LESSONS OF THE HOLOCAUST

As knowledge about the genocide of European Jews has exploded, the quest to distil its “lessons” has intensified. What can we learn from the Holocaust? Is there a redemptive message, or “take away” that may help prevent such depravity in the future?

Teasing these lessons out of the ashes of World War II is far more complex than familiar platitudes might suggest. Who defines the lessons? Where do we look for them—to the victims, to the perpetrators, to the bystanders, to the political leaders? How do we commemorate or memorialize the Holocaust? Indeed, are there lessons?

Michael Marrus, brings us into the conversation as he surveys this urgent question. Here are such authorities as Hannah Arendt, Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, Raul Hilberg, Emil Fackenheim, Christopher Browning, Daniel Goldhagen, and others. Yet, they often come up short on definitive “lessons.”

In this brief, sharp, stimulating analysis by a historian still totally engaged with his subject, Marrus offers the reader a new approach to the Holocaust lessons so many of us seek.

Michael Marrus is is a Fellow of Massey College at the University of Toronto and the Wolfe Professor Emeritus of Holocaust Studies. He is the author of The Holocaust in History, The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial 1945-46: A Documentary History, Vichy France and the Jews (with Robert O. Paxton), and Some Measure of Justice, on Holocaust restitution.