Commenting http://edition.cnn.com/2014/04/27/world/meast/mideast-abbas-holocaust/index.html

Genocide of Jews - and Roma and other minorities - by the Nazis was a horrible crime against humanity, but it's far from an isolated incident in recent history.

Few examples:

Up to 35 million people from Soviet Union died in WW II, up to 20 million died in Stalin's purges.

In China, the great Taiping rebellion 1850-64 led to death of up to 40 million people, several rebellions at the same time had death toll in multiple millions. No one knows how many died in the warlord period in early republic, but it was again many millions of people. War against Japan in 1937-45 killed at least 15 million, the last period of civil war until 1949 and it's aftermath killed at least 10 million people, then came Mao's atrocities.

In Congo the Belgian colonial government according to it's own later calculation killed 50 % of population, 10 million people. The civil war in 1960s led to death of up to 1.5 million people, the civil war and Rwandan attacks since 1997 have killed between 2-7 million people.

In Burundi and Rwanda civil wars and genocide have caused the death of up to 2 million people (but probably closer to 1.6-1.7 million) since they gained independence in 1962.

In Cambodia the Khmer Rouge killed between 800 000 - 2 200 000 people between 1975 and 1979; according to some estimates 50 % of them belonged to the Cham minority.

Armenian genocide by the Ottoman Empire during WW I led to deaths of 800 000 - 1 700 000 people; normal estimate is 1.2-1.5 million deaths.

Many of the examples above had to do with ethnicity, pigment or religion.

We tend to think that genocide is a 20th century "invention" as a deliberate action, instead of happening previously as an "accidental" result of uncontrolled massacres (Conquistadors etc), but genocide has been used quite often in the past.

It was a common item among other "tools" of empires - and even by politically unorganized groups.

The Mongols are an extreme example of the former, when it comes to the latter the traditional Inuit story how they overcame their predecessors, the Dorset, is one of genocide, although recent genetic studies show that some of the Dorset were assimilated into the ranks of the Inuit.

The Inuit traditional history is one of many very similar ones around the globe; just like in the one in Bible about how Hebrews took over Canaan it gives us a story of a "positive" genocide - even when modern evidence shows that this isn't the whole truth.

People around the world have favoured these stories of genocide over more complicated reality, where there have been also peaceful co-existence so that the heritage, genetic and cultural, of the defeated have also been passed to them.

This preference tells us something about the nature of humanity.