How Might Another Shoah Be Prevented?

One of the issues to come up very early in the existence of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council was the tension between the historical and the moral missions of the Council and, then, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. On the one hand, many wanted the story of the shoah to be told with as much detail as possible. The truth of what happened is awful but it must be told, and it must be told accurately and fully. On the other hand, what good is a museum for the shoah if it does not lead to some action to prevent further holocausts, genocides, and mass killings? In a series of experiments, Stanley Milgram and his team from Yale University required subjects to administer what they believed were painful and lethal electric shocks to innocent people in order to help them learn a set of associated words. Keywords: genocides; historical study; moral missions; shoah; Stanley Milgram; United States Holocaust Memorial Council