ABSTRACT
The Holocaust was nurtured in and implemented by modern, "rational" society, and so the social, cultural, and political nexus that led to barbarism may well be endemic to people civilization. To explain the Holocaust just by appealing to religious or racial antisemitism alone, however, would be problematic. Post-Enlightenment modernity inherited a religious image of "the Jew" and gradually developed a secularized stereotype that bore little resemblance to the real Jewish men and women who inhabited the towns and villages of Europe. A potent tendency in Nazi Germany was to create juridical-legal divisions between citizens and aliens, or "dominant and backward races, " which they hoped could scientifically be shown as rooted in moral and/or anthropological soil. Focusing on past historical experiences seems to suggest that nurturing prosocial values can help lay the foundations for long-term humanization policies.
