A heavy topic

In school we are studying World War II and the Holocaust. Last night I saw a movie called "The Devil's Arithmetic", the story of a sixteen-year-old girl who gets sent to a concentration camp. The movie really affected me, especially when they forced everyone to cut their hair--even the girls, and when the Nazis branded serial numbers on the prisoners' arms. I was appalled, maybe a little irrationally, that there were women Nazis working in the camps also. What is it that makes humans turn against one another like this? What did they see in the Jews that made them lower than the mud under their feet? What was it that prompted them to destroy so many innocent lives?

Communication

Let's visualize a scenario in which a group of extraterrestrial beings, in a spaceship, lands on Earth. They cannot speak our language and we cannot interpret each other's body language. How can we communicate with them, to make them aware of our intelligence (intelligence being a general term here)? What message would we give to them?

Utopia

Do you think our world could ever be perfect? What is a perfect world and how would we go about creating one, or changing ours so it fits the vision of perfection?