The article examines the question how specific the holocaust was and how can it be compared to other genocides – the fate of Armenians or the German repression of soviet peoples also resulting in millions of victims. According to the author, the specificity is that the holocaust was not limited to one country only, as it happened in Turkey before, and offered no escape for the Jews, while it offered the chance for collaboration for other citizens of the Baltic states and the Soviet Union.

The article presents the origination of the so-called Auschwitz Protocols and its reception, as well as its influence on later literature and historical memory. The protocols also question the responsibility of the ruling Hungarian elite in the tragedy of the rural Jews in Hungary, since this document was presented to the Hungarian leaders including the circles of Horthy.

This study reveals an area of the holocaust, which is less discussed in the scientific literature in Hungary. The Nazis set up ghettos in the occupied soviet areas immediately. The author presents the conditions of establishing these ghettos, their way of operation and movingly depicts their life: the hardships facing inmates, and what could they achieve concerning education and health care.

The coexistence of Christian minority nations and the majority Muslim population in the area of the Ottoman Empire suffered from bloody conflicts, after the nationalist movements started to emerge in the Balkan at the end of the 18th century influenced also by the intervention of great powers. The problem know as the Eastern Question, also involved the Armenian question, which received more weight in the second half of the 19th century, leading to the lethal politics of deportations in 1915 killing hundreds of thousands of people.