The subject matter of an educational unit on the perpetrators of the Holocaust is fraught with difficulty. The mystery of how some human beings become the mass murderers of others – men, women and children – makes such a unit unnervingly difficult to approach. This holds true for both subject matter and the issues that the educator might seek to convey. Teaching about the perpetrators necessarily forces the educator to walk a fine line between two obligations.

First, it is important to understand the human dimension of mass murder. The victims must be granted the human image and dignity that their executors attempted to deny them. The inherent danger in teaching about the perpetrators' views and responses alone is that the face of the victim will be lost – albeit unintentionally. The victims' perspective also needs to be heard and felt.

The second obligation is to understand that the murderers themselves were human beings and that it was human choice and man-made circumstances that led to the murder of six million Jews and millions of others. This must be understood as part of both the historical discipline and moral concern. The study of history is at all times a study of human actions and of the human spirit, even when that spirit has been subverted and has become ineffably corrupt. Moreover, the moral warning signs that the Holocaust must raise for us oblige us to attempt to understand how it is that human beings can reach such a point.

Yet, there is a profound danger in such an effort to understand the darkest recesses of the human spirit. It should be stressed at all times that understanding is by no means equivalent to acceptance, empathy or forgiveness. Rather, it is precisely the moral obligation to reject and to revolt against such conduct that reasserts the historical burden of understanding how it was possible.