(RNS) The biblical book of Esther is the source of the Purim holiday, which starts this year at sunset on Feb. 27 with synagogue readings, and continues the next day with carnivals, costume parties, and holiday foods.

It’s not exactly the Jewish version of Mardi Gras, or even Halloween, but close.

Purim commemorates the deliverance of the Jews from extermination inancient Persia (modern-day Iran). Their annihilation was devised by Haman, the evil prime minister who served under the weak King Ahasuerus. Purim is the Hebrew term for the “dice” or “lots” that were cast to determine the date of the slaughter.

But Ahasuerus’ Jewish queen, Esther, successfully used her royal position to rescue herself and her people. The book bearing her name concludes with Haman put to death on the very gallows he had erected for the Jews.

Haman, one of the first leaders in history to plan the slaughter of an entire people, may have failed in his obscene plot, but there have been many others throughout history who succeeded at genocide.

Here’s a list of quotable quotes from seven latter-day “Hamans.” Guess who said them (here’s a hint: one is from Haman himself). Answers follow at the end.

1. “Since he is of no use anymore, there is no gain if he lives and no loss if he dies.”

2. “They have neither the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits, nor the desire of improvement which are essential to any favorable change in their condition. Established in the midst of another and a superior race, and without appreciating the causes of their inferiority or seeking to control them, they must necessarily yield to the force of circumstances and ere long disappear.”

3. “I go on this journey only after avenging the blood of the crucified one by shedding Jewish blood and completely eradicating any trace of those bearing the name `Jew,’ thus assuaging his (Jesus’) own burning wrath.”

4. “There is a certain people, scattered and dispersed among the other peoples … whose laws are different from those of any other people. … Let an edict be drawn for their destruction … to destroy, massacre, and exterminate (them) …”

5. “The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of millions is a statistic.”

6. “Treatment of (the hated group) … is part of the … task of national regeneration. A solution can only be achieved if the philosophical perspectives are observed. … The aim of measures taken by the State to defend the homogeneity of the … nation must be their physical separation from the nation, the prevention of miscegenation, and finally, the regulation of their way of life. … The necessary legal foundation can only be created through a … law which prevents further intermingling of blood, and which regulates all the most pressing questions which go together with their existence … in the living space of the … nation.”

7. “(I am) determined to clear up the Jews in Europe without compunction. … We must accelerate this process with cold ruthlessness, and in so doing we are rendering an incalculable service to a human race that has been tormented by Jewry for millennia.”

The answers:

No. 1 was Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge leader in the 1970s. It is estimated he ordered the murders of nearly 2 million Cambodians.

No. 2 was President Andrew Jackson, in 1833, when he ordered the mass expulsion of American Indians from their homelands, many of whom died on the “Trail of Tears.”

No. 3 was the Christian knight Godfrey of Bouillon, setting out on the first Crusade in 1096.

No. 4 are Haman’s own words from Chapter 3 of Esther.

No. 5 is attributed to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. While there is no definitive source for the quotation, scholars estimate he is responsible for at least 20 million deaths.

No. 6: I omitted the names of the “nation” and its intended victims. The words, written in 1938 by Nazi SS Chief Heinrich Himmler, refer to Germany and European Gypsies.

No. 7 is no surprise: Adolf Hitler in 1942, the person responsible for the Holocaust.

Haman may have been one of the first genocidal maniacs, but sadly, he wasn’t the last.

(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser, is the author of “The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the Rest of Us.”)