This week, as the Jewish people and the nation of Israel commemorate the Holocaust, consider the reaction many had to the image of a sad and obviously humbled Saddam Hussein stroking his graying beard, much in the same manner as grandfathers over the ages stroked theirs.

How can such a mild and meek looking man be so evil?

This grandfather, however, as we all know, was no saint.

Of all the lessons one can learn from the Nazi war against the Jews, one that has particular resonance today is that evil comes in many shapes and forms, including forms that, like the bearded Saddam, elicit sympathy and compassion.

During the Holocaust, Jews found themselves victims not only of sinister-looking officers in black uniforms, but also of ordinary people who lived next door and intellectuals who sipped wine while enjoying Brahms and Beethoven. Jews who grew up with, lived with and worked with their neighbors soon found themselves betrayed by people who knew exactly what fate awaited the victims.

Despite the experience of the Holocaust, many today find it difficult to accept the notion that evil can indeed look as benign as the person next door. We seem to want to believe that we all have the capacity for good and evil, that we all are ultimately the same.

The Holocaust teaches us that while all people may be the same, all ideologies are not. When it comes to pure and true evil, there is no middle road and there can be no middle ground.

Today, the world is faced with an onslaught of terrorism that can only be described as evil. But while many accept the view that Nazism needed to be eradicated, they still cling to the bizarre notion that terrorists who kill with indiscriminate impunity can be somehow understood, negotiated with or otherwise appeased.

It’s not that people don’t accept the evil of Nazism; it’s just that they forgot what some Nazis looked like.

Some Nazis, like some terrorists, went to college and some were just plain folk. Some were rich and some were poor. There were tall Nazis and short Nazis, Nazis who liked sports and Nazis who didn’t. Nazis who looked and lived like most people do today.

What was disturbing about the evil of the Holocaust was that the architects came not from the fringes of society, but rather from the mainstream. What was indefensible was that the masses, rather than rejecting this evil ideology, tolerated and even embraced it.

When initially confronted with the beginnings of the end, many Jews tragically continued in denial, despite the signs that were present all around them. Many, until the knock came on the door, refused to accept that the civilized, refined culture they knew could be capable of the horror that followed.

Then, Nazi philosophy was promoted by fiery, emotional rhetoric that inflamed the people. Today, the new evil of terror finds a home in the rhetoric of those that distort and misrepresent truth no less than the Nazis did.

Then, cloaked in the clothes of medicine, Josef Mengele carried out some of the most monstrous crimes of the century. Today’s terror sees physicians like Al-Qaida fugitive Ayman Al-Zawahiri and Hamas’s “martyred” Abdel Aziz Rantisi involved in equally heinous and deplorable actions.

Then, the Nazis immersed their children, the Hitlerjugend, into a racist and hateful creed that fueled the criminal acts perpetrated against an innocent people.

Now, as then, there are societies where children are taught to hate and kill, where leaders and teachers preach dying for the cause and where the masses follow like lemmings.

Like then, there are those now who deny the evil they see, choosing instead to understand and explain away behavior rather than attribute it to a misguided and malevolent set of beliefs.

While it is true that we need to be wary of demagogues who look and sound wild and fanatical, the Holocaust also teaches us to be on guard against those whose demeanor may elicit sympathy or compassion but whose behavior nourishes the evil violence and hate around us.

We need to temper caution with fairness in confronting today’s threats, but being fair doesn’t mean being blind to the truth.

I. J. Mansdorf, PhD is a psychologist living in Israel. He is actively involved in dealing with the results of terror as a consultant both in Israel and in the United States. He also serves as coordinator of the Israel Citizens Information Council, a mainstream grassroots organization involved in public advocacy, information and education. He is an SPME Member and a Member of the Medical and Public Health Task Force of SPME.