This led Friedlander to examine the Vatican documents, which resulted in Friedlander's 1965 book, Pius XII and the Third Reich , in which he examined the role of the Catholic Church during this time. When asked if an event like the Holocaust could happen again, Friedlander shrugs. Something can always happen again, maybe in different ways. There are echoes of the Holocaust in the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, and in the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia before that, he says. That is why it is so important to study the Holocaust, so it doesn't happen again.
Human evil is something permanent.
Sometimes the social frameworks that control it are weak. Friedlander pauses to look at the purple jacaranda trees in full blossom beyond his window. There are still questions to answer. Roberta G. Wax is a freelance writer in Los Angeles and an instructor at UCLA Extension.