WNBC, NY
Gabe’s View: Mass Slaughter Then And Now
POSTED: 10:24 am EDT September 20, 2007
UPDATED: 5:32 pm EDT September 20, 2007
The New York Times has just published some newly discovered
photographs of SS men and women enjoying themselves back in 1944 after
a hard day’s work slaughtering Jews and other undesirables like Poles,
Ukrainians and Gypsies at Auschwitz.
The SS people are sunbathing in beach chairs, playing with a dog,
enjoying a feast of blueberries and having a sing-along with an
accordionist leading them. The pictures show the butchers of Auschwitz
having fun like normal people, smiling, enjoying life as they take a
break from their normal routine of administering death. Millions
perished in the gas chambers of this most notorious of all Nazi
extermination camps. When you walk through Auschwitz today or study
the photographs of the Nazi exterminators, you are reminded of Hannah
Arendt’s words about the "banality of evil."
After the atrocities of World War II were discovered, the slogan for
Jews and others became, "Never again!" But genocide is far from
extinct. Elements of the human race are still practicing it — and
people by the hundreds of thousands are still being wiped out.
In Darfur, tens of thousands have died and hundreds of thousands have
been driven from their homes in a struggle between African fighters
and the Arab-controlled central government. The secretary-general of
the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon, who has just visited the region,
warns that that this is "a society at war with itself … tribe
against tribe, warlord against warlord." He thinks the solution may be
complex but that the world must find it, lest many more innocent
people die.
A U.N. worker said, "The people of Darfur are frustrated. They’re
demoralized by a crisis that seems to have no end. They are angry to
see their children born and growing up in camps, rather than at home,
in peaceful villages. Still, they keep on struggling to regain their
dignity."
In the last century, Armenians, Rwandans and many others have been the
victims of genocide. Presumably, many of those committing the
slaughter led "normal" lives when they weren’t engaged in killing.
Sadly, as the newly discovered photographs of SS officers enjoying
themselves in 1944 make clear, genocide has existed in every
generation. And the people committing genocide have been
normal-looking folks, seeking pleasure in their off-hours.
Matthew Levinger at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has written:
"The 20th century has been called ‘the century of genocide’ — with an
estimated 170 million people murdered by governments between 1900 and
1999."
Will the 21st century be any different?