Rabbi Wein opens this most serious of lectures with an acknowledgment that no lecture can accurately depict all the horrors of the Holocaust or answer the nagging philosophical questions it raises. Nevertheless, he demonstrates how Hitler’s intense propaganda campaign created a genocidal environment. Anti-Jewish boycotts became anti-Jewish riots; riots were placed by mass shootings by the einsatzgruppen, and ultimately, the Jews faced the indescribable torture of the killing camps.

• the psychology of cruelty - how the Nazis dehumanized the Jews
• life in the ghettos
• the two sides of the Judenrat - helping the Jews or doing the Nazis' bidding?
• Thereisienstadt, the “show” camp
• Treblinka and Auschwitz - models of murderous efficiency
• the countries of Europe condemned, with the exception of courageous Denmark - Could more Jews have been saved?