ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the inquiry and turn attention to one of the greatest and most traumatic evils of our time, namely the Nazi genocide of the Jews. The Holocaust, as it has come to be called, raises profound issues about moral responsibility, punishment and forgiveness. The chapter explores a disquieting possibility that has been largely, neglected by students of the Holocaust. Namely, that approach to the question of Nazi guilt is substantially out of line with our normal thinking about moral responsibility and, in particular, with our usual notions of 'mitigating circumstances'. A strong thread of self-defence thus ran through the tangled web which was the Nazi rationale for genocide. The Nazis believed that the Jews offered a radical threat to the Germans and Germany and that extreme measure were therefore justified against them. The Holocaust was morally appalling for the quantity and quality of its constituent acts.
