Banality of evil

[stona]

I was sorting through a folder of various WW2 pictures when I came across this one which brought Hannah Arendt memorable phrase to mind.

It was taken at Solahutte, a sort of R and R camp for SS personnel about twenty miles from Auschwitz.



On the left, Dr Josef Mengele who surely needs no introduction.

Next to him Rudolph Hoess, Auschwitz camp Commandant.

The big guy, who really looks like the thug that he was, is Josef Kramer, Hoess' second in command who was in charge of the nuts and bolts of the extermination process at Auschwitz-Birkenau. He finished the war, and is better known to the British, as Commandant of Bergen-Belsen.

I don't know the fourth man, but he's keeping some pretty revolting company.

An amazing snap shot, that's what it is, not a posed propaganda or publicity photograph....................the banality of evil.

Steve

[eddiesolo]

Indeed, watched a program about Mengele and there was a lot of pictures from Solahutte, all smiling and happy, great picnics, smoking and drinking. Hard to get your head around what turns normal people into uncaring, unfeeling monsters, and what is frightening is that it still happens today and is it in all of us...I hope not.

Si.

[Alan 45]

Do you know what amazes me ? The fact they managed to hide the worst of the atrocities from their own people

Even alied commanders were shocked when they found these camps it truely is the worst that humans can do to people

[eddiesolo]

t truely is the worst that humans can do to people

+1 to that Alan...mankind has many shameful skeletons in his closet

Si.

[Guest]

Another one the world has them and they make sure they "pop" up where there is evil.

Captain Alfredo Astiz. Nick named Baby Face. At the time of the Falklands War & before he was a man with his own country mans blood on his hands.

By coincidence just reading Lieutenant Chris Parry's story of "Down South". A Fleet Air Arm observer on "Humphrey" a Wessex Helicopter attached to HMS Antrim a County Class Destroyer (beautiful looking craft). Sent to the Falklands with the RN force to recover the Falklands.

With Plymouth, Endurance, Brilliant, Antrim depth charged (Humphrey the Heli.)the Santa Fe (virtually destroyed her) & then Marines recaptured Georgia.

So Adiz the senior officer was captured. The crew & army types were made prisoner & interned temporarily on Tidespring an RN Aux. Worried due to his turbulent behaviour & worry about organising the prisoners he was then transferred to Antrim. He was prisoned in a cabin with a bathroom. The "suite" was made devoid of all things which may be used in some development. According to Chris Parry who accompanied him around the deck on exercise he was an aloof & dismissive of all of the RN officers. Captain Brian Young decided that they must search his room for any weapons. It was found that he had fashioned a knife out of a metal bedstead. He was left with a mattress.

He was "given" back to Argentina. There were many things after this which I only have vague recollection. But he was a nasty man.

Laurie

[Guest]

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Apologies for got to post pictures

[Guest]

I have a book which identifies the men in a similar picture, it says that by this point, Rudolf Höss is the 'ex-commandant' and Richard Baer is now in charge, with Kramer subordinate to him. Not sure if it's relevant, because it's hard to positively Id people in old photos, even by the 'experts'.

[downscale model art]

as long as we live, we should never ever forget. shall we forgive? im sorry, but i cant. too many lost voices remind us not to.

[stona]

I have a book which identifies the men in a similar picture, it says that by this point, Rudolf Höss is the 'ex-commandant' and Richard Baer is now in charge, with Kramer subordinate to him. Not sure if it's relevant, because it's hard to positively Id people in old photos, even by the 'experts'.

Hi Steve, that is entirely possible given the chronology of command. It would depend on the date of the photo being post May 1944 when Liebehenschel moved on to Majdanek of course. Any idea who the man on the right might be?

I guess we should say that Kramer was technically Commandant of Auschwitz II (Birkenau) after the reorganisation.

I visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex when it was still technically behind the iron curtain. I and a few others made the journey from Katowice at a time when Poland, in the throws of the confrontations between "Solidarity" and the state was not a very easy place to be. I've always had an interest in history, I was aware of how the system worked, I knew the numbers, but I was not prepared for the scale of the operation. I left that place a changed man.

Cheers

Steve

[downscale model art]

hey laurie... try and read FOUR WEEKS IN MAY by david hart dyke.... captain of HMS COVENTRY. cracking book mate!

[stona]

as long as we live, we should never ever forget. shall we forgive? im sorry, but i cant. too many lost voices remind us not to.

We don't really have to struggle with the moral issue of forgiveness. This generation has almost entirely passed on and the guilt of the fathers certainly should not be visited on the sons who have nothing to do with this.

We should never forget. Let the voices of the victims and the perpetrators remind us. Claude Lanzmann's film "Shoah" for all its shortcomings did attempt to do this

Cheers

Steve

[Guest]

Try this out,

My wife is 1st generation canadian born, german + croatian. Her parents came here in the 1950s, but He was born in 1927, and She in 1935. Meaning, my mother in law was born in nazi germany. She was 10 by the end and had lost her father and younger sister and it had changed her in ways that she refuses to admit. Her grandfather was born during the time of the Wiemar Republic and saw national socialism for the tyrannical dictatorship it really promised to be. As a consequence, he instilled a very strong sense of anti-naizism in his granddaughter. So much so that she refused to give the nazi salute, and her family constantly lived in fear that they would be denounced to the gestapo. One thing that saved them was that they had a small fortune by the standards of the day, and that they lived in a small town in northern germany near the denmark border and were largely out of the way for most of it.

But the father was a committed nazi soldier. He held the rank of "unteroffizier" and was wounded in action some time in 1944. He was home on sick leave and was told that "maybe he should just sit the rest of this out". (he has 3 daughters to consider). But he was a die-hard nazi and maybe even felt some sense of responsibility to the rest of the squad, to help lead them back out, back home. Or maybe he believed that might was right and since the germans proved they didn't have the might, they didn't have the right. And like hitler, thought that there was nothing left to live for. We will never know. He was sent back to the russian front and was M.i.A. on Jan, 31-Feb 01, 1945. Maybe captured and didn't survive the round up and transportation. Maybe killed through labour, the way the germans often treated their own prisoners. Either way, he never came back.

My father in law is croatian and fought against the nazis for the british. He was often involved in intelligence gathering and reporting. And smuggling. And then partisan work against Marshall Tito in croatia. It's all he likes to talk about anymore, and well, he's drunk most of the time these days...

I was raised in a navy family and was brought up to regard germans as 'the enemy'.

Hmm...that actually explains a lot about me, to myself.

Well played Mr Freud, well played...

[Guest]

I think it is very important not to forget and this is why I have so much respect for the Germans who have made museums out of many of thier concentration camps. They don't want to forget either but they also want to ensure it does not happen again. Not forgiving harbours the issues that led to it in the first place and I think we all have to move forward together with the joint resolve to never allow it again. There really is no point in not forgiving nthe current generation who had no part in those events and not forgiving is what allows the resentments to breed again. "All it takes for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing". I believe not forgiving is doing nothing.

[Guest]

hey laurie... try and read FOUR WEEKS IN MAY by david hart dyke.... captain of HMS COVENTRY. cracking book mate!

Thanks will do that. Try Lieutenant Chris Parry's story of "Down South". Half way through & one of the best written & interesting books I have read.

Apologies for interrupting your piece here Steve.

Laurie

[Gern]

You can find atrocity almost anywhere - and committed by almost anybody.

In the Black Country we have a proud industrial heritage which is highly celebrated. We even have a living museum dedicated to it. Much of this local industry involved chainmaking in small, local workshops. Many of these provided the only work available in some areas and whole families, including the elder children would work there.

Few stop and think however that the chainmakers derived a significant proportion of their income from making and selling slave chains. Everybody knew how awful life was for slaves, yet ordinary folk such as you'll meet every day made a living from it without sparing a thought for the misery and death they were contributing to.

You don't have to be a monster to act like one.

Terry Pratchett says it much better than I can:

"And it all meant this: that there are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal, kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do."

Gern