Although history never repeats itself exactly, the Holocaust shows that there is no moral or religious insurance policy, no political asset anywhere, to guarantee that human destructiveness will not do its worst. But if we look, at least from time to time, into the Holocaust's pit of destruction, painful and difficult though doing so is sure to be, we will be better equipped to cope with a new century, one that has not only the potential for amazing progress and goodness but also the possibility of squandering human life in ways even more devastating than the 20th century, and the Holocaust in particular, have demonstrated. No Holocaust repercussion is more important than committing resources to education that allows the Holocaust's "useless knowledge" to drive home that life's preciousness is priceless, its beauty fragile, its justice vulnerable, its joy precarious, its future ours to determine for good or ill.

At the time of this writing, the winner's identity was unknown, but Time's list of leading contenders for the Person of the Century included V. I. Lenin, Winston Churchill, David Ben-Gurion, Martin Luther King, Jr., Pope John Paul II, and Adolf Hitler. Time provided extensive Web site information about the principal nominees. In addition to calling Hitler "the century's greatest threat to democracy," the capsule description that headed Time's entries also noted that he "redefined the meaning of evil forever."