| Hodgkins:And if one is going to discuss the Holocaust, I think one has the obligation to present the ideas which lay behind the decision of the German goverenment to carry out their policies. I don't think it is wrong to say, what is factually true, that most civilized nations deplored the practices of the Holocaust, and that it violated the accepted norms of Western civilization. But one should, IMO, be careful not to make a blanket and unequivocal statement simply that it was wrong, or unjustified, or bad, because those statements are only true within certain contexts. The accurate thing is to say that within the generally accepted norms of Western civilized thought it was evil and wicked and inexcusable. But if one has a totally different value system, it could, I suppose, be defended as good and just and a failure only because the war ended before the Nazi government was able to succeed in obliterating the Jewish race from the face of the earth. Not my view, I trust it is unnecessary to say. But that is a view which students are, if they wish to, IMO, entitled to adopt if that's where their moral and intellectual development leads them. |
