The warning we ignored: Holocaust survivor Martin Stern on THE HUMAN CAPACTIY FOR EVIL

The warning we ignored: Holocaust survivor Martin Stern on THE HUMAN CAPACTIY FOR EVIL

April 13, 2026 · 1h 4m

About this episode

Holocaust survivor Martin Stern shares his experiences and reflections on the moral implications of history and present-day society.

This Yom Hashoah special episode features Holocaust survivor Martin Stern, who shares his story and reflects on his fears for the world today. Martin Stern survived arrest, deportation, and life in camps as a young child, his survival dependent on individuals who chose courage over conformity at moments of real danger. His life since has been shaped by that experience, through decades of reflection and education, including his work teaching younger generations about the Holocaust and other genocides. In this challenging conversation, Martin It examines how ordinary people come to adopt ideas they have not properly interrogated, how crowds form around moral language that has lost its substance, and how institutions fail to cultivate independent thought. What emerges is not simply memory, but a warning about how societies drift, how certainty replaces judgement, and how easily moral language can be detached from reality. 👁‍🗨 Watch if you want to understand how Holocaust testimony exposes the deeper failures shaping the present 💬 We Discuss: • 🕯 Why Yom Hashoah demands moral seriousness rather than symbolic remembrance • 🧠 How a five-year-old child experienced arrest…

People in this episode

Host: Jonathan Sacerdoti

Guest: Martin Stern

Topics covered

Keywords

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Nazi

Books & works: Holocaust, genocides

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