Sees U.S. grappling with evil

After 9/11, Americans began to define evil as something more than an abstraction and understood it in a concrete way, according to Dr. Deborah Dwork, a Holocaust scholar who is founder of the Strassler Family Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University in Worcester, Mass.

"Quite certainly, evil for us meant death, destruction, murder, attack," she explained. "It meant no tolerance for our way of life."

Another result of 9/11, she continued, is that the image of Saddam Hussein changed from that of a secular, military aggressor -- an image he earned during the 1990 invasion of Kuwait -- to a ruthless, totalitarian dictator.

Before 9/11, she said, "I believe that most people were not aware of the role of Saddam Hussein as a mass-murderer of the Kurdish people. Now, it's commonly known."

Holocaust and evil

The catastrophic effects of a highly intolerant ideology have no better illustration than in the voluntary participation of Europeans in the mass slaughter of millions of Jews during World War II, Dr. Dwork said. Many argue, she added, that the word "evil" applies to the Holocaust.

Studying the history and causes of the Holocaust can be "extremely useful" in analyzing both the effects of ideology on human societies and the meaning of evil in the present situation in Iraq, the professor said.

She also believes that the past can provide people with a useful lens through which to analyze current events. But it's not useful, she continued, to "mine history to find little pieces to support an agenda that we already have."

Saddam and Adolf

For example, she noted that some media pundits and government officials have equated Saddam with Adolf Hitler. They note, she said, that if "we had just invaded Berlin in 1933," a long, dismal war and a tremendous loss of life could have been averted.

Those who make such claims are not seeing the whole story, Dr. Dwork said, noting that "bombing Berlin would not have helped. In fact, it would have been the best friend Hitler ever had. It would have validated the story he was telling to the German people. It would have been the proof he needed.

"What we saw in history was Hitler and his associates' total lack of regard for human life," Dr. Dwork said. "When we look at various people in the world, [that example] is now a measuring stick [for evil]. Does Osama bin Laden believe in the sanctity of human life, or does he hold dear the lives of only the followers of his brand of Islam? Does Saddam Hussein hold dear the lives of only those who support his regime?"

Life amid war

Through military briefings and official speeches, she notes that the United States government "is very careful to talk about its regard for human life. I think they know we're watching for that. I think they know that the American people will not be particularly accepting of the ideology that 'a few Iraqis more or less won't make a difference.'"

Dr. Dwork said, "I am very much aware of the power that ideology played for Nazi Germany. Millions of Europeans participated in the process of murder -- not for the pleasure of murdering but because they had bought a particular ideology about what society should be like and what the world should be like."

And, on 9/11, "Americans saw that ideology can have very destructive effects," she said.

(Dr. Deborah Dwork will be speaking on "Learning About the Holocaust in a Post-9/11 World: Can Evil Ever Be Truly Understood?" April 9, 7:30 p.m., in Siena College's Key Auditorium. The program, co-sponsored by Siena College and the Holocaust Survivors & Friends Education Center, is free.)

(4/3/2003) [[In-content Ad]]