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Many scholars have claimed that the Holocaust is a unique and in many ways an unparalleled event in human history with wide-ranging transformational consequences for the human situation.1 Philosophers (Katz, 1983), theologians (Fackenheim, 1970), and historians (Bauer, 1978) have all viewed the Holocaust as an unprecedented event with radical consequences for their respective disciplines and, more importantly, for how we understand the human condition. Moreover, these scholars all seem to believe that the Holocaust has challenged our conventional social, cultural, and psychological criteria of analysis and interpretation primarily because it has revealed new data about human behavior that require new categories of understanding.
For example, the Holocaust has transformed our conception of evil. As Arendt (1952, p. 132) has pointed out, the Holocaust “has