On Holocaust Remembrance Day, we are urged to memorialize the millions who suffered and died in the Nazi concentration camps. Yet this is precisely what we have failed to learn. The rise of Nazism is often attributed to such non-fundamental factors as the resentment produced by the Versailles Treaty or the despair generated by the Great Depression. This state of mind, which subordinates the interests of the ego to the conservation of the community, is really the first premise for every truly human culture. . . . By this we understand only the individual's capacity to make sacrifices for the community, for his fellow men.
Historians usually dismiss such statements.
The idea that self-sacrifice is synonymous with virtue is too uncontroversial for them to connect to Nazism. Thus, such pronouncements are usually regarded as mere window dressing to disguise the Nazis' true agenda. Consider the full, logical meaning of altruistic self-sacrifice. It means, not benevolence toward others, but servitude. If the community needs money, it is the individual's duty to sacrifice his earnings.