Existential questions are great, actually! It means you're thinking on the subjects you are learning, and how to apply those lessons to your own life.

One thing I will point out is that a lot of people had existential questions in the face of the Holocaust, so you shouldn't feel alone on that front. And your response is, well, very human. I would say that it's more worrying to face learning about genocide with indifference than with a strong emotional reaction.

One thing I will point out is that individuals were not completely powerless in the face of the Holocaust, even if they had limited means to stop the genocide as a whole. There is a whole category of non-Jews known as the "Righteous Among the Nations" who saved thousands of lives. It's also worth noting that there was Jewish resistance to the Shoah as well, both on the individual level, and in mass uprisings like the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the Sobibor Uprising that helped shut a deathcamp down.

I'm not sure this is really a question suited to r/AskHistorians. However, whilst there are people here who specialise in the Holocaust and can probably give better advice than I can, I have seen people go through existential questions about what they believe as a result of what they study.

My university teaches a whole postgraduate degree on the Holocaust, and in the undergraduate history degree there are a few (surprisingly popular) modules about genocide. What you are experiencing is not uncommon, especially for people who have a rather optimistic world-view.

Essentially, people who do these kinds of courses often have to face the fact that the events they are studying appear incompatible with their perspective on the world. It's very difficult to think people are intrinsically good yet study how perfectly ordinary people like you and me became involved in the Holocaust, and how they came to believe in things like eugenics and racial superiority. It's hard to both believe in a 'go for it' spirit, holding a world-view that everyone matters, and be confronted with the undeniable fact that optimism will not stop an army. This kind of issue is not unique to genocides either. I know a couple of people who lost their Christianity by studying it's early history - it's quite hard to believe in things like the Bible and the Nicene Creed when you learn how they were cobbled together in a mess of bitter church politics that actually had little to do with the teachings of Jesus himself. It is simply that your world-view is being challenged by a barrage of new evidence, which can be difficult. A lot of historians experience this.

How do you process that? I don't know, but expect your attitude to humanity to change. As someone who has been to Auschwitz, I think there's an innocence to people which is lost when confronted with such things. Everyone is dimly aware that the Holocaust was a horrible thing that happened, most people probably know the figure of 6 million Jews. But as horrible as it is, it's a piece of knowledge that can be put to one side. However, when standing at the gates of Auschwitz, it has to be dealt with. It goes from being a fact in a textbook at school to a very real issue in front of you. I also had the exact same thing when I studied WW1 and then went on a tour of the battlefields - it's one thing to read about 44,000 people dying in a battle, and quite another to stand in the German Neuville-St Vaast cemetery and see tens of thousands of crosses stretching to the horizon. In studying WW2 ideology in such depth, it cannot be pushed to one side and has to be reconciled with your world-view.

As for how to deal with how pathetically small and unimportant most people are, I don't know. I just accept it, but it's worth remembering that through the combined efforts of millions of people, the Nazis were defeated. One person might not make that much of a difference, but it's not nothing and it does add up.

These are all really really normal responses. I’m a graduate student in Holocaust history and many of these are things I feel at times. One of my focuses is curation in Holocaust museums. One thing we talk about are the “5 R’s” which visitors experience when they go to a museum or site which presents what we call “difficult” or “dark” histories. These are experiences nearly everyone will have to some degree whether they’re a freshman in high school or a tenured professor in Holocaust history. Two of the most difficult for people to deal with, because they they may make them feel like they have some moral failing are reception, resistance, and repetition. The first, reception, is that someone may feel they are not physically or emotionally able to enter a place of difficult history. The second is resistance, it is normal to resist this information because it sends you into a state which can be best described as moral free fall because no matter how much you have read, you may be confronted with a fact that makes you go “no! What do you mean 30,000 people were shot?” This is not denial, the visitor accepts the information as true, their brain just needs some time to process and change their understanding of the world. The last is repetition, where someone has to repeat a fact, or reread or go back to an exhibit to give themselves that time to accept the change in their ability to understand the world. The Holocaust does not make sense, or is not understandable per-say, even if you knew every fact and had read every document. It is physically unimaginable for anyone in normal circumstances and yet studying it requires that moral free fall and the imagining of the unimaginable

Thank you. That...was really spot on to what I believe my mind has been going through. And, yes, perhaps it’s not meant to be “understood”. How does one adequately explain the sheer evil of humanity that was displayed? I’m always at a loss for words. Best of luck in your endeavors.