Professor speaks about Holocaust

Hebrew University of Jerusalem Professor Yehuda Bauer spoke to about 30 people about the impact of the Holocaust on the contemporary world at the Annenberg School Theater Tuesday. Bauer, the head of the Holocaust Studies Division at the Institute of Contemporary Jewry, began his speech by talking about the Holocaust's symbolism. "It has become a symbol for evil," he said. Bauer explained that the Holocaust is significant in people's minds today because it was unique in history and was motivated by Hitler and the Nazis. "Never before had a state ruled by ideology tried to remove an ethnic group," said Bauer, who is also the chairperson of the Vidal Sassoon Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism. Bauer asked the question, "Where was God at Auschwitz?" He said the motivation behind this question has created "a gap" in faith for many Christians and Jews. "The Holocaust is not going to go away, whether we like it or not," he said. "It is going to haunt us. It is going to become a growing warning of what can happen." Bauer ended the speech with three possible additions to the Ten Commandments -- "Thou shalt not be a perpetrator. Thou shalt not be a victim. And thou shalt not be a bystander." The speech was followed by a short question and answer session. Afterward, students had mixed feelings about Bauer's speech. "The speech was good," said Tom Heller, a College senior. "The topic of what we can learn from the Holocaust ties in with a course on the Holocaust that I'm taking." Yuri Boroda, a third-year Chemistry graduate student, said Bauer's speech could have been more comprehensive. "I think that [Bauer] didn't go to the very essence of the Holocaust," he said. "I think that the Holocaust was an attempt by paganism to conquer monotheism. He glossed over this." His speech was the first in what is slated to become an annual or bi-annual series of lectures called the Stanley M. Bogen Lecture Series. The series was started through Stanley Bogen, a class of 1958 Wharton alumnus, and is being sponsored by the provost's office.