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Ethical Considerations

Questions arising from the role of laws and the judiciary during the Holocaust are now being studied at dozens of American universities and in military academies, Dr. Michael Berenbaum said.
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February 13, 2003

“We will study death, but in the service of the Jewishfuture,” said Dr. Michael Berenbaum, explaining the primary mission of a newlycreated institute at the University of Judaism.

The mission is also implicit in the name of the Sigi ZieringInstitute for the Study of Ethics and the Holocaust, for it is Berenbaum’sbelief that many of the cutting-edge ethical issues facing Jewry and societytoday grow out of the seeds sown during the Shoah.

Berenbaum, one of the world’s leading Holocaust scholars,has been named director of the Ziering Institute. He says that by placing itwithin a university focused on the Jewish future and outreach to otherdisciplines, the institute can transmute the lessons of the bitter past intoguideposts for present and future generations.

As one example, Berenbaum cites the field of medical ethics.”The notion of informed consent by a patient, and his right to stop treatmentat any time, was derived directly from the postwar trials of Nazi doctors,” hesaid.

Another frontier issue is rooted in the Nazi experiments ineugenics. “Now that we are nearing the capacity to ‘perfect’ human beings bygenetic manipulation, we must ask whether something should be done, justbecause we know how to do it,” Berenbaum noted.

Turning to business ethics, Berenbaum recalled thesubstantial financial investments by Germany’s I.G. Farben to assure it asteady supply of slave laborers.

“The Nazis perfected the use of humans as consumable rawmaterial,” said Berenbaum, and applies the observation to such contemporaryissues as child labor and sweatshops.

“We must ask ourselves, what is the borderline between anappropriate investment, and a morally compromised one,” he said.

Questions arising from the role of laws and the judiciaryduring the Holocaust are now being studied at dozens of American universitiesand in military academies, Berenbaum said.

One can argue that the Nazis committed no crimes, becausetheir actions were legal under their own laws, he said. However, the Nurembergwar crime trials found that blind obedience to immoral laws, or therationalization, “I just followed orders,” are no longer a valid defense inthemselves.

“Without Nuremberg as a precedent, [former YugoslavPresident] Slobodan Milosevic would never have been put on trial by the U.N.Tribunal in The Hague,” Berenbaum argued. Another thorny legal question is theresponsibility of the bystander who witnesses a crime or a genocide withouttaking any action.

Berenbaum is also convinced that, for example, the UnitedStates would not have interfered in the “ethnic cleansing” campaigns in theformer Yugoslavia by bombing Kosovo, but for the guilt felt by the Americanmilitary for its failure to bomb Auschwitz during World War II.

“I used to think that the Nuremberg trials were a failurebecause they were not far-reaching enough, but now I believe that they setimportant precedents,” he said.

Some of Berenbaum’s conclusions may be startling, but hedoes not arrive at them lightly.

At 57, he has been studying and analyzing the Holocaustsince his graduate student days, and he is the author of 14 books on the tragicera.

Berenbaum was one of the key figures in the creation of theU.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, served as president and CEO of StevenSpielberg’s Shoah Foundation, has held teaching posts at leading universitiesand is currently adjunct professor of theology at the University of Judaism(UJ).

The institute which he now directs, funded through $3million in donations, honors the life and memory of Sigi Ziering, a Holocaustsurvivor, successful American industrialist and author of a searing play on theHolocaust, “The Judgment of Herbert Bierhoff.”

The institute, which is to become part of a planned UJCenter for Jewish Ethics, will sponsor a range of scholarly and popularconferences, seminars and lectures.

Its initial offering is a three-part roundtable discussionamong Jewish and Christian theologians, philosophers and historians on “The Vatican,the Pope and the Holocaust.”

In keeping with its outreach mission, the first session wasat the Jewish University of Judaism, the second at Catholic Loyola Marymountand the third will be held on Feb. 18 at the traditional Protestant ClaremontMcKenna College in Claremont.

For information, phone the University of Judaism at (310)476- 9777, ext. 445.

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