In response to the gentiles posting about the humanity of Hitler and the Nazis on Yom Hashoah

[attackfish]

If we’re going to be humanizing Hitler and the Nazis, okay, let’s do that. Let’s talk about how they had friends, and families, and flirted, and didn’t stop doing all the things humans do just because they started becoming monsters. Okay, that’s nice. Let’s talk about how when it was all over, they managed to put all that death and murder, and hate, and cruelty back in a box and keep doing all those nice human things. Let’s talk about how many of them were nice to their kids and loved their families. Let’s talk about how entire nations grew up telling themselves: “not my parents. Yes my dad was a member of the party, but he didn’t know. My mom worked for a company that used slave labor, but she didn’t know. Not my aunt, not my uncle, not the people who I love and love me. They didn’t know.” Let’s talk about how “no one” knew. Let’s talk about how that is absolute bullshit. Let’s talk about the lies that people have been telling themselves for thousands of years, that they are still telling themselves, that made this possible, about the greedy parasitic Jew, and the thieving, cheating dirty G*psy. Let’s talk about how at the start of WWII, more Americans were worried about how much power Jews had than how much power Hitler had, while Jews didn’t even have the power to keep themselves alive. Let’s talk about how antisemitism and anti-Romani racism are alive and well in Europe and the Americas today. Let’s talk about how maybe, just maybe you should look at your mother’s favorite great uncle, and your grandmother who made you cookies, and your friends’ grandparents and the way they look so human, and ask yourself: “Did they really not know?”

And maybe then we can talk about all those dead human beings they “didn’t know” about.

 

Comments

[ljwrites]

Oh good, you've put it here too. Humanizing killers and onlookers is all well and good, but my problem is that these stories tell an incomplete and therefore misleading truth. In my mind a good humanizing story should be, "Look at these people who are totally not monsters but people who could be you. And look at the awful things they did to these other people who are also all too human, just like you. See? You are not immune. You, too, have the capacity for evil within you." A proper villain-humanization story should make people uncomfortable, it should make people examine what they believe and what they do.

Instead, all too often the story is "Look at these people who are totally not monsters but people who could be you. And look at the awful things they did to... oh, these interchangeable stereotypes that are totally not like you. Why are we so hard on these poor dears, anyway? They're just people, not monsters! The evil must have happened like a flash flood or an earthquake, who knows. But let's not blame these totally-people for what happened to these not-quite-people, because that's awful to call people bad names like Nazis." These stories soothe where they should sting, and uphold the status quo while giving creators and viewers alike a totally undeserved sense that they are somehow brave and moral.

Humanization should mean acknowledging that humans, all humans, are capable of evil. Instead it's often used as a device to cut out the evil from the wrongdoers' lives while dehumanizing the victims, as though there's only so much humanity to go around. And guess which kind of story sells better and gets more acclaims. Sometimes I hate people.

[ljwrites]

Oh, I meant here as well as Tumblr. I considered replying there, but I hate reblogging text for discussion.

Not only do we have to guard against our own potential to do evil, which is the easiest task here really, but we have to learn not to look away when other people do evil, just because they look like us, and they are nice to us.

Excellent point! I consider "evil by omission" to be totally evil, and the thing is too many Germans were not only passive bystanders but active supporters of the regime.

Is it really that hard to empathize with dying children?

I think it is psychologically hard. Sympathize, sure, as in "Oh you poor things," and I do mean things--objects to be gawked at, to be pitied, to be saved. But to empathize--to enter into their stories and lives, even to acknowledge that they had lives and stories of their own, to feel what they felt, to realize that this could have been you, that is painful and it makes the world feel less safe.

Obviously it is moral cowardice not to take this conceptual leap of empathy. To withhold empathy is to cling to a fantasy of safety at the cost of disregarding and perpetuating oppression. I know that temptation as someone who has always been in the majority or at least a tolerated minority, the temptation to hold myself aloof from the oppressed and tell myself it could never be me and they must be less human or must have done something wrong. I can see why others give in to it, which does not make it any less inexcusable or wrong.

I am reminded of James Baldwin's words from Stranger in the Village: "People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster." Innocence becomes monstrous, willful ignorance when maintained for the purpose of shielding one's self from the discomfort of reality. I agree it is very much the logic of abuse and the enabling of abuse: Your personhood matters less than my momentary comfort. I will deny your humanity for as long as I can just so I can feel safe.

[sheenianni.livejournal.com]

Is "gypsy" considered an offensive term in English? The Czech translation is "cikán", which has been declared somewhat offensive a few years years back by the media, though I'm not entirely sure what prompted it, since the vast majority of Romani people still refer to themselves by that term. And since we're at the language lesson - can I call an African-American "black", or is that rude? I ran into this when I wanted to describe an OC in fanfic - "African-American" seemed kind of wordy, but I wasn't sure if "black" and "white" have any negative feeling behind them...

Anyway, I'm not sure what sort of posts there were about humanizing Hitler and the Nazis, so I'm kind of in the dark here, but I think it actually is important to note that they were "human" and with families and whatever... And I'm not in any way excusing Nazism or saying that being "good parents" made the Nazis any less horrible.

I mean, sure there were some psychopats and born "monsters" between them, but most of them were just ordinary people, which makes their actions that more terrifying. How can you smile and hug your kid in the evening and then go torture or murder someone the next day? How can an entire nation go crazy and decide that mass murder is a good idea, that it's right and justified or at least excusable?

I think some of them really didn't know in the beginning, and then they didn't want to know. The Jews were made to send "happy" letters from the concentration camps, so for a while the wider public really didn't know... and by the time they couldn't deny the truth, it was already too late.

There was propaganda of course, and then there was fear. If you didn't fall in line, if you spoke up, you could be next... so most people kept silent. Which is a horrible long-term strategy even if you disregard that you're condoning the mass murder, because once they're done with "them", you can be next, but short-term it makes sense. If you have to choose between protecting your family and friends or speaking up for some nameless Jew, then it's easy to be selfish... and nobody else is doing anything, so why should you?

So we have to talk about them being human, we have to remember that they were also "good parents" and "otherwise nice people really" so we don't fall into the same trap again. We have to remember the horrors of holocaust so we don't let it happen again.

I know more about communism than nazism, and the communists didn't murder nearly as many people in my country as the Nazis, but the principles remain the same. After 1948, people cheered when the so-called "american traitors" were executed; they cheered when the pilots who fought the Nazis in the Battle of Britain for our freedom were sent to concentration camps or outright murdered in political trials; even when all this became apparent, a lot of people still believed that "mistakes have been made", but the underlying cause was just.

It's simple really - in a crisis (aftermath of a war, a financial collapse, hunger, disease, poverty), the people are most vulnerable to manipulation. Then all you have to do is take an "enemy" and villify them to people. Any excuse will do - they snatch children, they're american traitors, their skin color is wrong, their language is wrong, they use black magic, their religion is "evil" etc. Everything bad is "their" fault and if we persecute them enough, life will magically become better. Some people will believe it, some will simply take advantage and some will stay silent because they're afraid or because they simply can't be bothered - and then you get holocaust and genocide.

It's the silent support that is so dangerous. I don't think many people can imagine themselves actively killing/hurting someone, but how many of us would stay silent in fear, or let ourselves be manipulated into actually supporting something monstrous? How many of us simply wouldn't care?

We can't let anything like this ever happen again.


I don't think I can wish you a "happy rememberance day" - unless it's happy because you and your people are still here. Is there an appropriate saying? As I see Yom HaShoah was yesterday... I hope you had a good day.

[sheenianni.livejournal.com]

Wow, Hitler going to an art school could have stopped the war? Now that is a new one. Ugh.

What countries exactly are considered Eastern Europe?

This is an interesting bit of history, because I never really considered pre-war Czechoslovakia antisemitic - probably based on our first president Masaryk, who was well known for his support of jewish people (in the late 19th century, he became famous for defending a Jew named Hilsner in a murder trial of a young girl - he was most likely innocent, but at the time that didn't earn Masaryk many friends). So I did some research and it turns out that the Slovakian part of Czechoslovakia was somewhat antisemitic, while in the Czech part the antisemitism was supposedly much weaker than before the war and weaker than in most of Europe, though there has never been a serious study of this. I guess some of it was Masaryk's influence - even though we tend to idolize the guy a bit, there is no doubt that he was a remarkable person.

If people really want to talk about how the war could have been prevented, then maybe they shouldn't have signed the "Munich treaty", which effectively ripped Czechoslovakia apart and later gave Hitler the weapons he needed to attack the rest of Europe. We will never be able to tell if Czechoslovakia would have been able to sustain Hitler's attack, but we wanted to fight - the army was ready and eager to defend the boarders, until they were forbidden to do so by the travesty of a "treaty". On one hand, thanks to being annexed by Germany, Czechoslovakia was mostly spared of the fights and most non-Jewish people survived... but maybe if we had fought, the war never would have broken out and Hitler could have been stopped right there, or it would have taken him longer to get the kind of power that he then unleashed on Europe. But that's all pure speculation nowadays. If there is one wisdom to take from it, it's that trying to appease a power-hungry dictator by backstabbing your alies is usually a bad move - sooner or later he will want more and then you'll have no ally and an enemy on your doorstep.

Still, you made me wonder how much antisemitism there was in Czechoslovakia in between the wars...

From what I know, there were people who stole the Jewish property and helped the system, but they were mostly considered collaborants and traitors by the other Czechs... who mostly remained quiet, except for those who left the country to fight either with the Brits or the Russians. Whoever opposed the system was persecuted... the university students who demonstrated against the Nazis in 1939 were sent to concentration camps or outright murdered; two innocent villages were burned to ground as a retaliation for the assasination of Heydrich, and those are just the best known cases.

I want to say that we were innocent in the Jewish persecution, but that wouldn't be true. And it troubles me - like I said before, my great-grandfather was half-jewish, and he ended up in Theresinstadt for helping his jewish friends; though he was one of the lucky ones and survived the war. At least I can say that nowadays, antisemitism is very rare here - yes, you will still find an odd "neonazi" or two, but they're by far a minority.

So we let the Nazis take over our country, and after the war we let the communists take over and ruin this place for forty years. It was a crappy situation all around but we still let it happend, and we have to live with this knowledge and move on somehow.