Fresh look at Amalek within us

These days we are commanded to remember the Evil of Amalek- often viewed as the Arch-enemy of G-d and his people. As we remember from the Torah, Amalek attacked the Jews at the point of their journey from Sinai to the Land of Israel, demonstrating his total rejection of any Divine intervention into human history, and even willing to cross the desert and confront the Jews, solely to show his animosity. Later we meet Amalek's descendant Haman in the story of Purim, and Haman's hatred of the Jews pushes him to seek the first Final Solution in the Jewish history. We celebrate our victory but should still remember what Amalek and his descendants did to us, fulfilling the Mitzva of " Mechiyat Amalek"- erasing his memory.
Here comes the question- by remembering Amalek, we seem to be doing just the opposite- we NEVER FORGET! So how are we erasing his memory then?
Another important question is " Who is Amalek? " With Sennacherib ( ancient Assyrian conqueror) mixing the nations of the world, we don't have any way to trace the original tribes of the past, so says the Talmud ( and our common sense strongly agrees ) So WHOM are we supposed to " erase" anyhow?
Answering this question, most contemporary Rabbis point to Amalek as a symbol- symbol of Evil, such Evil that acts out of no benefit, simply motivated by blind hatred. In our times of the horrors of the Holocaust many came to associate this with Nazism, and the like. Others explain, that we must eradicate Evil from our hearts and minds ( various explanations given usually pointing to different bad character traits that we must eradicate - Pride, Anger, etc )
I think we can actually combine both perspectives, if we ask the following question-
HOW THE HOLOCAUST BECAME POSSIBLE?
How otherwise decent people committed such acts of violence and despicable brutality on a massive scale? During the Nuremberg Trials, many Nazis claimed that they simply followed the orders. This brings forth another question- To what degree are we humans capable of doing Evil, when we are " simply following orders ", not seeing ourselves as personally responsible for the outcome of our actions?
This very question was asked by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, who conducted his world famous experiments on obedience to authority figures. His experiment was conducted in 1961, right after the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Eichmann’s defense that he was simply following instructions when he ordered the deaths of millions of Jews roused Milgram’s interest. In his 1974 book Obedience to Authority, Milgram posed the question, "Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?"
Milgram was interested in researching how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person- how easily ordinary people could be influenced into committing atrocities for example, Germans in WWII.
In his experiment, the volunteer was asked to help in study of the effect of pain on human memory- and for this purpose was supposed to give an electro shock to the " learner" - each time increasing the voltage for every wrong answer. There were 30 switches on the shock generator marked from 15 volts (slight shock) to 450 (danger – severe shock).
Before conducting the tests, Milgram polled fourteen Yale University senior-year psychology majors to predict the behavior of 100 hypothetical teachers. All of the poll respondents believed that only a very small fraction of teachers will be willing to administer severe levels of shock.
Yet the reality proved truly shocking results- about 65% of the "teachers" in the test administered the maximum level of shock ( potentially lethal ) to their " students" - this despite the fact that they clearly heard them screaming, knocking on the wall etc. This experiment was repeated in different countries, with similar results.
Here's what Milgram wrote about it in his book -
Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.
This experiment seems to tell us something frightening about the human nature- when confronted with difficult moral questions, we often choose not to take responsibility and simply yield o authority.
Judaism brought into the world the idea of Man created in the Image of G-d, his Freedom of Will and thus Moral Responsibility for his actions. If this is what Judaism stands for, we can understand what the essence of Amalek is- essential Doubt that Man possesses such Greatness, stripping him from any G-dlike identity. After all, we are simply more advanced animals. It's not a coincidence, that Hitler actively promoted this vision ( later referred to as Social Darwinism )
“Truly, this earth is a trophy cup for the industrious man. And this rightly so, in the service of natural selection. He who does not possess the force to secure his Lebensraum in this world, and, if necessary, to enlarge it, does not deserve to possess the necessities of life. He must step aside and allow stronger peoples to pass him by.” - Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf.
And possibly this would answer our first question- we OUGHT TO REMEMBER, WE MAY NOT FORGET- what such vision of man and such philosophy does to humanity!
We ERASE Amalek's memory by recognizing the traits of his philosophy in our own hearts and minds! This paradox of remembering to erase the memory in fact is teaching us another lesson-
AMALEK WILL NEVER DISAPPEAR! Our human nature is in constant conflict between Good and Evil, and this would continue on- to help us make the right moral choices, and to elevate us to serve G-d with Love and Compassion, with our Free Will and desire to do Good, eradicating cruelty and herd mentality from our midst!
Happy Purim!