Wars and Death

"When 1 man dies it is a tragedy, when 1 million men die, it is a statistic".
Stalin said this and I can't help but realize how eerily true this statement is. I flip through my history textbooks and read about... I don't some war where 300 people were killed and I think, "That's not that bad, 20 million Russians were killed during WW2. Then we come to the Jews and the Nazi's where 6 million were tortured and murdered, and I think "Well I mean, worse things have happened. Look at the Korean war where 10 million men, women and children were slaughtered".

The shocking amount of people that have died have become mere statistics and I forget to think that those 10 million men were men. They had families and they had homes and they had lives. The grief we feel when one person in our family dies is inconsolable; imagine 10 million families and their grief. Of course, assuming that the families hadn't already died. Imagine the number of generations that ended during those 3 years. Sons that would never have sons, family names dying out and heritage ending.

20 million Russians
6 million Jews
2 million Cambodians
Million

The numbers have gotten so big that I cannot grasp the concept of a million anymore. The illusory concept of 20 million Russians dying is foreign to me. I cannot imagine that amount of people dying. But of course, it happened. History says so.