Why I Keep Studying the Holocaust

For the past forty years I have been obsessed by the Holocaust. It may be because my parents were survivors.  Maybe because I am Jewish.  Maybe because so many of my relatives were murdered over there.  Whatever it is, I teach the Holocaust in my classes.  I read what I can on the subject.  I have visited Auschwitz and Buchenwald.  I have been to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D. C.  I am presently thinking of writing a book on the works of Elie Wiesel.
  

Why do I care so much about an event that is almost eighty years in our past?  Isn’t it enough?  What more can possibly be said or discovered?  Let it go.  But I cannot and will not.  Why?


Eighty years ago, in the heart of Europe something happened which revealed to us the light and the darkness of the human soul.  The Nazi revelation teaches us the capacities of the human being to commit evil and to be rationally convinced that doing so is right.  Yes, there have been other horrific events which could also function as a revelation but none so well documented and unprecedented as the Holocaust.


There is book entitled: The Nazi Conscience by Claudia Koonz.  She describes how Nazis woke up each day, went to their jobs, day after day after day, murdered Jews and others in massive numbers and were convinced they were right.  Their consciences were clear.  Many were lifelong Christians who did not see any contradiction between the mass killing and the Gospel of their faith.  For all their training in religious faith, their love of classical music, their education steeped in the liberal arts, none of it prevented the evil which occurred. Some of Hitler’s most prominent supporters were university professors in the Humanities and Natural Sciences not to mention prominent Christian pastors, theologians and philosophers. 
   

The Holocaust is a warning to us about what can happen.


As time goes by and the survivors continue to die, will the memory of the Holocaust also diminish, decline and fade away?  Today, the younger generations tell us they have not heard of it. 


So, I cannot and will not let go because I hope against hope if we keep studying, it may cumulatively have some effect.  Maybe, some of my students will eventually teach the Holocaust themselves.  Maybe a student who became a Pastor will remember, in his or her sermon, to caution the congregation to be aware of anti-Judaism in the New Testament.  Maybe some will teach their children to remember.  Maybe some will not forget. I hope so.


If I keep studying and teaching the Holocaust it is because I am puzzled and dismayed by the amazing power of fear in our brains.  That fear seems to resist taming by love, religion, the arts, the sciences, theology and philosophy, psychological therapy, and of course common sense.  There is something in our brains that resists taming the fear of the stranger.


To be honest, remembering and studying the Holocaust may not prevent other mass murders.  Since 1945 there have been many catastrophes, from the Cambodian Khmer Rouge murders to the Rwandan genocide and much more.  The killing has not stopped.  We feel helpless and it may be hopeless, but that is precisely why we must do what we can never to forget.  It is why I cannot stop studying the Holocaust.  The old Jewish saying is correct, “In memory lies redemption.”