THE HOLOCAUST REMEMBERED; SCHOLAR TO LECTURE IN CAPE TONIGHT

"In Germany, they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up."

--Martin Niemoeller

Harry James Cargas has a problem with that quotation, often recited to illustrate the dangers of racism and choosing a target for hatred.

The problem, Cargas says, is the quote doesn't reflect the right spirit.

"I should save you not because it'll help protect me, but just to save you," said Cargas, 63 of St. Louis County.

A noted Holocaust scholar and professor of literature and language at Webster University, Cargas will speak tonight at 7 at Rose Theater on the Southeast Missouri State University campus on "Women and the Holocaust" as part of the university's Holocaust Remembrance Week activities.

On Friday night at Barnes and Noble at West Park Mall, Cargas will lead a round-table discussion on the Holocaust. The discussion will start at 7, and Cargas will sign copies of his books beginning at 8.

Cargas said he was 28 years old and working as a coach and teacher at a Catholic high school in New Jersey before he had heard of the Holocaust. He was reading a Catholic journal and came across excerpts of the book "Night" by Elie Wiesel, an Auschwitz survivor.

"It was the part where his father was beaten to death before his eyes," Cargas said. "I was a new father at that time, and it staggered me that this could happen, and what did that mean for me as a father?"

He said what struck him the most was that Wiesel's father never fought back during the beating.

"How could this kid continue to love his father when his father couldn't protect him?" Cargas asked.

His interest caught, he read several more books about the Holocaust.

"About the fifth or sixth book I read, I realized every killer was a baptized Christian. I'm a baptized Christian," Cargas said. "It takes a lot of people to kill 6 million Jews."

Cargas describes his religious affiliation as not Roman Catholic but "post-Auschwitz Catholic." He takes a Christian perspective on the Holocaust. "I look at it from the point of view of the persecutor. What was there that allowed us to do this?" Cargas asked.

Jews were historically persecuted in Europe, he said, but Germany's campaign of genocide speaks more to the lack of response from the rest of the world.

As a case in point he cites the lack of response from the Vatican and the institutional Roman Catholic Church, which never took an active stance against the persecution of Jews.

"There was not adequate intervention by the Vatican," Cargas said. "There were some Catholics who were absolute heroes, but they were not directed by the Vatican; they acted individually."

The participation of Christians as persecutors and executioners in the Holocaust, and the non-action by Christian leaders to put a stop to that persecution has many ramifications for Christians today, he said.

"It means being able to say it was our fault," he said. "We teach repentance and recognition of failure, but we don't practice it very well."

Cargas said he doesn't worry too much -- "at least not yet" -- about neo-Nazi and white supremacist movements catching public attention.

"But this marks one of the failures of Christianity," he said. "We talk about loving others, and some of us are out to kill each other."

Some Christians are taught to consider Jews "Christ-killers," Cargas said, "which is bad history and bad theology."

The lesson for Christians from the Holocaust, and from contemporary instances of political oppression, is one of individual responsibility, he said.

"How am I responsible? What can I do to take responsibility? Individuals can do something and have done things to change the world," he said.

For many years Cargas hosted and produced shows for National Public Radio in St. Louis. One of those broadcasts was an interview with Wiesel. That led to a collaborative book, "Conversations with Elie Wiesel."

Cargas has written more than 31 books and has a long history as a human-rights activist. In 1980, he was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to the first U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council Executive Committee. He's proud of that accomplishment.

Tonight, he will be reading women's accounts of how they were treated by the Nazis during the Holocaust.

Few scholars have focused on the experiences of women during that period, he said. "They haven't received really much notice in general," he said.

He tells of one survivor's account of the first time her father took her to a funeral after the war. "She realized two things," he said. "First, she realized that people die alone; she had only seen people die in masses. And secondly, she realized that people die of natural causes; she had only seen people murdered."