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Holocaust ethics
Germany's legal system worked with the Nazi regime in stripping Jews and others of rights. Image: Public Domain.

Holocaust Ethics Webcast Explores Legal Professionals’ Role in Genocide

The Midwest Center for Holocaust Education and UMKC Law School are presenting a crucial examination of professional ethics during humanity’s darkest hour. Following International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Jewish Federation of Greater Kansas City will sponsor a live Zoom webcast, “Ethics and the Holocaust” on Wednesday, February 5.

While Adolf Hitler, the SS, and the Nazis bore primary responsibility for the Holocaust, their systematic genocide required the cooperation of legal professionals and others. This presentation will examine the ethical challenges that confronted lawyers and other professionals, exploring how they either confronted or ignored moral conflicts during one of history’s most devastating periods.

The webcast will address:
• Factors that led professionals to become perpetrators, collaborators, or bystanders
• The role of ethics for legal professionals during the Holocaust
• Contemporary lessons about professional ethics drawn from this historical tragedy

Featured speaker Dr. Shelly M. Cline, historian and education director for the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education, brings extensive expertise to this topic. Dr. Cline also serves as an instructor in the University of Kansas Jewish Studies Program and has taught at the Kansas City Art Institute and UMKC.

The Holocaust era began in January 1933 with Hitler’s rise to power in Germany and ended in May 1945 with Nazi Germany’s defeat by Allied Powers. Also known as “the Shoah” (Hebrew for “catastrophe”), the Holocaust resulted in the systematic murder of six million Jews and millions of others. Nazi Germany and its collaborators devastated thousands of Jewish communities across Europe.

The webcast runs from noon to 1:15 p.m. Missouri attorneys can earn 1.5 hours of continuing education credit, with Kansas accreditation pending. While attorneys pay an $80 fee, the program is free for educators, students, and non-credit attendees. Register at www.law.umkc.edu/cle, call (816) 235-1648, or email umkccle@umkc.edu.

–Alan Goforth | Metro Voice

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