0:41
Now there is an extensive judicial and
theoretical debate on the definition of genocide.
In fact, the term only comes up in the post-war era.
For our purposes.
We can define it as the organized use of violence
in order to eradicate a population defined by some categorical characteristics.
That it is about using this organized violence
that we associate with war, in order to eliminate a
population that has been defined by a particular characteristics, by
their race, by their ethnicity, by their religion, by, whatever.
But their legal status.
Now we most distinguish between conflicts that have had genocidal consequences.
For example the conquers of the Americas.
And ones where the very point of the violence
is to kill all the member of a community.
And that's the kind of genocide that we are going to be talking about today.
1:35
Shoah, is about as clear example of a genocide as we're going to see.
It was the attempt to eliminate the Jewish people, not
as a byproduct of conquest or the unfortunate consequence of
violently erected state institution, but rather the very point of
the exercise was to produce this eradication in this death.
The goal was to completely eradicate a group of people
who's specific categorization the Nazi's were very careful in delineating.
The Nazi's spent hours, days, weeks, years, reams
of paper trying to precisely categorize what this category was.
What were the character, what were
the exact genetic characteristics of the Jewish.
Quote unquote race.
What we're
the family patterns that had to be used.
So what we see in the particular genocide is not just the violence, but prior
to that violence, this very elaborate bureaucratic attempt
to organize a population according to some characteristics.
2:44
Now, some may object to classifying the Holocaust as a war.
That is, the fear is that this
might grant a certain political legitimacy to the mass murder.
That by classifying it as a war, we remove some of the horrible.
There's also a fear that this is the first step into normalizing the inex-
Explicable.
There is a concern if we treat Auschwitz
as merely another date point in the history
of humanity we might obscure the particular evil
that occurred there and I'm very sensitive to that.
But I want to argue that it was a form.
Now even the perpetrators knew this was a different kind of violence.
And thus knew to never speak it's name and to always disguise it.
Even the perpetrators of this violence realized that
this was, if you will, beyond the norm.
That this was not something that they could speak about openly.
And in fact they're very, very careful about not
mentioning it and trying to eradicate all the evidence.
3:49
Now, some would argue that only humans go to war.
But the Holocaust is characterized by a descent into inhumanity.
And I want to argue unfortunately.
That if it were only that simple.
That in some ways there's evidence that the Holocaust was
not purely this exercise in our animal natures.
But as in other cases of war, that it was very much an expression of the humanity.
An expression of the part of humanity we
certainly do not like but we have to recognize.
The point is that Hitler, Himmler, Hess, Eichmann,
Heydrich etcetera, thought of this as a war.
They thought that the Holocaust of the Showa word as a war.
And felt that they were doing their duty in order to
preserve Germany, or the Arian Nation, from contamination, if not eradication.
Now, again.
You have to be very careful here, this
is not to justify or rationalize the horrific actions,
but actually to put them into the same
context as we have these other categories of war.
To note that this is not necessarily an aberration, but in a sense
is an extreme form of the same principles that we have been studying.
To assume the point of view of these people.
It's extremely distasteful.
But that analytical empathy is required in the way, the
first, the first step of understanding any kind of human condition.
This analytical empathy is not to humanize these people as an ethical concern,
but to humanize them, and again, so we can understand how human beings can do this.
We must also understand that the Holocaust
was something done by reasoning human beings.
These, if the Holocaust had depended on
homicidal maniacs, okay, would not have succeeded.
What the Holocaust required were normal people who were willing to
do something as horrific as the Holocaust because of their particular rationale.
If all involved had been raging beasts and
behaved without reason, the Holocaust would never have happened.
It was precisely because they were human, it's precisely because they were
quote unquote normal, ordinary people, that we need to understand the Holocaust.
As in other wars, our task is to ask how it
is that so many did what should have been impossible and unbearable?
How did normal people, how did this man engage in these actions?
How did this man that we know nothing about, but let's assume that he was just a
normal human being, how could he face this kind
of slaughter and this kind of violence?
Now, in order to understand how something like this could
happen we have to explore the notion of the enemy.
How the idea of an enemy is created that requires this kind of violence.
Now, there's a long and deep history of antisemitism.
In Europe and in Germany.
That is far too well documented to need discussion.
The German Frau who willingly stopped shopping at her Jewish neighbor's store.
The Viennese burgermeister who could not pass up
the opportunity to move into a better apartment.
The French policeman.
Helping to load trains or the Latvian thug only too willing to beat someone to death.
The polish peasant brining milk to the SS barracks.
All shared a fundamental sense supported
by many religious and political institutions that
the Jews were different, that somehow the Jews were not quite one of us!
And what's fascinating here is how this notion of the other, how this
notion of someone who was not one of us, how the notion.
That, the Jew was somehow separate,
a different category, turned into a campaign for extermination.
So how does this patron, how does this hatred that is there for hundreds of
years in Europe, turn into the horror of the shah word?
First we have to understand the leadership willing
to use every instrument available to perpetrate the horror.
That is that you have a leadership
8:24
This is propaganda, but for some,
and it obviously for Hitler and his inner circle.
This peril was real.
Again, that is not to excuse or rationalize them, but
this is to understand how they perceive this process.
The spark of hatred was required to set a flame.
And since the dry timber of anti semitism.
And was fan by an extremely effective machine of propaganda.
So you begin the sense with the conditions of
anti semitism, you add this leadership, and then you create
an organization which fancies hatred into the kind of
actions that weâre going to see.
The roll of the Jew as the other.
It's important example, it's important, its extreme example.
Of the dynamic of war that we have discussed from the very beginning.
One of the reasons I want to cover this horrific event is
because it shows us how far these kinds of distinctions of us.
And then can go.
The importance of differentiation the anti semitic sentiments that were already there
from a policy that lead practically
to their extermination on the European continent.
9:41
We can do this, we can try to understand the
creation of this horror, by looking at a series of stages.
The violence against the Jews began with the thuggery of the brown shirts.
The beating people in the street.
The using gangster tactics to intimidate people.
It evolved into the program of Kristallnacht in 1938, when the
violence reached a new level, and the threat reached a new level.
Then you have the systematic killing of the [UNKNOWN] group between 1939 and 1941.
This was, again, an escalation of violence using clear violence
in, and war like violence against the population.
But it culminates with the industrialized assembly
line mass murder of 1942, and 1944.
We have to understand that the final solution
is a product of a series of stages.
If a product of this very process of war,
and the dehumanization that is produced by the war.
I want to argue, and I think most of the literature is on my side, that the
Nazis do not begin their anti-semitic campaigns in
the 1920s with the slaughter of millions in mind.
The goal was to make Germany Judenfrei, that is free of Jews.
And as offensive this was, it began with an emphasis on
forced migration through systematic intimidation and
persecution, and, relatively, relatively, limited violence.
What we see here is, again, disgusting, but it was not
the kind of systematic extermination that we're going to see later.
There were Jews in concentration camps.
From early in the 1930s.
But they were not the exclusive focus of persecution.
They were there along with various other groups.
Particularly political opposition.
So the Jews had been singled out.
But not for the kind of process that we're going to see later.
I want to argue that Autumn of 1938 is a clear turning point.
Some have argued that the fiscal pressures on the state required the appropriation
of whatever Jewish capital and resources remained
in Germany, that we can understand Kristallnacht.
Not just as an explosion of hatred, but actually as almost a material grab.
In order to grab the amounts of
Jewish capital and Jewish properties, that were still available.
Even after five years of intimidation.
There was also in the autumn, by the autumn of 1938,
a frustration with the reluctance of other countries to allow greater immigration.
Let us understand this.
And it's very, very important that the Nazis
were trying to push the Jewish population out during the 1930s.
And one of the reasons they were not able to do so, is
because of the rest of the world, would not take this population in.
The rest of the world also suffered from this kind of anti-semitism.
And refused, in a sense, to accept this population the Germans.
12:44
Then, in his speech to the Reichstag on January 30, 1939.
Hitler starts threatening something very different, and he makes explicit the
threat of speaking about the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.
This is one of the first instances that we have of this vision.
Not just of making Germany or Europe Jewed and fried, free of Jews.
But rather actually exterminating the Jews.
Now, after the war begins and the [UNKNOWN] group are unleashed
on Poland, there is no apparent systematic campaign of extermination.
That is, we have an incredible amount of
violence, we have it directed at a particular population.
But its managerial systemality, if you will.
Its systemization had not quite developed yet.
The Jewish population is forced into ghettos, but appears that
this is really a first step in their forceful removal.
Towards the east, in order to provide
Lebensraum for German migrants, into the Polish countryside.
So, it seems that the move of the Jewish population, for example,
in Poland, into ghettos, is not as a step prior to their extermination.
But prior to their forced movement, far into the
east, so their land could be taken over by Germans.
Now, let us not misunderstand what this move to the
east meant; it was not expected to be a successful
migration, in that this Jewish population would then prosper in
the east, they were meant to be pushed in the east.
To literally starve to death they were going to be
pushed out these territories and left to their own devices.
And left without the kind of tools for their own survival.
So there was no good intention in any, in any of these
but it was still not yet that systematic industrial approach of extermination.
14:38
The invasion of the Soviet Union, in June 1941 marks the beginning
of this third phase of the Shao the one that we are most familiar with.
For the next year, a part of the German
war machinery was devoted to the systematic killing of Jews.
As the invaders moved west.
So, we begin to see how this process of
killing a population becomes more organized, if you will.
The killing of Jews appeared first to be part of a general debolshevikization.
campaign.
But by late 1941, Jewish identity in ending of
itself would override any other consideration including age or gender.
That is, that what we see is the
intensification of this category, the centralization of this category.
As the main purpose of war.
This, this process, this [UNKNOWN], this, this the, this Holocaust
by bullets, if you will, resulted in the deaths of more than one million Jews as
well as gypsies, Soviet POWs, all sorts of populations.
But the center category was clearly the Jews.
15:49
In nineteen forty two, we see a change.
At the beginning of this year, 75% of the
Jews that would be killed will still be alive.
But by the beginning of 1943 only 25 were still living.
That is 1942 is a clear moment when a campaign of harassment, a
campaign of violence, a campaign of
death becomes a campaign of institutionalized extermination.
We begin with the Wannsee Conference of earlier 1942 where the Nazi leadership, a
large part of the Nazi leadership, meets
to institutionalize this killing and changes its method.
It is it expresses its frustration.
With the inefficiencies of things like, the [UNKNOWN]
group and they're not simply getting the job done.
Moreover, interestingly, they recognize that the
psychological costs on the troops are considerable
and at the [UNKNOWN] Conference, a new level of evil is reached.
And you get Operation Dried Heart begins in camps
at Sobidor, Treblinka, Mojonick, as well as those Achellno.
In Auschwitz.
These become operational between 1942, 1942 and 1944.
And an estimated 3 million Jews are
17:39
That was these.
These material gains, if you will, were
a positive collateral to the kind of extermination.
Since great efforts were made to keep this secret, the murder was not
necessarily functional in that it could not be used to intimidate or terrorize.
That is, we're not seeing this kind of violence as almost
a functional part of the imposition of terror on a population because.
This all has to be kept very, very secret.
Killing was its own objective, and the reason was a perceived identity.
That the whole point of this exercise was to kill those who had been identified.
As something.
Here we come to racial warfare, at its most extreme.
Now, where we have many many accounts of
daily brutality on an individual level from camp guards.
Most testimonies confirm our image of, [LAUGH] bureaucratic indifference.
[LAUGH] That, this was not a process driven in a sense by an
animalistic side, but rather, facilitated by
a bureaucratic distance, by a bureaucratic rationality.
The method of killing squads such as Babi
Yar, used, through most of 1941, brought challenges.
They were, and again, I apologize for having to speak it in
this way but I think it's important
that we understand how the Nazis perceived this.
There were logical concerns with body disposal, for example.
So the kinds of killing squads we see here.
That always left the problem of what to
do with this masses, this mass number of corpses.
There was a difficulty of killing innocence and
maintaining a descensiy and upstanding with such and obligation.
That is, that the germans face almost
A personal problem.
In that the soldiers, even the most blood thirsty, even those who
had been convinced by this propaganda, are shocked by this continual, process.
In this,
Created a new need for a method of synchronized killing.
That is, that the structure of the extermination camps.
The structure of Auschwitz has to be seen almost
as a strategic shift given the
Frustrations with the old fashionably way of killing.
Now, the gemination campaign of nineteen thirty nine have provided a method.
And very individuals groups were quite enthusiastic, and were out of patience.
And when one reads this memos, there saltatory about their production quarters.
How the can improve the process.
What they wanted to do.
Was to create a smoothly running mass
murder organization, but on an extraordinary scale.
Now, each camp shared some of the same characteristics.
20:38
Contact with the victims was minimized to the initial arrival and very
soon after, victims would be funneled into a path, finishing in their deaths.
So, there was relatively small contact between the killers.
And the killed.
The removal of bodies was done by
the sonderkommando, or prisoners, who had gained a
short extension of their lives by doing,
what can only be described, as the unspeakable.
The actual number of personnel involved could be kept
at a minimum, making the process of recruitment easier.
You did not need to find millions of mass killers, you
could create an industrial process in a sense, where a few individuals.
Could actually accomplish this.
The process was to de-personalize as much as possible.
While the personnel were encouraged to think of their work as normal.
Even if unpleasant.