The Importance of Teaching the Holocaust to Future Generations
Eighty years ago, on January 27, 1945, Soviet forces overran a section of German-occupied Poland. The Nazis had been on the run for a couple of years by this point, near the end of World War II, so it was not the retreat that shocked the Soviets. In the neighborhood of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Soviets discovered 600 corpses and 7000 live, emaciated prisoners. It was only the beginning of the discovery of the horrors of the Holocaust, a word now used as a synonym for evil.
In 12 years of Nazi power, and particularly after the 1942 start of the “Final Solution,” some six million Jews, along with five million Slavs, Roma, dissidents, and other prisoners, were worked, shot, or gassed to death. The bulk were taken from modern-day Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine, but Hitler’s odious apparatus netted victims from across Europe, sometimes with complicity of local governments. The Nazis claimed that the Jews were being resettled in newly conquered areas of the USSR, but they were instead systematically executed. Those who could work were worked to death. Those who couldn’t work, including children and the elderly, were killed with all the industrial genius of the German nation.
What should be a source of shock for today is the increasing number of young Americans who doubt that the Holocaust, one of the most well-attested events in all history, even happened. The records are there, as were a number of eyewitnesses. The Nazis said they were going to do it, and Germans today admit they did. This evil happened.
This is why Holocaust Remembrance Day is important to note and observe, especially with the next generation. It is a historical marker that forces us to face the reality and potential of evil. Especially in a culture like ours, which too often caricatures evil, we must not downplay the potential of humanity to commit evils after the Fall.
My generation owes much to films that taught us about the Holocaust, such as Schindler’s List, Life is Beautiful, or The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Schools once assigned books such as The Diary of Anne Frank, Man’s Search for Meaning, or Eyewitness to Auschwitz, in which a narrator describes three years working in the crematorium. The Holocaust Museums in Washington D.C. and Jerusalem are especially invaluable tools for bolstering our cultural memories.
It is a profound and dangerous mistake to deny this evil or to assume it is a matter of the past as if our “enlightened age” is incapable of doing what our ancestors did. Moral evolution is a pernicious and dangerous lie. Future generations must know the truth of the human condition, lest they too are deluded by moral and technological hubris.
After all, the Holocaust was not the work of the oppressed seeking to redress sins of the past. Nor can it be explained as the work of barbarians or uneducated bigots lashing out against all who were different. Germany was arguably the most scientifically advanced and best-educated nation in the world at that time.
The unnerving HBO movie Conspiracy portrays how military, legal, and political German leaders gathered at the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942. There, they set in motion a plan to rid the world of Jews. Most of the men at that meeting were caught and killed or died before the end of the war, but their actions endure as among the vilest archetypes of human depravity.
The Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazi regime is the most well-known horror of a horror-filled twentieth century. At Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Bergen-Belsen, the world confronts the realities of evil in this world and the human condition. Whatever it takes, we must never forget.
Photo Courtesy: ©Pexels/Alexander Zvir
Published Date: January 27, 2025
John Stonestreet is President of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, and radio host of BreakPoint, a daily national radio program providing thought-provoking commentaries on current events and life issues from a biblical worldview. John holds degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (IL) and Bryan College (TN), and is the co-author of Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview.
The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of CrosswalkHeadlines.
BreakPoint is a program of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. BreakPoint commentaries offer incisive content people can't find anywhere else; content that cuts through the fog of relativism and the news cycle with truth and compassion. Founded by Chuck Colson (1931 – 2012) in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on today's news and trends. Today, you can get it in written and a variety of audio formats: on the web, the radio, or your favorite podcast app on the go.
