In his 2005
book Auschwitz: A New History, Laurence Rees follows events and developments both
within the Nazi party and during World War II that led to the shifts of purpose
and function to which Auschwitz was brought. Several main characters in the narrative,
for example, Hitler himself, his main collaborators: Heinrich Himmler, Hermann
Goering, and Josef Goebbels, as well as other important persons like Reinhard
Heydrich and Josef Mengele are followed as their initiatives contribute to the
gradual conversion of Auschwitz from its initial purpose as a concentration
camp to its ultimate manifestation as a death camp. Rees’ research was
conducted after the collapse of the Soviet Union, allowing him access to
previously unavailable documents held, for example, in East Germany. Moreover,
with greater access to countries formerly dominated by the USSR, Rees was able
to meet with and to interview survivors of the camps as well as former members
of the SS and camp functionaries. The long passage of time since the ending of the war
had allowed some of these people freedom to speak of their experiences for the
first time. Using all of his sources, Rees is able to document many of the
stages of the expansion of Auschwitz in both size and function as well as the
events and personalities which affected these changes.
Throughout
he keeps a close eye on Rudolf Hoess, painting a portrait of another not
particularly exceptional person, who nonetheless was instrumental in
shepherding a broken-down Polish military barracks in a back-water area into
the premier death camp of the Nazi gulag, responsible for the demise of roughly
1.1 million people. Hoess was the commandant of Auschwitz from its inception in
1940. Other than the period from November, 1943 to May, 1944 which he spent at
another death camp, Majdanek, he remained its leader until January, 1945 when
the remaining prisoners were forced out into a winter death march just ahead of
the advancing Soviet troops. Hoess was captured soon after the fall of Germany
and was executed at Auschwitz in 1947. During the year preceding his death he
wrote his memoires, which though self-serving, provide a fairly accurate record
of the development of and activities at Auschwitz.
Hoess was
born in 1900 to Catholic parents in the Black Forest area of Germany. While
very young he joined the army, fighting bravely in WWI, becoming one of the
youngest non-commissioned officers and receiving the Military Cross. Like
Adolph Hitler and many of his generation he was bitter and angry at the defeat
of Germany, buying into the view of a number of right-wing nationalist parties,
that internal enemies, communists and Jews, were responsible. In 1922 he joined
the Nazi party. Involved in a politically motivated murder, he was imprisoned
until 1928. After his release he joined the Artamans, an agricultural community
where he met his wife and became a farmer. In 1934 Himmler, Hitler’s chief
policeman, invited Hoess to leave his community and to join a special detachment
of the SS that would oversee the burgeoning world of concentration camps. In
his memoir Hoess attributed his acceptance of Himmler’s offer to questions of
advancement and salary. More to the point it was his opportunity to take on a
role in the kind of world he had dreamed of since Germany’s devastating loss in
the war. In November, 1934 Hoess travelled to Dachau to begin his experiences
as a concentration camp guard.
Reading
about Hoess, I have found myself reflecting on the life trajectories that have
pulled so many young men into similar all-encompassing movements with
“religious” as well as nihilistic components. The Nazi party clearly drew to
itself men (and some women) who enjoyed their permission to employ brute force
against vulnerable peoples. But it was more than that. Its success was born of
particular circumstances: the profound anguish of a generation schooled to
believe in their ability and right to prevail, devastated by the collapse of
their forces in November, 1918; bitterness and rage turned against an already
identified group – the Jews; an extension of this hatred to encompass the
Allied forces who had defeated them, and, communists who favoured
trans-national allegiances over a predominately German identity; social,
political, and economic dislocation in the aftermath of war and again during
the Great Depression which affected European countries even more profoundly
than North American; the rise of a charismatic leader who articulated the
experience of this generation and seemed to point the way toward a new and
brilliant millennium. Nazism for many with Hoess’ background became a
“religion,” a faith to which they might happily give themselves over. Its
doctrines were extreme and fundamentalist but they had a clarity that appealed
to people wandering in the confusions of post-war Germany. Their leader was
also their prophet, a man to revere, to love, and to obey. One of the former SS
soldiers that Rees interviewed more than 50 years after the demise of the Nazi
state was asked to sum up how he viewed the years of its dominance. After a
moment’s reflection, he uttered just one word: “paradise.” Extreme religious
fundamentalists of whatever creed see the world in a substantially black and
white manner. Their need for coherence and certitude makes them vulnerable to
adhering to whatever “religion” or cause the circumstances of their lives makes
available to them.
However,
not all are vulnerable to causes that involve extreme violence. I would suggest
that those who are have themselves been the victims of violence, especially
during their formative years – perhaps experienced in the context of war or
profound social upheaval, but even more often in the crucible of their own
familial home. I read recently of studies that show brain changes occurring in
children who receive corporal punishment, changes that make it considerably
more likely that they will employ the same means of so-called discipline when
they have children of their own. Violence against the vulnerable is not simply
a matter of behaviours being learned and mimicked, but of patterns in the brain
that facilitate these behaviours. Obviously not all people who have been
physically abused repeat this behaviour just as not all who were sexual abused
do, but, an avenue in the brain is prepared for this option when one is faced
with the kind of frustrations experienced by his or her own care-givers.
Circumstances and/or conscious decisions will greatly determine the outcomes.
People of my own generation generally were physically disciplined both at
school and at home. We had our own children during a period when public opinion
was turning against this type of violence. The impulse to strike out in
frustration met a sense that to do so was fundamentally wrong. Many of us were
forced to do battle with our own inclinations to act as our parents had done and
to justify violence with the rationale, “You asked for it.”
A child who
has been significantly abused and terrorized – because that is how the intense
rage and physical force of the enormous parent is experienced by a small child
– the nervous system of that child, like that of any small mammal, becomes
oriented to a watchfulness for signs that other terrors are impending. As the
child develops, the ways that this focus is elaborated can take many and diverse
directions. It was long an assumption that if overwhelming experiences happened
in the early life of a child, they would have little or no effect as they would
not be remembered. Certainly the child would retain no cognitive memory as
these are not formed until we have reached a stage of being able to articulate
our experiences at least internally. But the body, the nervous system
“remembers.” Once overwhelmed by an experience of terror, the brain, the
nervous and endocrine systems become highly sensitized to cues that
another profound threat is imminent. Watchfulness and reactivity absorb focus
and energy needed for the development of a child’s imaginative life, the
essential ingredient for age-appropriate learning and behaviour, the basis of
true individuality and self-knowledge. Soldiers returning from a war zone
exhibit identical responses to those of abused children under conditions of
extreme stress and fear, responses subsumed under the general term Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD.
Both Rudolf
Hoess and Adolph Hitler grew up with dominant fathers who insisted upon
absolute obedience. Unquestionably in
that era, such insistence would be fortified by physical punishment, a
condition which would have been similar for many of their contemporaries. These
early experiences together with those of their young manhood in war, defeat,
dislocation, and confusion led them not to the conclusions of mature adults,
but rather to ones more consistent with children lacking a developed conscience
with which to empathize and consider the feelings and needs of others. Like the
boys in The Lord of the Flies, they constructed a society based on brutality,
fear, and obedience, giving themselves over to a “chief,” seeing the world in
starkly black and white tints: the good and the beautiful; the bad and the
ugly; the survival of the fittest – in that context the one with most power,
the one who crushes the weak, deemed not deserving of survival. Many of these
conditions exist for those currently drawn into polarized, extreme
fundamentalist sects of our own era.
At Dachau
Hoess entered into and embraced the world of the SS as exemplified by its commandant,
Theodor Eicke. To Eicke the prime virtue of a man called to this form of duty
was hardness: total elimination of compassion for prisoners in his charge. A
prisoner was ipso facto, an enemy of the State; the duty of the guard was in
all cases to follow orders, regardless of how severe or inexplicable, in his
treatment of the prisoner. Any sympathy or human understanding of the prisoner
was to be squelched. Beatings, even executions must be carried out
unhesitatingly. SS members formed a special bond of brotherhood, recognizing
their collective capacity to perform difficult but essential offices for the
State of which “weaker” men would be incapable. A model member, Hoess advanced
quickly, becoming by April, 1936 Eicke’s chief assistant. That September he was
promoted to lieutenant and transferred to Sachsenhausen concentration camp just
north of Berlin, where he remained until his 1940 posting as commandant of the
yet to be constructed camp of Auschwitz.
No comments:
Post a Comment