I now understand how the Holocaust happened

Like many Australian Jews my age, the Holocaust profoundly affected my upbringing. Both of my paternal grandparents survived the concentration camps. I was reminded of that every Sunday when I would see the Auschwitz tattoo on my late grandmother’s arm as she served us lunch.

As a student at a Jewish day school, the Holocaust was a key area of study. We read books, watched videos and visited the Holocaust museum. We boarded buses to see Schindler’s List. When it was my bar mitzvah, we didn’t visit Disneyland; we went to Israel and spent an afternoon in sombre contemplation at Yad Vashem.

Despite studying and being immersed in the Holocaust my whole life, one question always nagged at me: how did the Holocaust happen? We were told the Germans were highly educated and cultured. How could such sophisticated people give birth to the insane barbarism of the Final Solution?

It has taken me several decades, but I have finally found the answer.

It’s right in front of us – in Australia and around the world in 2026. The best vantage point is the professional social networking site, LinkedIn. Prior to October 7, 2023, LinkedIn was a place where professionals prosaically boasted about their latest corporate achievement – getting promoted, or completing a project or transaction.