Civilization and Barbarity: An Examination of Several Abnormalities in the Death Camps of the Holocaust
by In the midst of the Nazis’ industrialized killing system, prisoners disembarking from trains and herded toward the gas chambers often did so with a camp orchestra playing; Sonderkommando and their SS masters played games of soccer in the shadow of crematoria chimneys; inmates performed plays in camp theaters; hospitals were an integral part of even purpose-built death camps.
It is possible to view many of the abnormalities this essay deals with in a similar light. Arendt writes that the Nazis’ most difficult problem was “how to overcome…the animal pity by which all normal men are affected.” I propose an answer to this question. Much in the same way that consumers today would prefer to buy free-range or “Happy Farm” chicken, the SS may have found it easier to kill Jews if they soothed their consciences with the “nicer” elements of the camp, such as its orchestra, theater, hospital, soccer games, and petting zoo. If this hypothesis is accurate, then these abnormalities were, like the gas chambers and crematoria, an integral part of the industrialized mass-killing process.
Whether or not we label the SS as uncivilized demons, it is clear that they did not see themselves as such. Bauman suggests the SS felt that, by overcoming their animal instincts of pity and dutifully killing the Jews, they had become even more civilized. Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss appeared to the commandant of Treblinka and Sobibór, Franz Sangl, as “a kindly, unselfish family man who loved his wife.” Höss took pride in being the first to use “Zyklon B to gas Jews to death, finding the poison gas to be “rational, hygienic, and “humane.’”
Dr. Mengele of Auschwitz, who on the one hand participated in selections at the railway junction and killed prisoners himself, has been described as having “compassionate” moments in which he gave his patients the “best of care”. Robert Wistrich calls such discontinuities examples of “a high degree of personal fragmentation.” Perhaps it may stand as an explanation for many of the abnormalities found in camp existence. This suggests that, at times, the SS were not just killers, but also men who felt bound to certain morals. Perhaps this may explain why basic medicine was made available and distributed in camp hospitals.
In this essay, I have attempted to account for certain abnormalities found in concentration camps – such as camp orchestras, theaters, sports events, and hospitals – by examining several possible reasons for their existence. Explanations include the Nazi desire for camp efficiency, the deliberate attempt at dehumanization and humiliation of the Jews, and the guards’ desire, whether “civilized” or sadistic for diversion. A final explanation points to the fact that many Nazis saw themselves as civilized individuals, and may have, at times, acted accordingly. If this final explanation has any merit, it illuminates what has been perhaps the starkest contrast of the Twentieth Century, an intimate interconnection of civilization and barbarity.
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