Beyond Auschwitz

To study the Holocaust BEYOND Auschwitz is to seek knowledge from the whole human trajectory that led to Auschwitz. Human history is comprised of a road, a road we are all traveling. It starts in antiquity and is added to with each new generation. It is a never ending story. Along the way there have been moments where human beings have exalted themselves to their highest selves - times when we saw, cherished, and respected our shared humanity and our divine souls. There have also been moments along that road where human beings have debased themselves to their most primitive selves- times when we enslaved, tortured, and abused others. We must study both with equal interest, intensity, and neutrality to understand how human beings have created amazing art, architecture, literature, music, and earthly stewardship but have also committed some of the world's most egregious acts of evil against their own species, each time intensifying the horrors and ultimately creating the state-sponsored industrialization of murder that was the Holocaust. This textbook takes you on that journey down that road. It asks you to take your 21st century glasses off and to see each century with its own set of glasses - to understand more than to be understood.