There has never been ANYTHING quite like the Holocaust or Auschwitz… because those events crouch right smack dab in the middle of a century that believed that with enough wealth, and enough education, societies would rise out of Evil, and people would become nicer and kinder and more reasonable, as well as cleaner.

Instead, the Nazis showed us that a sophisticated culture (Bach, Beethoven, Einstein, etc etc), with an up to date system of roads and railways and electricity and radios and movies… can put all that knowledge to work doing Evil on a grand and modern scale unheard of in history. Lists were made, people were funneled into Hell, and records were kept, slaughter of humans was made into a bureaucratic process. Indeed.

I have a book of commentaries of early 20th century “modern” thinkers, who had thrown aside all that silly old stuff about “God”… nice people who could not see Hitler, and Stalin, and the systems they built – for what they were. It took a Victorian, embued with that old time Victorian religion and romance to recognize what was growing in Europe in the 1930s.

And that is what “Auschwitz” should mean to all of us – for all our pride and comfort and education, we make our world, and we have shown that we can make a very evil one. Caution is advised.