The Holocaust​—Why Should You Care?

‘DID the Holocaust really happen? Does it matter? Why should I care?’ some might ask.

One reason mankind should care is to ensure that history does not repeat itself. Concentration camp survivor Primo Levi expressed doubts that the concentration-camp mentality is really dead. He asked: “How much is back or is coming back? What can each of us do so that in this world pregnant with threats at least this threat will be nullified?”

Thus, Levi voiced the concern of many who wonder whether this type of horror could happen again. How does recent history answer? The history of atrocities, genocides, tortures, death squads, and “disappeared” and “liquidated” persons since 1945 in various countries is proof that the mentality that justified concentration camps is still alive and active.

And to those who have survived​—children, relatives, and friends of the dead—​the historical reality does matter. History is based on actual events and real people. Does it matter whether Jesus was a myth? Or whether Napoleon or Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, were real or fictional? Of course it does. The course of history has been changed by these men.

Likewise, the Holocaust has perhaps been the most shattering blow to the ego of civilized mankind in all history. As Primo Levi put it: “Never have so many lives been extinguished in so short a time, and with so lucid a combination of technological ingenuity, fanaticism, and cruelty.”

But there are those who doubt that it happened. They question whether the Holocaust is a historical fact.