Holocaust Conference for Educators

The conference was great.  I unfortunately didn't get to hear from any holocaust survivors since those sessions had been booked by the time I was approved to go.  (Funny thing about that.  They approved me, paid 65 dollars for food for me, 65 dollars to attend the conference and 110 dollars for my hotel room and then they didn't get a sub for my classroom today because no one remembered that I wouldn't be there.  Sometimes, people are strange.)
Even though I didn't get to hear from survivors I did get to listen to three professors from NAU, it was almost enough to make me want to go back to college.  I miss getting lectures from professors in rooms full of my peers.
The first person I heard from talked about ethics and the holocaust.  He pointed out that ethics mean different things to different cultures and even to different people within a culture.  Basically ethics are doing the right thing verses not doing the right thing.  This becomes very complicated when you realize that the vast majority of the Nazis believed that they were doing the right thing because it was their duty and that they were in fact being ethical.
An interesting thing that I didn't know - Nazis didn't like individuals who took too much enjoyment from killing Jews and they worked to eliminate such sociopathic people; they wanted the perpetrators of the Holocaust to be doing it for the "right" reasons, for their country and out of duty.
The type of person with the moral integrity to stand against genocide is actually quite rare.  For genocide to succeed the vast majority of the people in the civilization have to be either behind it or stay silent which since it helps the killing go forward is the same as being complicate.  The type of person who resists is typically a non-conformist and an outcast in society to begin with.
We talked about how almost everyone will behave ethically when there is no personal risk, but once there is a risk of some kind most people will stop behaving ethically.
The Nazis weren't monsters; they weren't even sociopaths, they were simply told what to do and they chose to follow orders because that is the natural inclination of all human beings, to fit into their societal role and obey the authority figures above them.
Where the man took the conversation surprised me.  Ethics are an individual choice, our "Individual Agency," as he put it is what determines our moral standings.  I never thought a Holocaust Conference could make me feel uplifted and happy but this one certainly did.  It took the Holocaust out of the mold in which I typically think about it, an event that killed 12 million people and put a new light on it
What do we learn about people from this moment in time?
What do we learn about ourselves?
How did different genders react to the Holocaust?
How do we apply the lessons of the Holocaust into our daily lives and live the old slogan, "Never Again"
It was spiritual in a way.  I'll talk more about it later, I'm falling asleep.