| AUSCHWITZ: THE RACIAL CURE |
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. . . . NCOs and also company commanders and camp
leaders Some were . . . how shall we say? . . . well, one cannot put it any
other way - interested in it. They pressed forward, or rather they engaged
themselves .... They said, “What those others are doing is all
rubbish!” Or . . . some who had already been in other concentration camps
where one was experiencing these matters because, for instance, the crematoria
had been out of operation or were small . . . . Physicians and other people
— all those who believed themselves to be experts — they engaged
themselves there. |
As Dr. B. summed up the matter: “The problem . . .
was not the selections but how one can burn the colossal quantities [of
corpses] if the ovens are not working. That’s what was being talked about,
and nothing else.”
The problem led to antagonisms among doctors
and other SS leaders (“Why didn’t you have an idea?”),
and to disclaimers of responsibility (“That is not our job — you go
ahead and do something”). Soon discussions of the nagging problem were no
longer confined to small medical or technical circles but were extended to
casual off-duty moments, with such comments as, “This fool, he did such
and such — how can he do that when — ?” Dr B. explained that the
“best ideas” did not necessarily come from doctors or other officers
but came from “very simple people“ among SS personnel. And his
message again and again was that the focus was always pragmatic, on what
worked — “not [on] moral or, aesthetic or any other such
considerations . . . because that [area of feeling] was already blocked off
[abgeblockt].... It was purely a technical matter.” And, with
chilling consistency, on the subject of ethics: “No. ‘Ethical’
plays absolutely no [part] — the word does not exist."*
B. then
provided a simple but telling model:
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The whole pattern of things within the camp
atmosphere ... was just the way it is in a civilian community, with all the
human squabbling, you understand…. It was like the planning of
construction or something on that order, things you observe in any community
.... Not only professional conflicts but also positions of power ... were
fought out just as in any civilian organization, but here it was all about the
Auschwitz crematorium and such things .... It is exactly the same .... Human
beings living in communities have a task, . . . administering something
somewhere, and ... they always function in the same way — according to
rules — for instance, Parkinson’s Law.† ... And it was exactly
that way within the concentration camp — especially so because of the
secrecy and because it [the camp] had such an exceptional position
[Sonderstell- […ung] |
__________
* In the original German:
“Nein. Ethisch spielt überhaupt — das Wort gibt es
nicht.”
† The semi-humorous principle — put forward
in C. Northcote Parkinson’s 1980 book, Parkinson: A Law — that
bureaucracy expands to fill up available space. |
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