Holocaust Memorial Day

So the Pope wants to grant sainthood to one of his predecessors...which one? Pope Pius XII who was silent and did nothing in the face of the Jewish holocaust...on the day of the Holocaust Memorial. Interesting juxtaposition of news items wouldn't you say?
As Eli Wiesel says so succinctly, “We do not live in the past, the past lives in the present.”

And what a better image to encapsulate that thought than the vandalized tombstones... 

I often contemplate the sort of hate required to justify not just the murder but the systematic slaughter of masses of people. We all feel hate of others at some time in our lives but the hate is usually directed at an individual rather than an amorphous mass of people who can be categorized by their skin color, religion or tribe.
It must be a unique trait of the human species (and we think of ourselves as superior to all other species) to have the capacity and will to exterminate fellow individuals on a mass scale, indiscriminately and without any conscience, remorse or guilt. 

I suppose some people would turn to religion to understand the nature of evil. For others who aren't religious like myself, the answer is more difficult and elusive.