Fundamentals in Holocaust Studies

Abstract

Regular conferences on Holocaust Studies be gan in 1970. For serious study of the meanings of the Holo caust, certain ground rules are essential. Interfaith coopera tion ensures that the event will not fall victim to Jewish pre ciousness or gentile banality. The Holocaust confronts Christianity with a massive credibility crisis that Christian preachers and teachers must work through. Interdisciplinary cooperation, essential to any aspect of studies in totalitarian ism, is a second imperative. The death camps were planned, built, and operated by men and women of the modern uni versity. The modern university, with its overwhelming com mitment to technology and its scant attention to ethics and wisdom, is also called into question by the Holocaust. Inter national cooperation—especially from programs involving Israelis, West Germans, and North Americans—has devel oped extensively with the passing of a generation and with the achievement of a certain distance from the anguish and trauma of the Holocaust. Nevertheless, the event confronts the individual as well as the society with a challenge that is total and not merely intellectual. In this it is an epochal event of the mass of the Exodus, Sinai, and the Destruction of the Temple.