The Holocaust cannot be forgiven because it is not our place to forgive

The argument

It is not anyone's responsibility to forgive on behalf of victims that died during the Holocaust. The argument turns on who holds the standing to forgive at all. Forgiveness is not a verdict about whether an act was wrong — that judgement is available to anyone — but the release of a particular offender by the particular person who was wronged. Where the person wronged did not survive, no one occupies that position, and neither sympathy nor descent from the victims transfers it. Although a nation may forgive another nation for the cruelties that they caused as a whole, individual forgiveness is only able to be granted by those that experienced the Holocaust. The distinction matters because the two operate at different levels. States can settle with states, and the representatives who do so act with an authority their office genuinely confers on them. No such office exists for the wrong done to a person: it is not a decision to be made by anyone who was not directly involved in the Holocaust, because no one else was the person to whom it was done. According to Jewish traditions, the perpetrator must show remorse and ask for forgiveness, which places a further condition on the exchange and locates it firmly between two people. In many cases, the survivor may be unable to see the perpetrator again due to relocation or passing away, so that the condition can never be satisfied. Despite the situation, this does not relinquish the power of forgiveness to another person — an exchange that has become impossible does not become possible again by being handed to a third party. Therefore, only the victim of the Holocaust has the power to forgive the offender. This leaves the question and power to forgive completely in the hands of the victim, and where the victims did not survive it leaves that power nowhere at all. Because it is not our place to forgive, the Holocaust cannot be forgiven.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Even if a person was not directly involved in the Holocaust, their family could have been forever altered by the Nazis killing family members. This can permanently change generations of a family. People should still be willing to forgive the Holocaust because it can help them let go of any resentment that they have towards the actions of the Nazis in the past. If people could not forgive atrocities that they were indirectly affected by, they will be more likely to harbor negative emotions in their own life. By forgiving the Holocaust, they are taking control of their own life in response to the oppression of their heritage.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The premise establishes who may not forgive on the victims' behalf, which is a claim about standing rather than about whether the Holocaust can be forgiven at all. [Rejecting P2] The argument allows that one nation may forgive another, which concedes that forgiveness can operate beyond the individuals directly involved — and it never explains why the collective case is admissible while every other is not. [Rejecting P3] From the fact that the power rests solely with those who experienced it, what follows is that the answer is theirs to give, not that the answer must be no. The counter-argument develops that gap: a survivor who chooses to forgive is exercising the very power the premise reserves to them, which the conclusion forecloses.