Remembering the Holocaust

“It is not just these people who were killed but their futures were killed as well,” Charles Rix, Dean for the College of Humanities and Bible, said in relation to Jews killed during the Holocaust. “Their lives ended, but their futures and who they would have become also ended.”

International Holocaust Remembrance Day, on Jan. 27, 2022, will mark 77 years since the liberation of the concentration camps. 

Meredith Eck, a senior in Rix’s class Reading the Bible after the Holocaust, said the Holocaust often feels further in the past than it is in reality.

“It (the Holocaust) was less than 100 years ago and there are still people alive who survived it,” Eck said. “It still affects the world today.” 

Senior Maggie Mitchell took Rix’s class her freshman year when she studied abroad in Austria.  Mitchell said learning about the Holocaust can help people step into the shoes of the victims.

“It (the Holocaust) was not an overnight thing where Nazis started rounding up Jews and putting them in concentration camps,” Mitchell said. “It was years of anti-Semitic propaganda and making the Jews themselves feel less human.”

Junior Hannah Pritchard said although the Holocaust was a deliberate act, many people participated in the Holocaust with a herd mentality.

“It (the Holocaust) was perpetrated by people who did not think for themselves,” Pritchard said. 

Pritchard said a more in-depth education about the Holocaust could help connect Americans with the rest of the world. 

“In American culture, because of where we are geographically, it is so easy to detach from the Holocaust and say ‘oh it happened over there to these people,’” Pritchard said. “A greater education could help change the worldview to ‘we’re not so separate.’ Any of us could fall victim to those things and fall on either side and I think it is an important thing to realize.”  

Eck said younger generations need to be educated about the Holocaust. 

“I think it is important for kids to know not just a sanitized version of history and not pretend we live in a world where everyone is going to do the right thing all of the time,” Eck said. 

Don Drew, Professor of Business and Management, said the circumstances of the Holocaust were not unique enough for it to be considered an event incapable of repeating itself. For example, Drew referred to the Rwandan genocide which occured in the 1990s. 

“The lessons from the past are useful in seeing the possibility for something happening in the future,” Drew said. 

Rix said the reason he teaches a class on the Holocaust is to ensure each class of students are aware of what happened in the past so they do not repeat it.  

“People need to understand what humanity is capable of; the reality of genocide and the fact we are capable of doing this needs to be kept in front of every generation,” Rix said. 

Pritchard said learning about the Holocaust can help people develop their own beliefs. 

“I think it is hard when you learn about something in an educational setting not to just view it as numbers or names or lists,” Pritchard said. “We could incorporate it (The Holocaust) into people’s lives where it evokes an empathetic response instead of something entirely knowledge based.” 

Hannah Ewing said she gained a new perspective on how trauma affects people in Rix’s class. 

“Everyone in the Holocaust experienced trauma, so it is definitely something I have paid attention to a lot,” Ewing said. “I can relate trauma to everyday things and other people.”

Elijah McCoy said observing the trauma the Jews experienced during the Holocaust can help students accept imperfections.  

“You can have the mindset of bearing witness and understand trauma is in everyone,” McCoy said. “We are broken people and God works through our trauma.”

Rix said he wanted his students to know God acknowledges suffering. Rix gave several examples from the Old Testament, including how God paid attention to the death of Able, he sent his angel to visit Hagar in the wilderness and liberated the Israelites from their slavery in Egypt. 

“The law in Exodus is based on God calling Israel to remember their suffering and not cause others to suffer,” Rix said. “Therefore we need to pay attention to suffering. It is a theme that runs all the way through the Bible, Old Testament and New.” 

Rix also said he hopes his students learn to notice and appreciate the diversity of people. 

“What I hope students will see is to be aware of who is around them and to pay attention to people who may be at the margins. It is creating a vision for a wide group of people and the value of everybody,” Rix said.