Holocaust Memorial Lecture: The Holocaust at the Individual Level

KEENE, N.H. 9/1/03 - According to John Roth, the key to understanding and teaching about the Holocaust lies with examining the lives of individuals, from figures such as Hitler to people who were in some way motivated to save the lives of defenseless human beings.

“The truth about the Holocaust cannot be taught,” Roth, the Edward J. Sexton Professor of Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College in California, argues, unless we remember that, “from time to time, courageous resistance did save lives and prevented the Nazis from doing their worst.”

Roth will present the sixth annual Holocaust Memorial Lecture at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 18, in the Mabel Brown Room of the Young Student Center at Keene State College. His talk, “Ethics after the Holocaust,” is sponsored by Keene State’s Cohen Center for Holocaust Studies. It is free and open to the public.

In 1982 Dr. Roth was visiting professor of Holocaust studies at the University of Haifa in Israel. In 1988 he was named National Professor of the Year by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. He has served on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council and on the editorial board for the journal Holocaust & Genocide Studies.

Among his publications are Approaches to Auschwitz: The Holocaust and its Legacy (with Richard Rubenstein, 1987); Ethics after the Holocaust: Perspectives, Critiques, and Responses (1999); and Remembering for the Future: The Holocaust in an Age of Genocide (with Elisabeth Maxwell, 2001).

Roth will also speak at the fall meeting of the Northern New England Philosophical Association, which will be held at Keene State Friday-Saturday, Sept.19-20. Conference sessions are free and open to the public.

For more information, contact Paul Vincent, director of the Cohen Center, at 603-358-2722.