Do we need more studies of the Holocaust? It is difficult to avoid the question as one considers this volume. The literature on the subject is enormous and still growing, as the impressive thirty-one–page bibliography of this study also indicates. Clearly, historians, philosophers, and social scientists have refused to agree with the sentiment often expressed that the unique horror of the Holocaust is basically incomprehensible. The subject continues to stimulate morbid fascination and renewed efforts to understand it. These studies have been inspired by the hope that they will not only lead to deeper understanding but could also contribute to preventing the recurrence of similar catastrophes. Unfortunately, as the huge massacres in Cambodia and Rwanda suggest, these hopes remain unfulfilled. The desire to purify the world of variously defined undesirable groups persists and remains the common denominator of major outbursts of political violence.
Aside from curiosity and the hope that understanding might modify human misbehavior, several considerations may justify further studies of the Holocaust. The most obvious would be new source materials; the second, new questions and the possibility of new findings and insights, based on the new sources and questions. At last it may be argued that there is room for studies (such as this one) which summarize, synthesize, and evaluate what has been learned over time about these matters from the innumerable sources already available.
The desire to purify the world of variously defined undesirable groups persists.
The study here reviewed meets many of
