| THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GENOCIDE |
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Nature’s Engine
That metaphor of
“nature's engine” suggests the relationship of omnipotence to the
apparently, opposite feeling of powerlessness or impotence, of being no more
than a tiny cog in someone else's machine. The Auschwitz self could swing from
the one emotion to the other, both. turning out to be part of the same
psychological constellation. The very forces that provided its sense of power
over others could cause it to feel itself overwhelmed, threatened, virtually
extinguished. For another principle suggested by the observation that “one
could react like a normal human being in Auschwitz for only the first few
hours” is the extraordinary power of that environment over any self that
entered it.
Moreover, the Auschwitz self quickly sought that stance of
powerlessness (as Dr. B. cited some doctors: “I'm not here because I want
to be. …I can't change the fact that prisoners come here. I can just try
to make the best of it") as a way of renouncing responsibility for what was
unsaid: that “prisoners come here” to be murdered. This emotional and
moral surrender to the environment had great psychological advantages. The
Auschwitz self could feel: “I am not responsible for selections.
I am not responsible for phenol injections. I am a victim of the
environment no less than the inmates.” More than mere retrospective
rationalization, this stance of nonresponsibility was still another means of
avoiding feelings of guilt at the time. The Auschwitz self permitted the
murderous environment to sweep over and into it. It accepted that
environment’s givens: “Mass murder is the norm, so it is commendable
to select and thereby save a few people, or to experiment on prisoners and maim
or kill a few here and there since they are in any case destined for
death.” The Auschwitz self could then become an absolute creature of
context, and there is no better way to abnegate moral responsibility of any
kind. One can expend considerable psychic energy in seeking and achieving the
status of the helpless pawn.
But the more accurate image may be that of
environmental tool. A tool does not initiate action but plays an important
technical role in it by enhancing the skill and efficiency of the wielder.
Here, of course, the wielder was the Nazi leadership — ultimately, the
Führer himself. But from the standpoint of the Nazi biomedical vision, the
Auschwitz self was a tool also of the evolutionary process, of a biological
imperative. In this way the biologization of Auschwitz — of Nazi Germany
in general — contributed to a doctor’s self-abnegation and
powerlessness no less than to his omnipotence. .
The Auschwitz self
could also experience the pleasures of obedience. For just as omnipotence
becomes readily associated with sadism, so can powerlessness or impotence be
associated with masochism. The fear experienced by the Auschwitz self had to do
not only with specific superiors but with threats of being somehow dislodged
from its balance of omnipotent power and impotent helplessness. It required
that balance |
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