Nephi begins with specifics relating to the Old World community. His detail for this community‘s future comes in part from his exegesis of Isaiah’s theme of redemption, but also because his own feelings still go out to his old homeland and have been the focus of very powerful revelations he has received - portions of which he will summarize here.
Historical: Nephi’s immediate reference for a destruction of Jerusalem is the Babylonian captivity his father had foretold, and which they had escaped through the desert and on to a New World. Nevertheless, Nephi is also aware of another historical destruction, that which was the subject of much of Isaiah’s discourse. The eventual fulfillment of those prophecies lay in the destruction of the Northern kingdom, and the removal of the ten tribes.
In prophetic vision Nephi foresees other destructions to come upon the Jews, and any of the terrible pogroms against the Jews in more recent history can attest to the accuracy of Nephi’s vision. Nevertheless, Nephi reminds them as he reminds us, that such things are foretold by the prophets, and are ultimately caused by our refusal to completely follow the Lord.
This is not to say that the Jews are to blame for the Holocaust. Far from it. Just as with the destructions predicted by the hand of Assyrian and Babylon, Israel can be placed in a position where the Lord is unable to stay the destructive hand, a series of events no doubt enabled by other events in Israel’s past.