What lesson in the present can we take from the lesson of the past

Educators around the world are looking for the best way to teach the narrative of the Holocaust in order to try and prevent human evil events from happening again. Exploring that period and circumstances that led to a social reality in which inconceivable expressions towards minority groups were legitimate, is important and necessary. But is it enough?

Learning the history – The Lesson – is the basis, but not enough. In order to create a change, we have to observe and identify, with mature honesty and self-awareness, how human evil exists in each and every one of us – here and now. After watching the film, we will discuss two main questions:

• What present lesson can we learn from past history?
• What is individual’s responsibility to evolve a positive sense of selfhood of the other, in a multicultural society?

A short lecture on Heinz Kohut’s theory: The self-psychological theory developed by Kohut was an attempt to understand the buds of human evil as manifested in the two world wars, as a necessary duty for any person seeking to preserve humanity. Awareness to the sources of human evil, he believed, would lead to an understanding of each individual’s responsibility to serve as a self-object – any figure whose presence I experience as self-constitutive others.