What is the purpose of our memory and why do we remember the past? In an evolutionary perspective. I would say that we remember the past to see what works, and not to do what does not work. To bring the successes with us in the future and leave our failures behind. When we say that we will remember the holocaust, what are we going to remember?

That is a difficult question to ask, and even harder to answer. Has it though us that there is something wrong with Germans?, that it was isolated to that time and place? Or perhaps it was the consequence of following pathological leadership or was it because of economical turmoil? All valid answers and valid lessons to learn, perhaps not the lesson there is something wrong with Germans. However there is another lesson that i belive is of great importance to learn, a lesson that i belive is terrifying to learn. That the atrocities of the holocaust was committed by ordinary men, and that we are ordinary men.

Reading history in the views of the victims can be a hard thing to do, but reading history in the eyes of the prosecutors, that is truly terrifying. We can see that due to pure statistics, if you or i, lived in Germany during the 1930-40 we would, with a large probability, have been Nazis. We would have been ordinary men, capable of immense cruelty. Reading history in the eyes of the prosecutors is a hard thing to do, but that is probably where we belong, which is a hard lesson to learn.

There is a book called ” Ordinary Men” that shows the journey of ordinary police officers in Germany, that during the war voluntarily committed some of the most brutal murders of the holocaust. They became a German death squad, whose deeds are so brutal that i do not want to write them.

The Nazi regime did not come to power because of luck, the came to power by giving the people what they wanted. That is how they gained the support to control the country. Ordinary men, that supported the cruelty that led to genocide. Ordinary men that carried out each order.

I belive that the lesson we should learn from the holocaust, is that we, that i, am capable of such unbelievable horror, we can create hell on earth. History can show us, that brutality, is part of our human nature. This evil that exists, it exists in all of us, or so i belive (and think history can show us), is something that we must be aware of, that we must battle against. Without battling our evil within, we can not be truly good. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. We must be on our guard so that such incomprehensible cruelty, genocide, never happens again, for we are all capable of it. That is the lesson that i belive we should learn.