The Holocaust presents a paradox for both the experienced scholar and the young student. It contains the forceful presence of the ultimate evil – the cruelty of human beings to each other, the mockery of basic of human values, and the unlimited degradation of men and women. At the same time the history of the Holocaust reveals great manifestation of love, compassion, courage, and heroism. In the study of the Holocaust one confronts the categorical defiance of God and human values, as well as the devotion to human values under the worst of conditions, including dire hunger, pain, suffering, and humiliation.

Scholars and educators often fall into the trap of talking about the Holocaust either in general and vague terms, such as referring to "man’s inhumanity to man" without identifying what stands behind the phrase; or else they concentrate on describing particularly cruel and violent behavior. They may demonize the historical figures and thus remove them from the realm of human beings. In fact, it is critically important that any analysis of the Holocaust should stress that it belongs within the domain of human behavior. All the actors – perpetrators, victims, rescuers, idle or engaged bystanders – were human beings, even when their actions were morally indefensible. They were not demonic or Satanic, despite what they did in the context of their ideology of death and hatred. And they confronted other human beings who had often been stripped of all human resemblance through starvation, humiliation, and the breakdown of the self. Therefor, beyond the generalizations, we must not forget the individual and his or her story.

I will start my presentation with a story of one woman who did not survive, nor leave a written record, but her story is recorded in the underground archive of the Warsaw Ghetto known as "Oneg Shabbat."

She was the wife of a shoemaker and we do not even know her full name, but I shall call her Dina. Dina and her family barely made a living from her husband’s craft of shoemaking and repair. She raised their three children, took care of the house, and helped the family business by selling the shoes in the marketplace. This role for the wife – both managing the home and supporting the family business – was very typical in lower middle class Jewish families in Poland. When the war broke out and the city of Warsaw was heavily bombed, the family’s home was damaged, but they did not have to move out. A few weeks after the occupation began, Dina’s husband was kidnapped and deported to a forced labor camp, from which he miraculously returned after a few months. He was, however, physically and mentally ill and for long months was unable to resume his responsibilities at home and return to his work.

Even before his return Dina had to find the means to provide for her children. She began by selling what was left of her husband’s stock. When this was sold out, she extended her small commercial endeavor to include other commodities and demonstrated inventiveness and independence. She sold food and produce brought to the city from the villages, and thus she provided for her children and her ailing husband. As the fall of 1940 approached, her husband recovered and was able to go back to his work. Dina managed to provide him with the hard-to-obtain leather, and returned to selling shoes. Just as she and her family began to hope for some stabilization, the order for all Jews to move into the ghetto struck them.

The search for a place to live, the crowded dwelling [they were forced to share], and finding themselves completely cut off from their former business ties were disastrous. However, the shoemaker’s family strove to endure and Dina, who thought that she could manage the unsafe streets better then her husband, turned to smuggling food and other merchandise from the Aryan side into the ghetto. This was a very risky enterprise. She spoke Polish well and knew the customs of the marketplaces and its cultural milieu well enough to be able to get along despite the tension and danger. Dina trusted her Polish friends not to inform on her movements, and to minimize the danger of passing through the ghetto entry points, she often stayed for a few days in the Aryan side. Her Polish friends risked their lives by hosting her and by providing her with merchandise that was in demand in the ghetto.

In the summer of 1941, our courageous shoemaker’s wife gave birth to her fourth child. The few weeks that she remained at home brought the family to the verge of starvation, and it was necessary that she resume her smuggling operations.

Welcomed by her Polish friends and pushed by the dire need of those in the ghetto, she ignored the growing danger and the Nazis’ increasingly harsh enforcement of the ghetto’s enclosure. In December 1941, the tireless and inventive Dina faced the cruel fate of being turned in by a Polish informer, and a month later, she was executed by the Nazis.

What will a historian learn from this story? This is but one example in the sources that describe in detail the human struggle to survive and resist the policy of the Nazi occupier to sever the Jews from their natural economic and social environment. In this short account of Dina’s last days, we encounter the details of her life that involved the family, friendships, and the suffering of the isolated and uprooted Jews in the ghetto. Such stories go beyond the "usual" tragedies of war since it belongs to the particular doom of the Jews – who were targeted by the Nazis to be excluded from human society. The exclusion included the relationship of the Jews with the Poles, who were also deemed to be subhuman and were themselves destined to become slaves of the "master race."

The historian, who places this narrative alongside many others in the political context of the Nazi era and the Second World War, reflects on the microcosm of the Nazi persecution of the Jews. The events recounted in Dina’s story preceded the mass killings in Warsaw and in the General Gouvernement. But by January 1942, when Dina was executed for committing an illegal act, over one million Jews had already been murdered by the Einsatzgruppen, and the first extermination camp in Chelmno was in operation.

These, then, present one of the greatest difficulties in the study of the Holocaust – why were Dina and the Jews excluded and sent to death? How and why did it serve the interests of the Third Reich? Scholars and educators convey historical interpretation by examining motivation and incentives embedded in the social, political, and cultural reality. However, despite the vast effort devoted to clarifying the Nazi anti-Jewish policy and the attitudes and actions of Germans, historians and social scientists often conclude that the Nazis’ course of action and that of their followers defy all reason. Historical explanations endeavor to define a theory and a conceptualization that will demonstrate the connection between Nazi racial antisemitism and the decision-making process that led to Auschwitz. Whether one perceives a "twisted" or a direct road leading to the attempted extermination of an entire people, one is left bewildered and overwhelmed by the reality. And I think that we will always have to live with unanswered questions about the processes that culminated in the Holocaust.

This is more difficult still for the educator. Even if he can offer his students a sound interpretation of the behavior of the perpetrators, victims, and others engaged in action or inaction during the Holocaust, he is also obliged to suggest some meaning of the events, otherwise why teach it? Can he indeed derive some meaning from an event of almost total destruction? Will the teacher be able to convey to his students the enormity of the crimes committed without leading them to lose hope in humanity or become cynical about the condition of the world? What will his students carry with them once their hours of study are completed? I suggest we go back to the story of Dina and her like.

The task of a university teacher is twofold. She must help young adults to accumulate knowledge and insight about a short but very complex period, integrating an understanding of the crisis of democracy with the racial ideology and antisemitism that accompanied the rise of Nazism. The other task is to foster in the students a sense that despite the ugliness, cruelty, and desperation experienced in the Holocaust, it is important to struggle with the issues raised by it, for the attempt to find an accurate interpretation for the Nazi destruction is valuable in itself.

The second task is thus to help students who will themselves become schoolteachers to ask the educational question and use pedagogy to convey meaningful conclusions about the Holocaust. When these teachers will confront their adolescent students they must be able to move their students to act and be responsible for their own society and to promote tolerance and human rights. This is difficult because the Holocaust does not end with "consolation" and the triumph of "good" over "evil" as we can see in the example of Dina’s story. Hitler and the Nazis very nearly accomplished their goal of destroying the Jews of Europe. What, then, is the meaning of the Holocaust?

I think that it lies in the paradox with which I opened my talk. If we are able to connect an individual’s story, or the story of one family, one city, one country, one camp, to the general history of the Second World War and to the history of the political structure and ideology of the Third Reich, we may find the way to live with the paradox and achieve educational goals.

In studying these specifics a teacher must stress the knowledge of history, the understanding of major research debates, and the necessity of following continuing developments in research. It is useful to learn how scholars of different nationalities and backgrounds study the same issues in varying ways and ask differing questions. It is important for students to understand that historians are also asking the questions of their own time, and that they search within the past for solutions for issues of the present. We were motivated to convene this assembly because of the late civil wars in Africa and the former Yugoslavia that became genocidal, with their perpetrators using the terminology of the notorious past such as "ethnic cleansing." Such wording thundered in our ears and raised our consciences and made us alert. However, the past is never the present and analogies are never parallels. And despite the specificity of the Holocaust in its historical context, it should remain as a pointer to our responsibility to our fellow human beings.