John Doe, the Holocaust and memory

Confronted with absolute evil, Henry Lesser asked himself, "Why?" What could make a person so completely hateful, so completely psychopathic?

Henry Lesser was a 26-year-old, idealistic Jewish boy from Falls River, Massachusetts. He took a job in Washington, D.C.'s prison system as a jailer on March 1, 1928. Criminology was a deep interest of his. What was the nature of good and evil? Was it nature or was it nurture?

Growing up, Lesser had been exposed to seemingly contradictory Jewish answers. Judaic religious thought recognizes that humanity is born with the "evil inclination." And humanity i...