Introduction to Ethical Rehabilitation After the Holocaust

Wars decimate a nation’s infrastructure. Genocide murders the innocents in a society, and it leaves behind moral corruption and societal twistedness. A genocide like the Holocaust can happen only if the normative ethical commitments of many individuals and collectives to honor the fundamental right to life are compromised or abandoned. When a society lives through a genocide, the moral imagination of peoples and collectives, their ethical behaviors, and even the underlying social contract become twisted and broken. Societies and individuals caught within a genocide need an ethical rehabilitation in its wake to move a post-genocide society out of its ethical degradation. Mass graves that were hidden from the global community must be exposed, and disguised ethical wrongdoing must be openly addressed. Most often societies rely upon a process of transitional justice to accomplish a post-genocide makeover. Transitional justice includes three components—memorialization, reparations, and lustrations. These refer to the honoring of deceased victims and survivors, the restoration of goods and services to surviving victims and their families along with compensation for past wrongs, and the capture, prosecution, and punishment of perpetrators. Some additional steps may be needed to restore a justice that produces social stability and harmony.