THE HOLOCAUST

The Holocaust, which has been remembered with special observances throughout this week, is considered by many to be the darkest shadow on the history of the 20th century. To say that the Holocaust resulted in the deaths of millions of Europeans civilians, mostly Jews, at the hands of Nazis during World War II is fact. But it also is too simplistic. The complex horrors -- and lessons from those atrocities -- continue to unfold more than half a century later.

In those intervening years, special museums have been opened to show the world what the concentration camps were like, to record how the people in the camps were used and abused and to remind the world that such a terrible genocide can never be allowed to happen again.

The pain and anguish of those years are almost unbearable, particularly to those who have never been exposed to such barbaric treatment of one human by another. But the lesson is a difficult one. Evidence continues to mount in Eastern Europe of mass killings of one ethnic group by another, particularly in what was formerly Yugoslavia.

This week's memorials and ceremonies are a grim reminder to a world far removed -- technologically, sociologically, economically and politically -- from Adolph Hitler's vision of world dominance. But the quest by one group to attain complete dominance over another has changed too little.

In a world that has grown remarkably smaller in the last 50 years, thanks to high-speed communication and widespread long-distance travel, it can be fervently hoped that those who seek tolerance and understanding and who appreciate the contributions of every culture will find, in a way, their own domination in the family of mankind.

Surely the despots of today's world have demonstrated that the ability to slaughter a civilization is greater, not less, than during World War II. The thin curtain that keeps such a catastrophe from occurring is the understanding that there is, ultimately, retribution for every horrible act.

But for the survivors of the Holocaust who are still among us, the memories are forever too.