How Should I Teach the Holocaust This Time?

Professor John Roth offers a fresh perspective on Holocaust history, stating Holocaust history is an ongoing evolving warning against threats to democracy and individual human rights.

Today is January 27th, 2025—International Holocaust Remembrance Day. As we take time to honor the Holocaust victims and their families, we must reflect on a tumultuous 2024, fraught with violence and uncertainty, especially for Israel and Palestine. 2024 saw the continuation of the Israel-Gaza War, as escalations led to increasing bloodshed in Gaza and hostilities towards Israel in the international arena. The consequences of the Israel-Gaza war reverberated in the US, with many Arab Americans withdrawing their support for the Democratic Party and supporting either the Republican Party or third-party candidates in the hopes of a swift end to the conflict.

With the turning of the calendar into 2025 and a new US President, Israel and Palestine have reached a tentative ceasefire, allowing both Gaza hostages and refugees to return to their respective homes. The Gaza hostages return to their families after being seized by Hamas over a year ago and forced to live without proper medical care and even without food at times. The Gaza refugees return to a land filled with rubble from the shellings of yet another conflict between Israel and Hamas, exhausted from the devastation of their lives over the past few months.

“How should I teach the Holocaust this time?” Professor John Roth, the founding Director of the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights—now the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights, boomed out at the Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum at Claremont McKenna College on November 13th, 2024.

Professor Roth is right. In the light of the Hamas attacks on October 7th, 2023, in the aftermath of the Israel-Gaza War, in the rubble of the humanitarian crisis that has spread through Gaza, how should we teach Holocaust this time? Do we append recent events as the next chapter of the aftermath of the Holocaust?

Ambika Gupta and Catalina de la Peña’s conversation with Professor Roth on the Watchtower discusses the evolution of Holocaust study and its lingering aftermath—an aftermath that includes the formation of the state of Israel, the Nakba, and the subsequent conflicts between Israel and Palestine. The aftermath of the Holocaust is not over even with the ceasefire, as simmering tensions between Israel and Palestine remain boiling underneath the surface of the ceasefire and prisoner exchange. The next chapter looms large.

In “Revisiting the Holocaust with a Modern Lens with Professor Roth,” we hear a fresh perspective on Holocaust history. Professor Roth explores the Holocaust not as a story of the past on human rights but as a living narrative that warns against the fall of democracy and the protection of the rights of the individual.

“The Holocaust was a large-scale attack against a largely defenseless minority group, whose humanity and human rights are denied,” Professor Roth says in the podcast, “If Holocaust education and study today does not respond to circumstances where other people are besieged in that way, it fails.”

The Holocaust led the world to promise “Never Again.” We constructed international organizations such as the Human Rights Watch to track human rights violations and advocate for human rights. We created the International Human Rights Courts to oversee the implementation of human rights treaties. A whole range of academic studies popped up to explain the Holocaust, leading to the formation of Genocide Studies.

The horrors of the Holocaust led to academic exploration in history for historical causes, in theology for religious rationale, and in sociology for cultural influences. Psychologists conducted the Milgram experiment to test if individuals blindly follow orders that defy their personal beliefs. Philosophers like Julius Zell questioned why the Holocaust happened and how things could go so wrong. Professor Roth examined why the moral constraints of the day did not prevent the Holocaust.

We now have the institutions and the academic grounding to ensure “Never Again” is more than mere words. However, if all of the research, exploration, and institution-building do not adapt to the times, do not incorporate other targeted minority groups, and do not take action to protect human rights, the promise of “Never Again” will be merely words.

The Holocaust is no longer only an event in the past but part of a looming narrative that encompasses humanity’s fight for individual human rights for all of humankind. So, as we honor the victims of the Holocaust today, we must also remember the fight ahead of us to ensure that the promise of “Never Again” after the Holocaust is kept for all people.

To listen to "Revisiting the Holocaust with a Modern Lens with Professor Roth," please click here.

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Professor John Roth is the founding director of the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights—now known as the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights. Professor Roth taught at Claremont McKenna College (CMC) from 1966 to 2006. With Professor Gordon Bjork and Professor Ward Elliott, Professor Roth founded CMC’s signature tutorial program in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) in 1985. Professor Roth has been named the 1988 U. S. National Professor of the Year by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Beyond teaching, Professor Roth has authored, coauthored, or edited more than fifty books, and he has published hundreds of articles and reviews. His most recent books are Warnings: The Holocaust, Ukraine, and Endangered American Democracy and Stress Test: The Israel-Hamas War and Christian-Jewish Relations. Additionally, Professor Roth has been a member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, Washington, DC, and he served for many years on the church relations committee at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

On November 13, 2024, he was awarded the Donald C. McKenna Achievement Award by President Hiram Chodosh.

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Disclosure: Unless otherwise indicated, all views expressed in this post are solely those of the author(s) in their individual capacity and are not the views of the Artemis Endeavor. Unless otherwise indicated, all views expressed in the podcast episodes represent the views of the guests and the hosts of the Watchtower in their individual capacity and are not the views of the author(s) of the post nor the views of the Artemis Endeavor.