Ethical Rehabilitation After the Holocaust

Genocide murders 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 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 to move a post-genocidal society out of its ethical degradation. This book discusses the steps of transitional justice as ethical ways to move individuals and societies away from lingering injustices and toward an equilibrium of justice. 

Part I: Memorialization.- 1: Introduction to “Ethical Rehabilitation after the Holocaust”.- 2: Memory and Denial after the Holocaust.- 3: Mass Graves, Murder Factories, and Memorial Museums for Transitional Justice.- Part II: Reparations.- 4: Transitional Justice as Reparations that Cannot Wait.- 5: The Survivor Factor in Reparations for Transitional Justice.- Part III: Lustrations.- 6: Transitional Justice as Closure to the Past through Lustrations.- 7: Statutes of Limitations in Post-genocidal Proceeding for Justice.- 8: Hunting Nazis for a Better World .- 9: The Holocaust and the very idea of Forgiveness.- Part IV: Moving Forward with Transitional Justice.- 10: How an Ethno-Nationalism can thwart Transitional Justice.- 11: Transitional Justice and Proactive National Responses to Oppression – What can a post-genocidal nation do?.- 12: Individual Engagement in Transitional Justice.- 13: Conclusion: Genocide Prevention is Still Possible.

Paul E. Wilson is a faculty member and Program Coordinator for Shaw University, where he has taught religion and philosophy classes for the past thirty-two years. His monograph, The Degradation of Ethics Through the Holocaust, was published by Palgrave in 2023.