ABSTRACT
Forgiveness is not, perhaps, the most important issue that confronts people when they consider the Holocaust. But still, it is one of the moral questions that arises out of that great catastrophe. The first claim is that only the victims can forgive the perpetrators, and most of the victims are dead. There can be no third-party forgiveness; any such pseudo-forgiveness cannot replace or substitute for that of the victims. The claim that forgiveness will encourage future perpetrators in their misdeeds, so it should be withheld on essentially consequentialist grounds is an empirical claim, and people lack the evidence by which it could be established one way or the other. But it does seem fairly implausible. Some classic reasons for forgiveness in lesser cases of wrongdoing are considerations such as: the wrongdoer has repented, he understands how wrong his actions were, he asks to be forgiven.
