Philosopher Reveals What Holocaust Survivors Know That History Books Cannot Teach

When Holocaust survivors warn about rising authoritarianism in contemporary politics, they aren’t just giving a history lesson. They possess something historians who study the Holocaust cannot fully replicate: the understanding of what it is like to live a life shaped by genocide, to be someone whose existence was shattered and who must carry that weight every day.

According to new philosophical research, this difference isn’t just about having more vivid memories or stronger feelings. By “moral knowledge,” philosopher Daniel Vanello means an understanding of what it is like to live a life shaped by having been profoundly wronged. That kind of knowledge only comes from lived experience.

Vanello, from University College London, argues that experiencing moral wrongs like genocide, oppression, or violence provides access to understanding that those who study these wrongs from the outside cannot fully achieve, no matter how expert they become. His research, published in the Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, enters the ongoing debate about who can truly understand moral evil and how that understanding is acquired.

The argument challenges recent philosophical work claiming that many forms of understanding about atrocities are accessible through expertise and study alone. While historians possess crucial information about how the Holocaust happened and the antisemitism that enabled it, Vanello argues they cannot fully access what survivors possess: understanding of what it means to lead a life defined by having endured that evil.

What Holocaust Survivors Know That Experts Cannot Fully Learn

Vanello’s argument centers on what happens psychologically when someone experiences being profoundly wronged. Holocaust survivors didn’t just witness terrible events that ended when the camps were liberated. They had to continue living as people to whom those events happened. They had to reconstruct their identities, make sense of their experiences, and carry forward as individuals whose existence is marked by survival.

This ongoing process involves what Vanello calls “autobiographical reflection,” the work of organizing experiences into coherent personal narratives. When survivors recount their experiences decades later, they aren’t simply retrieving stored memories. They’re articulating evaluations of what happened that are inseparable from the emotional pain of having to live as someone defined by those experiences.

Vanello draws on the concept of “transformative experience,” which describes events that fundamentally change both what someone knows and who they are. When someone survives a concentration camp, they gain understanding that cannot be fully conveyed through any amount of description or study. Vanello extends this concept to moral wrongs specifically. In plain terms, the harm does not end when the violence ends; it continues in the work of living afterward.

Part of the moral wrongness of the Holocaust lies not just in the immediate horrors of starvation, torture, and mass murder but in forcing survivors to carry those experiences forward. A survivor must live with memories that resurface unbidden, integrate experiences that resist integration, and find ways to continue existing despite having seen the depths of human cruelty. That ongoing emotional labor can only be fully understood by those who have lived through it, though Vanello acknowledges that others can develop partial understanding through testimony, empathy, and imagination.

The Difference Between Witnessing and Enduring

Vanello carefully distinguishes between several types of knowledge about moral wrongs. Historians analyze documents, interview survivors, examine the political and social conditions that enabled genocide, and develop sophisticated understanding of how antisemitic ideology translated into systematic murder. These abilities matter enormously.

Bystanders who witnessed Nazi atrocities also possess important knowledge. They saw the violence, the dehumanization, the machinery of genocide operating in real time. Their testimony provides crucial evidence about what happened.

But survivors possess something different from both historians and bystanders. When survivors testify, they aren’t just providing historical information or eyewitness accounts. They’re giving voice to what it means to be a person who must lead a life characterized by having survived genocide. They’re articulating what it’s like to be someone who was targeted for extermination, who endured conditions designed to destroy human dignity, and who nevertheless continued to exist.

Vanello uses the example of how European society has valued Holocaust survivor testimony since World War II. Survivors have spoken at trials, written memoirs taught in schools, and shared their stories in interviews and documentaries. Their testimonies have played a crucial role in shaping moral consciousness. But why? There are many reasons societies value survivor testimony, but Vanello’s contribution is to identify a specifically epistemic one: survivors can articulate aspects of the moral wrongness committed during the Holocaust that historical analysis alone cannot fully capture.

How Moral Understanding Emerges From Shared Trauma

Vanello’s research also examines how new moral concepts emerge through shared experiences of being wronged. He uses the example of sexual harassment to illustrate this process. Before the concept existed in public discourse, women who experienced what later became known as sexual harassment lacked the words to name what was happening to them.

One woman, Carmita Wood, worked as an administrator at Cornell University in the 1970s. A prominent professor sexually harassed her repeatedly. Wood developed physical pain, changed her behavior to avoid her harasser, and eventually quit after eight years. When she applied for unemployment benefits and was asked why she left, Wood struggled to explain. Under pressure to fill in the form, she wrote “personal reasons.” Her claim was denied.

According to Vanello’s analysis, moral concepts like sexual harassment emerge through a social process where people with similar experiences come together to make sense of what they’ve endured. When women who had been harassed gathered to share their stories during second-wave feminism, they engaged in collective reflection.

As they described what happened and how it made them feel, they evaluated the objective features of their situations while simultaneously processing the emotional pain of reliving those experiences. They noticed commonalities: similar behaviors by harassers, similar power dynamics, similar emotional responses. Through this shared evaluation, they generated the concept of sexual harassment.

This generative process requires an ability that only those who have experienced the relevant wrong can exercise: the capacity to draw generalizable understanding of moral wrongness from intensely personal, painful experiences. This same process applies to Holocaust survivors. When survivors came together after the war to make sense of what they had endured, their collective reflection helped generate deeper understanding of the nature of genocide, the mechanics of dehumanization, and the long-term effects of systematic persecution.

The Philosophical Debate About Holocaust Knowledge

Recent philosophical work has questioned whether experiencing moral wrongs provides any real advantage in understanding them. Philosopher Lidal Dror argues that since the wrong-making features of genocide are objective facts about how people were treated, knowledge of these wrongs should be equally accessible to everyone through study and analysis. Another philosopher, Briana Toole, suggests that what appears to be privileged knowledge from experience is actually just specialized training that could be provided to anyone.

Vanello doesn’t deny that people without direct experience can acquire substantial knowledge. Historians of the Holocaust develop expertise in identifying the conditions that enable genocide, explaining the psychological mechanisms perpetrators use, and teaching others to recognize warning signs. Vanello’s claim is not that survivors know more, but that they know something different.

The distinction lies in how the knowledge is generated and what it includes. When a historian learns about the Holocaust, they’re learning to recognize objective features of events and understand causal relationships. They develop this ability through years of study, archival research, and analysis of testimony. But they aren’t evaluating those objective features through the lens of someone who must make sense of them as part of their own life story.

When a Holocaust survivor describes the feeling of being herded into a cattle car, they aren’t just reporting a historical fact. They’re articulating an evaluation that emerged from their attempt to understand themselves as someone who was targeted for extermination and survived. That evaluation is inseparable from their emotional experience of having to continue living with that memory and integrating it into their sense of who they are.

Why Holocaust Survivors’ Accounts Cannot Be Replaced

If experiencing moral wrongs provides unique understanding, what does this mean for how society approaches moral education and remembrance? Vanello argues that Holocaust survivors and others who have reflected deeply on their experiences should be recognized as irreplaceable moral educators.

When survivors speak to school groups or share testimony at memorial sites, they aren’t just adding emotional color to historical facts students could learn from textbooks. They’re providing access to a dimension of understanding that historical study alone cannot fully convey.

Before the June 2024 European elections, a group of Holocaust survivors urged young voters to vote against rising right-wing political parties. On Vanello’s account, moments like these illustrate how lived experience shapes moral perception. When these survivors point to contemporary developments that remind them of the 1930s, they aren’t simply applying historical pattern recognition. They’re exercising a perceptual ability refined through lived experience of where such dynamics lead. They recognize warning signs not just intellectually but through a deeper understanding rooted in having lived through the consequences.

Vanello points out that this doesn’t mean only survivors can teach about genocide. Rather, their unique understanding of the specific wrong they experienced makes them valuable educators for that particular moral domain. A Holocaust survivor possesses distinctive knowledge about genocide and systematic persecution.

Moral Responsibility and Learning From Survivors

One concern about stressing the unique knowledge survivors possess is that it might seem to excuse those who haven’t experienced certain wrongs from moral responsibility. If understanding genocide requires having survived it, can people who haven’t experienced such atrocities be blamed for failing to prevent them?

Vanello argues his account actually strengthens moral accountability. His research identifies multiple types of knowledge about moral wrongs, only one of which requires direct experience. People who haven’t experienced the Holocaust can still learn to identify conditions that enable genocide, understand why it’s wrong, explain how it operates, and take action to prevent it.

Because these forms of understanding are accessible without direct experience, people who lack them have no excuse. More than that, Vanello’s argument places a responsibility on those without direct experience to actively seek out and learn from those who do. If survivors possess unique understanding that others need to grasp moral wrongs more fully, then those who want to understand have an obligation to listen to survivor testimony and learn from it.

When societies ignore or dismiss survivors’ voices, they’re actively choosing ignorance. They’re refusing access to a form of knowledge they cannot fully acquire any other way.

Vanello’s conclusion returns to why societies create space for survivor testimony in the first place. When courtrooms hear from survivors, when schools invite them to speak, when memorial institutions record their stories, these practices recognize something important. Those who have been wronged possess an irreplaceable perspective on what that wrong means. Their knowledge emerges from the painful work of continuing to exist after transformative trauma.

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