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One of the greatest, if not the greatest, manifestations of barbarity and demonology in human history is the Holocaust. Much has been written, and yet much remains to be written on this subject. Efforts have been made to understand the psychodynamic motivation of the persecutor (Loewenstein, 1952). How could a country that, before Hitler, was emblematic of some of the best of culture and science be plunged into the darkest era of human civilization and, thence, into the bottomless abyss of human cruelty? It was as if all psychological defense mechanisms had been totally destroyed and the cauldron of all the primitive sexual and aggressive instinctual derivatives broke through into the light of day and achieved expression. Obviously, one man, Hitler, could not have done it alone. The Holocaust required the cooperation of like-minded millions who shared these cruel feelings and wholeheartedly cooperated in this barbaric endeavor. The world's age-old hatred, anti-Semitism and all the perverted ideology attached to it, became the vehicle for its justification and expression.
The worst in humans, that which would take years of psychoanalysis to reach conscious awareness in an individual undergoing this therapeutic process—and then only with a heavy burden of guilt and shame—was projected en masse onto the Jews, who were then treated accordingly. Barbarity was religionized, if I may coin a word, and ridding the world of men, women, and children who thus became the objects of this projected depravity became perversely sanctified. This maneuver rendered the persecutors' behavior virtuous, thus liberating them from any feeling of guilt and the necessity of accepting the sinful consequences of their behavior. A desanctification of Hitler's ideals and vision, accompanied by a breakdown of the psychological defense mechanism of denial,