Sergei Kastalsky, Natalia Rudnitskaya

Holocaust

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The Banality of Evil: Eichmann in Jerusalem- a book written by Hannah Arendt, who was present as a correspondent for The New Yorker magazine at the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a former SS Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel) who was in charge of the IV-B-4 Gestapo department, responsible for the "final solution of the Jewish question". The trial took place in Jerusalem in 1961.

In the book written by her at the end of the process, Arendt analyzes the events that took place, trying to give them a third-party assessment.

Brief summary of the contents of the book

In her book, Hannah Arendt argues that, in addition to the desire to rise up the career ladder, Eichmann did not have any traces of anti-Semitism or psychological handicap in his personality. The book's subtitle refers the reader to the idea of ​​"the banality of evil" and this phrase serves as her final words in the final chapter. So, she cites the words of Eichmann, said by him during the trial, which demonstrate the absence of any addiction to his criminal acts, the absence of any measure of responsibility for what he did: after all, he was only “doing his job”:

Criticism of the edition and the book

Criticism of Arendt's book

According to critical media coverage, the book about the 1961 Israeli trial of the "architect of the Holocaust" has long been a classic of 20th-century political thought. According to critics, the book is not, as stated in the author's annotation, an "extremely meticulous study" of the Holocaust, but is a detailed discussion, divided into many cases and examples, about the political and moral causes of the phenomenon, when people "refuse to hear the voice of conscience and look in the face of reality." According to critics, the heroes of her book are divided not into executioners and victims, but into those who have retained these abilities and those who have lost them.

Criticism of the Russian edition of 2008

The hard, often sarcastic tone of the book, the lack of reverence for the victims and the sharpness of the assessments outraged and still outrage many.
Arendt writes about the Germans - "German society, which consisted of eighty million people, was also protected from reality and facts by the same means, the same self-deception, lies and stupidity that became the essence of his, Eichmann's, mentality." But it is also merciless to the self-deception of the victims, and especially to those who - like part of the Jewish elite - for "humane" or other reasons, supported this self-deception in others ...
... But the main thing is that for some reason the translation does not have an editor (they indicate “editor-in-chief - G. Pavlovsky” and “responsible for the release - T. Rappoport”, but proofreading and reconciliation of the translation was clearly not part of their functions). Translating Arendt (I speak from my own experience) - especially not from her native German, but from English, in which she often expressed herself inaccurately - is a slow and difficult task. And in the absence of an editor, the translation came out not only bad or even inaccurate, but unreliable. It's not that here, as in any translation, there are errors (for example, " radical variety"anti-Semitism turned into meaningless" radical assortment”), but in the fact that these errors distort the tone and thought of the book, distort the author's voice. " Judges who remember too well the basics of their profession”, turn for translators into “ too conscientious for their profession- and Arendt herself suddenly turns into a cynic. Instead of " the process began to turn into a bloody show", translators, confusing the literal and abusive meaning of the word" bloody", they write" "damn show" - and a harsh assessment turns into rude abuse ...

First of all, the annotation of the Europa publishing house was criticized, speaking about the “bloody attempt of the Tbilisi authorities” and about the “stubborn attempts of the West to“ privatize ”the topic of crimes against humanity” . The opinion of a journalist from the Kommersant newspaper is that this edition of Arendt's book is a hastily prepared ideological action - this haste affected the quality of the publication itself. So, in the Russian title, the title and subtitle for some reason switched places.

Also, for some unknown reason, the first, 1963, edition of the book was chosen for translation, and not the second, revised and supplemented by the Postscript, published in 1965, which has since been reprinted - and is the classic book that the whole world reads.

Related publications

• Jochen von Lang, Eichmann Interrogated(1982) ISBN 0-88619-017-7 - book written in response to Eichmann in Jerusalem containing excerpts from the materials of the pre-trial investigation.
• Eichmann in Jerusalem. A Report on the Banality of Evil(erstmals 1963. Die Aufl. seit 1965 mit der dt. "Vorrede" als "Postscript" in der "rev. and enlarged edition.") Penguin Books, 2006 ISBN 0143039881 ISBN 978-0143039884 . Die Seiten 1 bis 136 (teilw.), das berühmte Zitat auf Seite 233 engl. (entspricht S. 347 deutsch) und vor allem das Stichwortverz. sind online lesbar: (English) - English edition
• David Cesarani: Becoming Eichmann. Rethinking the Life, Crimes and Trial of a "Desk Murderer" Da Capo, Cambridge MA 2006
• Gary Smith: H.A. revisited: "Eichmann in Jerusalem" und die Folgen ed. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 2000 ISBN 3518121359
• Walter Laqueur: H. A. in Jerusalem. The Controversy Revisited in: Lyman H. Legters (Hg.): Western Society after the Holocaust Westview Press, Voulder, Colorado USA 1983, S. 107-120

• Eichmann in Jerusalem. Ein Bericht von der Banalität des Bösen Aus dem amerikanischen Englisch von Brigitte Granzow (v. d. Autorin überarb. Fassung im Vgl. zur engl. Erstausgabe; neue Vorrede). Seit 1986 mit einem "einleitenden Essay" von Hans Mommsen. Erweiterte Taschenbuchausgabe. Piper, Munich u. a. 15. Aufl. 2006, 440 Seiten (Reihe: Serie Piper, Bd. 4822- Frühere Aufl.: ebd. Band 308. Diese Ausgabe, zuletzt 2005, liegt der Seitenzählung in diem Art. zugrunde) ISBN 978-3492248228 ISBN 3492248225 (German)
• Auszüge: Eichmann and the Holocaust(Reihe: Penguin Great Ideas) Penguin, 2005 ISBN 0141024003 ISBN 978-0141024004 (German)
• Elisabeth Young-Bruehl: Hannah Arendt. Leben, Werk und Zeit Fischer, Frankfurt 2004, ISBN 3596160103. S. 451-518. (Aus dem American.: Hannah Arendt. For Love of the World Yale Univ. Press 1982) (German)
• Julia Schulze Wessel: Ideologie der Sachlichkeit. H.A.s politische Theorie des Antisemitismus Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 2006 (Reihe: TB Wissenschaft 1796) ISBN 3518293966 Rezension von Yvonne Al-Taie (German)
• David Cesarani: Adolf Eichmann. Burokrat und Massenmörder. Propyläen, München 2004 (German)
• Steven A. Aschheim (Hg): H.A. in Jerusalem Univ. of Calif. Press, Berkely u.a. 2001 (engl.) ISBN 0520220579 (Pb.) ISBN 0520220560 (German)
• Dan Diner: Hannah Arendt Reconsidered. On the Banal and the Evil in Her Holocaust Narrative in: New German Critique No. 71 (Spring/Summer 1997) S. 177-190
• Richard J. Bernstein: Did Hannah Arendt Change Her Mind? From Radical Evil to the Banality of Evil in: Hannah Arendt. Twenty years later MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. & London 1996, pp. 127-146
• Claudia Bozzaro: H.A. und die Banalität des Bösen Vorw. Lore Huhn. FWPF (Fördergemeinschaft wissenschaftlicher Publikationen von Frauen) Freiburg 2007 ISBN 978-3939348092

In 1961, Adolf Eichmann, one of the architects of the "solution of the Jewish question in Europe," was tried in Jerusalem. On trial as a journalist from the publicationTheNewYorker was attended by Hannah Arendt, a German-American philosopher of Jewish origin, who became the founder of the theory of totalitarianism. The court tried to present Eichmann as a brilliant maniac-psychopath, who almost single-handedly planned and organized the extermination of an entire nation. However, Arendt saw in him something completely different, and somewhat even more frightening - a completely ordinary, unremarkable person, whose scale of crimes overshadowed his true character for the public, since it did not correlate with the scale of his personality.

There is no person who would be like an island, in itself, each person is part of the mainland, part of the land; and if a wave blows a coastal cliff into the sea, Europe will become smaller, and likewise if it washes away the edge of a cape or destroys your castle or your friend; the death of each person diminishes me too, for I am one with all mankind, and therefore do not ask for whom the bell tolls: it tolls for you.

John Donne, English poet and preacher, 1623

Who is Adolf Eichmann?

Adolf Eichmann was in charge of Department IV of the Main Directorate of Imperial Security of Nazi Germany. It was this department that was entrusted with the "solution of the Jewish question." Therefore, after the war, Eichmann, who hid in Argentina, like many other Nazi criminals, became the most wanted Nazi in the world for the newly formed state of Israel. So, when they found him, the Israelis did not hesitate to steal a person from the territory of another state, and the director of Israeli intelligence personally led the kidnapping operation.

Israeli Prime Minister Ben Gurion hoped to make the trial showcase by denouncing anti-Semitism and the Holocaust in the person of a man who was seen as central to these war crimes. The prosecution sought to present Eichmann as "a man obsessed with a dangerous and insatiable craving for murder", a "perverted sadist", and most importantly - an ardent anti-Semite in order to show the unnaturalness of anti-Semitism itself as a phenomenon.

However, this position almost immediately began to run into problems. The first of these problems was that the 12 psychiatrists who examined Eichmann unanimously agreed that he was completely normal. “Anyway, he was much more normal than I was after I talked to him!” one of the doctors who examined him said. Both the psychiatrists and the priest who spoke to him found him "a man with very positive views," who was very kind to family and children and, worst of all, clearly did not have an insane hatred of Jews.

When studying the biography of Eichmann, neither an evil genius, nor even a sadist, was found in him. He was quite an ordinary person. Even very ordinary. Eichmann could not finish school, he left first from one, and then from another school, where his father sent him. Then he worked for about three months in the mines, which his father again owned, after which his parents again sent him to study at the Upper Austrian Electric Company, and then helped him get a job as a traveling representative for the Vacuum Oil company, where he was mainly engaged in the installation of gasoline pumps in his area and provided supplies of kerosene.

All his life, Eichmann tried to join some organization that would help him understand who he was and somehow define himself. So, in his youth, he belonged to such organizations as YMCA, Wandervogel and Jungfrontkämpferverband, then he tried to join Schlaraffia (a male organization like Freemasonry), and after that, family friend and future war criminal Ernst Kaltenbrunner suggested that Eichmann join the SS - the only organization where he was able to stay for a long time and where his career somehow went uphill. Which was mainly due to the strengthening of its influence.

Eichmann's activities before the start of the war

How did it happen that such a very mediocre person was responsible for one of the greatest crimes in the history of mankind, carried out by the murder machine of the Millennium Reich?

The answer to this question is quite simple - no way. No matter how hard the prosecution tried to pin the blame for the Holocaust on Eichmann, they could not find evidence that he really participated in the murders of Jews. Although he was found guilty on all 15 charges imputed to him, none of these counts directly related to the murder: they all spoke of complicity in murders and crimes against humanity. It was not possible to prove his direct involvement in the murders.

The fact is that Eichmann began his career in the SS with boring paper work - he systematized the file cabinet of the Masons. Soon he was offered to move to the newly organized department dedicated to the Jews, which at that time did not have a clearly defined goal, so Eichmann, in general, had to do all the same boring clerical work.

Germany wanted to get rid of the Jews. However, in the early stages, deliverance did not consist at all in physical destruction, but in the deprivation of their citizenship and expulsion, which was called forced emigration. This is exactly what the department in which Eichmann worked did: he helped draw up documents, obtain visas, buy tickets, sell property (Jews could only take a small amount of money and a very small amount of things out of Germany), negotiated with representatives of Jewish communities and foreign governments.

Many Jews gladly collaborated with Eichmann's department. The first anti-Semitic laws of the Third Reich, which prohibited them from holding certain positions and somehow excluded them from German society, merely formalized the economic and social position of the Jews that existed at that time. Therefore, the Zionist Jews, who themselves sought to isolate and form a Jewish state, only rejoiced at this state of affairs. Moreover, these laws pushed other Jews to Zionism. It turned out that the Zionist organizations, which initially had influence on only 5% of the Jewish population of Germany, could now interact with the authorities, since their goals at that time coincided.

Before the outbreak of the war, Eichmann's department was very successful in expelling Jews from the territory of the Reich: first from Germany itself, then from annexed Austria, and then from annexed Czechoslovakia. He turned the disparate bureaucracy, endlessly driving Jews from one ministry to another and thereby slowing down the process of their expulsion, into an organized machine that quickly coped with its task. The concentration of Jews in one place was initially only a means of accelerating the process of expulsion.

However, as soon as the war began, it became clear that there was simply nowhere else to deport the Jews, since the Nazis occupied almost the entire European continent, and the British controlled the seas and simply would not have allowed the Jews to be transported anywhere by sea. Eichmann made plans to create a puppet Jewish state in Madagascar, or at least in Poland, where he could become governor-general. But these plans were not destined to come true. The political solution of the Jewish question was soon replaced by the final one. Eichmann's further work consisted in capturing, concentrating and transporting Jews to concentration camps.

How were the Nazis able to organize the Holocaust?

Throughout the process of "solving the Jewish question," the cooperation of Jewish organizations and communities with the Nazi authorities played a huge role. It was they who helped to compile lists of Jews, describe their property, exchange money that Jews could take out of Germany, inform Jews about the process of emigration and the requirements of the Nazi authorities. These same organizations assisted the Nazis in spreading propaganda among the Jews, encouraging them to proudly wear the yellow star, the symbol of their exclusion from German society.

These same organizations selected the most healthy, respected, or wealthy Jews, first to be sent to Palestine, then to be evacuated, and then to be concentrated in a model Jewish ghetto in the city of Terezin. It was shown to foreign observers because it had the most tolerable living conditions. It was mainly the heads of the Jewish communities who entered this ghetto as a reward for their cooperation with the Nazi authorities. Therefore, it was also called the old man's ghetto. However, in Terezina, as both the war and the solution of the Jewish question approached, there was constantly not enough space for new Jewish collaborators, so there were periodic purges. And Jews of a lower rank were still sent to death camps.

What made the Jews to the last to believe the Nazi authorities? Moreover, what kept the Nazis themselves from going crazy with the inhumanity they showed against the Jews? And, finally, what kept the citizens of both Germany itself and the occupied countries from revolting against all this? They could not, after all, without exception be ardent anti-Semitic maniacs. And they could not be so afraid of the authorities, so as not to try to oppose the created horrors.

And, indeed, when in 1939-1941 the Nazis began to test the mentally ill with the help of gas chambers in Germany, the German society was outraged, and because of the protests, the project had to be curtailed. Therefore, the death camps had to be moved to the East.

However, it was not enough to simply move the camps away from the eyes of German citizens. It was also necessary to hide the essence of what was happening not only from them, but also from the executors of orders. To do this, "linguistic norms" were developed, in which the murder of concentration camp prisoners was called a "medical procedure", "special treatment", "forced relocation", "change of residence", "deportation". And, since the scale of the crime being committed was beyond all human understanding, many people believed these formulations.

The effect of these "language norms" on the Germans was simply amazing. Eichmann, who was very susceptible to all sorts of clichés that replaced his own thoughts (even his lawyer, to everyone's horror and outrage at the trial, continued to call mass murders "medical procedures"), did not see anything outrageous in this formulation. At the same time, throughout the war, he himself remained just a cog, albeit one of the central ones, in a machine aimed at the destruction of the Jews, just a mediocre bureaucrat who did not hesitate to fulfill the requirements of his superiors.

How could this tragedy have been prevented?

Eichmann was indeed not the maniacal anti-Semite he was portrayed as in Jerusalem. The court was not even able to prove his direct participation in the murders of Jews, although he definitely knew that the killings were hidden behind the "linguistic norms". However, he continued to diligently pursue his business, not out of hatred for the Jews, but out of a desire to be promoted and gain more power and out of a desire to please Hitler, whom he admired. Because he managed to climb the career ladder from corporal to chancellor. There was also a spirit of competition with other departments, which, for the same reasons, tried to exterminate as many Jews as possible. But if other departments were forced to operate only in the East, and they did not shy away from any methods, then Eichmann continued to carry out his work throughout the expanded Reich solely according to instructions.

It is remarkable how these instructions were carried out in different countries. In the East, where there were most Jews and where the process of assimilation was just beginning, citizens and local authorities were happy to cooperate with the Nazis in the capture and destruction of Jews. This is despite the fact that immediately after the Jews, Hitler planned to destroy or resettle the inhabitants of Eastern Europe beyond the Urals.

However, in the West, the Germans constantly had problems. "Deportation" always began with Jewish emigrants. Since they were not citizens of the countries in which they were located, they did not have the right to protection from these states. Therefore, for example, in France at first they happily agreed to deport them. However, by the time the Germans proposed to include French Jews on the lists for deportation, rumors had already reached France about what “resettlement to the East” means. Because of this, mass demonstrations and sabotage of German orders began in the country, even by French anti-Semites. The French were glad to resettle foreign Jews somewhere far away, but refused to become accomplices in their murder. Therefore, 80% of the Jews who lived in France at the time of the outbreak of the war survived it.

If in France the registration and deportation of Jews was initially carried out exclusively by the French police, then in Belgium the authorities, in principle, initially did not cooperate with the Germans in this matter. So the members of the SS dealt with it. But even they did it very inactively, and the Governor-General of Belgium did not take any part in it at all. Belgium didn't even have a Jewish council to help the Germans account for all the Jews. So during the war, not a single Belgian Jew was ever deported. Moreover, half of the Jews living there at the beginning of the war suddenly disappeared from all lists. At the same time, there were practically no collaborators in the country. And the Belgian workers and railroad workers could not be trusted in deportation matters, as they found ways to slow down Jewish trains and leave the car doors open, so that the Jews constantly escaped from them.

In Holland, the Nazis encountered civil resistance to deportation immediately after trying to expel at least foreign Jews from the country. Because of this, the Germans immediately abandoned the idea of ​​cooperating with the Dutch civil administration in this matter. However, Dutch Jews were let down by the presence of their own Nazi movement in the country and the tendency of Dutch Jews themselves to distinguish between them and foreign Jews. This helped the Germans set up a Jewish council to record local Jews and conduct roundups. As a result, only those Jews who were sheltered in their shelters by the Dutch themselves were not deported from Holland. Of the 20,000 Jews who survived in Holland (which is a lot for such a small country), 15,000 were foreigners, which shows the unwillingness of Dutch Jews to face the truth and their lack of understanding of the true goals and methods of the Nazis.

Even more incredible was the situation with the solution of the Jewish question in the Scandinavian countries. Only about 8,000 Jews lived in Norway at the start of the war, 7,000 of whom were refugees from Germany. As soon as Germany ordered their deportation, local German officials resigned, and Sweden announced that it would accept all Jewish refugees. So by the time the Nazis began to carry out anti-Jewish operations, almost all Norwegian Jews had already fled to Sweden.

The Danes in this matter have shown an example of real civic courage. As soon as the Nazis demanded that Jews start wearing patches, the Danish authorities said that the Danish king himself would be the first to wear such a patch. In addition, Danish officials threatened to resign if anti-Jewish operations began on their territory, which would plunge the country into chaos. Finally, when by the end of the war the Germans decided to take on the "solution of the Jewish question" in Denmark themselves, the German officials themselves, who had spent several years in the country, sabotaged orders from Berlin. Eventually, the Nazis sent in an SS corps and tried to stage a massive roundup of Jews in Denmark. However, they were only able to arrest 100 people, whom they could not warn not to open the doors to the Germans and not agree to go with them, because if they resisted, the Danish police would take their side. And even these 100 people ended up in the elite ghetto in Terezin and lived there better than all other Jews, since the Danish press constantly created a sensation about their fate.

Finally, some of the most striking resistance to Nazi anti-Semitism occurred in Germany's allied countries: Bulgaria, Spain, and Italy. Spain simply refused to extradite its Jews. Whereas Italy and Bulgaria for most of the war simply dodged when the Germans demanded that they introduce anti-Semitic laws. When they did agree to these demands, things got even worse. The Bulgarians, instead of gathering all the Jews in the ghetto, forbade them to live in the territory of the only large city in the country and thus scattered them throughout Bulgaria, because of which the Germans could no longer find them, catch them and transport them to the death camps.

The Italians seemed to simply mock the Germans. When Mussolini nevertheless was forced to introduce anti-Jewish laws, he made a reservation in them, according to which Jews who were members of the fascist party or their relatives did not fall under them. In a country that had been ruled by the Nazis for 20 years and where it was impossible to enter the civil service without membership in the party, almost everyone fell under this reservation. When the Nazis were able to get the Italians to gather at least some of the Jews in concentration camps, they settled thousands of the poorest Jews in the most luxurious hotels in the Mediterranean country. Angry that the Italians were sabotaging their demands, the Germans sent their best and most brutal officers to deal with the matter. However, when they arrived at the places, it turned out that the Italians lost all the lists of Jews, and the Jews themselves had already managed to escape.

All of these examples show the following. The only thing that really helped the Nazis to commit their crimes was the indifference of people to each other, to foreigners, to other peoples, to their compatriots, to the poor. And this indifference to other people's troubles brought trouble on themselves. Because of this, the most anti-Semitic peoples almost became victims of the Nazis themselves. When people realized that someone else's misfortune was their misfortune, when they stood up for those who were in a vulnerable position, evil was forced to retreat. Therefore, the explanation of how the catastrophe that befell Europe, Germany and the Jewish people became possible is a quote from a speech by a German pastor in which he tried to explain the inaction of German intellectuals in the face of the Nazis:

When they came for the communists, I was silent - I was not a communist.

When they came for the Social Democrats, I was silent - I was not a Social Democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists, I was silent - I was not a union member.

When they came for me, there was no one to intercede for me.

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In 1961, something strange was happening in Jerusalem.

The whole world seemed to be holding its breath as they watched the trial unfold against hellfire Adolf Eichmann. But yesterday's prisoners saw not a monster, but a notorious Nazi functionary; a faded, frightened, middle-aged bespectacled man who was neither the initiator of the "final solution" nor some exemplary sadist. This is what a quiet, homely accountant looked like. He was him, as Hannah Arendt convincingly writes, - just an executive cog, hiding humanity under a pile of other people's cliche slogans in an atmosphere of total self-deception. It must be admitted that this was not so difficult to do, given the then bestial situation in the world, where the value of one person stubbornly tended to zero and people like Eichmann easily found excuses for their actions by supposedly “forced measures” in the ring of enemies.

Of course, not he, but his bosses - Heydrich, Himmler, Hitler - conceived the "final solution", for this he was too down to earth and helpful. Not even he - Eichmann - decided where to send the Jews and how to treat them. At best, he "made suggestions", but his leadership did not always agree with them.

That was the horror. The court was faced not with the personification of evil, individual arbitrariness, which can be stigmatized in one person and discarded, but with the phenomenon of collective dehumanization, a kind of Nazi situation in which crime became the norm and in which the doubts of weak Eichmanns were easily shattered against the steely stubbornness of all Heydrichs, Kaltenbrunners, Himmler. Therefore, the court in Jerusalem had to work hard and tediously through the intricacies of the Nazi bureaucracy and identify the measure of personal responsibility of Eichmann, whose routine activity of transferring Jews to concentration camps can hardly be called so odious. If it were not for Eichmann, then, undoubtedly, any other middle-ranking functionary would have coped with this. So, speaking of Eichmann, we are not dealing with a person, but with a huge group of the population, which in normal, healthy times conducts quite respectable activities - works in state institutions, etc.

Unfortunately, the question: "What happens to ordinary people in the conditions of state criminal debauchery" in the book is considered only in relation to Eichmann. If we put the question more broadly, then we can come to the disappointing conclusion that the transformation of a huge number of people into mass murderers is quite within the power of the state, and thousand-year-old attitudes like “Thou shalt not kill”, some kind of civilized raid will collapse under the weight of conformism.

But why is it even worse that in Russia, which is not at all prone to self-accusation, repentance, although moral commandments and spirituality are generally pedaled here with aplomb, the return of bestial, Stalinist times does not occur only due to the good will of the state, and even, perhaps, because of the European fashion for humanism.

Memorials and monuments

On January 27, 1945, Soviet troops liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp. On this day, International Holocaust Remembrance Day is now celebrated - six million Jews killed, and in Germany also - Day of Remembrance for all victims of National Socialism who died in concentration and labor camps, prisons, involuntary labor and in killing centers.

Memorial sites in Germany

Berlin

The central memorial to the Jews of Europe killed during the Nazi era is located in Berlin near the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate. It was opened in 2005. The documentation center is located in its underground part. Some of the documents of his exposition in Russian are materials collected after the war during the investigation of crimes committed in the "Third Reich".

Memorial sites in Germany

"Crystal Night"

During the Jewish pogroms on the so-called "Kristallnacht" on November 9-10, 1938, more than 1,400 synagogues and prayer houses were destroyed on the territory of Nazi Germany and in some parts of Austria. One of the synagogues was located on the Kazernenstrasse in Düsseldorf. After the war, monuments or memorial plaques were erected here and in many other such places.

Memorial sites in Germany

Dachau

41,500 people died in the Dachau concentration camp. It was created in 1933 near Munich for political prisoners. Later, Jews, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses and representatives of other groups persecuted by the Nazis began to be sent to Dachau. All other concentration camps of the "Third Reich" were organized according to his model.

Memorial sites in Germany

Buchenwald

One of the largest camps was located in Thuringia near Weimar. From 1937 to 1945, about 250 thousand people were imprisoned in Buchenwald. 56 thousand prisoners died. Among them were also several hundred deserters and those who refused to serve in the Wehrmacht. After the war, they continued to be considered "traitors" and "cowards" in Germany for a long time, and the first memorial stone was installed in Buchenwald only in 2001.

Memorial sites in Germany

Gypsy genocide

This monument, erected in Buchenwald in 1995 on the territory of the former block number 14, is dedicated to the gypsies who died here - European Roma and Sinti. The names of all the camps of the "Third Reich" to which they were sent are engraved on the stones. The total number of victims of the Roma genocide in Europe is still unknown. According to various sources, it can range from 150 thousand to 500 thousand people.

Memorial sites in Germany

Langenstein-Zwieberg death camp

Buchenwald had over 60 so-called outer camps. One of them is "Malachite" in Langenstein-Zwieberg near Halberstadt. Its prisoners were building an underground plant for the Junkers. Two thousand prisoners died from disease and exhaustion, were victims of torture and execution. Another 2,500 died or were killed during the death march, when the camp was evacuated due to the approach of the front.

Memorial sites in Germany

Dora-Mittelbau

Another outer camp of Buchenwald was formed in 1943 near the city of Nordhausen in Thuringia to organize production at the underground Mittelwerk plant, where V-2 rockets and other weapons were assembled. For a year and a half, 60 thousand people passed through the Dora-Mittelbau camp. Most of the prisoners were from the Soviet Union, Poland and France. Every third of them died.

Memorial sites in Germany

Bergen-Belsen

Memorial on the territory of the former Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Lower Saxony. In total, about 50 thousand people died in this camp, among them 20 thousand prisoners of war. In April 1945, 15-year-old Anne Frank died here - the author of the famous diary denouncing Nazism and translated into many languages ​​of the world.

Memorial sites in Germany

Sachsenhausen

"Work makes you free" - this sign in German over the gates of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Brandenburg has become a household word. In total, over 100 thousand people were killed or died in this camp, including from 13 to 18 thousand Soviet prisoners of war. Among them is Stalin's eldest son Yakov Dzhugashvili. The national memorial, established by the government of the GDR, was opened here in 1961.

Memorial sites in Germany

Flossenbürg

"I have heard of Dachau and Auschwitz, but never of Flossenbürg" - such a quote greets visitors in a former concentration camp in Bavaria. 30,000 people died in this camp. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a well-known German pastor, theologian and participant in a conspiracy against Hitler, was a prisoner, and Andrei Yushchenko, the father of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, was among the Soviet prisoners of war.

Memorial sites in Germany

Barrack No. 13

In the Berlin district of Schöneweide was one of the many camps for forced laborers driven from other countries for forced labor in Germany. Their total number during the years of the "Third Reich" amounted to several million people. The exposition of the documentation center in one of the surviving barracks of this camp is devoted to the fate of forced laborers.

Memorial sites in Germany

Ravensbrück

Sculpture of a mother with a child on the lake in Ravensbrück, the largest women's concentration camp in the "Third Reich". It was established in 1939, 90 kilometers north of Berlin. The number of prisoners during its existence amounted to more than 130 thousand people - about 40 nationalities. 28 thousand prisoners died. Medical experiments were also carried out in the camp.

Memorial sites in Germany

"Siemens barracks" in Ravensbrück

The prisoners of Ravensbrück and its numerous subcamps were used for forced labor. In 1940, textile production was established here, and in 1942, the electrical engineering concern Siemens & Halske AG built 20 industrial barracks. According to the testimonies of the surviving prisoners, at the end of 1944 up to 3,000 women and children worked here daily for this company.

Memorial sites in Germany

Stoves for Auschwitz

Former Topf & Söhne factory in Erfurt. Here, by order of the National Socialists, furnaces were produced in which people who died in Auschwitz and other concentration camps were burned. On the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27, 2011, a documentation center was opened in the former factory building.

Memorial sites in Germany

"Stumbling Stones"

Such metal signs embedded in the sidewalks can be seen in many cities in Germany. "Stumbling Stones" - Stolpersteine. The first one was installed by the German artist Gunther Demnig in Cologne in 1995. Stones commemorate the victims of National Socialism near the houses in which they lived. There are already more than 45 thousand of them in 800 German settlements and 200 outside of Germany.

Memorial sites in Germany

Gestapo

Numerous documentation centers are also involved in the study of the crimes of Nazism in Germany. In Cologne, such a center and museum are located in the former Gestapo building - EL-DE-Haus. In its basement there were cells for prisoners, on the walls of which there were inscriptions, including in Russian.

Memorial sites in Germany

Homosexuals

Since 1935, the Nazis also began to persecute homosexuals. In total, more than 50 thousand of them were convicted in the "Third Reich". About 7 thousand died in concentration camps. In 1995, a monument was erected on the embankment in Cologne - the Pink Triangle. The memorial shown in the photo was opened in 2008 in Berlin's Greater Tiergarten park. Another one is in Frankfurt - Frankfurt Angel (1994).

Memorial sites in Germany

Opponents of the regime

Plötzensee Prison Museum in Berlin. In 1933-1945, the National Socialists executed more than 3,000 opponents of the regime here, many of them by guillotine. Among the victims are participants in the failed assassination attempt on Hitler on July 20, 1944, and those who knew about its preparation.

Memorial sites in Germany

Gray buses

"Grey Bus" is a monument created in 2006 in memory of more than 70 thousand victims of the T-4 eugenics program - people with mental disorders, mentally retarded, hereditary burdened patients and disabled people. These buses took them to the killing centers. The monument is transported, temporarily installed in places associated with the program. A copy is permanently in Cologne.

Memorial sites in Germany

Castle Grafeneck

One of the six centers where people were killed under the T-4 euthanasia program was located at Grafeneck Castle in Baden-Württemberg. From January to December 1940, 10,654 people died here in carbon monoxide chambers. In 2005, a documentation center was opened here, which annually receives up to 20 thousand visitors.

Memorial sites in Germany

Sonnenstein

Another death center was located in the Saxon city of Pirna in Sonnenstein Castle. In 1940-1941, 13,720 people suffering from mental illness and mentally retarded people, as well as more than a thousand concentration camp prisoners, were killed in his gas chamber. The ashes from the crematorium were dumped into the Elbe. Relatives were sent a falsified death certificate as a result of illness.

Memorial sites in Germany

criminals

This photograph was taken in 1946 during the trial of doctors and other employees of another Nazi killing center located in the Hessian city of Hadamar. In the gas chambers, through injections and the deliberate cessation of necessary therapies, they killed about 14,500 patients. A permanent exhibition about these crimes has been open in Hadamar since 1991.

Memorial sites in Germany

Logistics of the Holocaust

In conclusion - about the mobile exhibition of the German railway concern Deutsche Bahn "Special trains of death" ("Sonderzüge in den Tod"). Since 2008, it has been visited by more than 350,000 visitors in various places in Germany where it has been demonstrated. A special section of the permanent exhibition of the Deutsche Bahn Museum in Nuremberg is also dedicated to this topic.

Lucifer effect [Why good people turn into villains] Zimbardo Philip George

The banality of evil

The banality of evil

In 1963 the social philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote a book that has become a modern classic: The Banality of Evil: Eichmann in Jerusalem. In it, Arendt details the trial of war criminal Adolf Eichmann, a committed Nazi who personally ordered the extermination of millions of Jews. Eichmann justified his actions in exactly the same way as other Nazi leaders: "I was just following orders." As Arendt writes, “[Eichmann] was completely convinced that he was not innerer Schwainenhund, i.e. a dirty bastard by nature; as for conscience, he perfectly remembered that he would have acted contrary to his conscience precisely in those cases if he had not done what he was ordered to do - with maximum zeal to send millions of men, women and children to death.

However, Arendt's most striking testimony about Eichmann's trial is that he appeared to be a completely ordinary person:

“Half a dozen psychiatrists declared him ‘normal’. “In any case, much more normal than I was after I talked to him!” one of them exclaimed, and the other found that his psychological make-up as a whole, his attitude towards his wife and children, mother and father, brothers , sisters, friends “is not just normal: it would be nice if everyone treated them like that.”

Reflections on the Eichmann trial led Arendt to her famous conclusion:

“The problem with Eichmann was precisely that there were many like him, and many were neither perverts nor sadists - they were and are terribly and terribly normal. From the point of view of our legal institutions and our norms of legal morality, this normality was more terrible than all the atrocities put together, since it implied ... that this new type of criminal, who is in fact an "enemy of mankind", commits his crimes under such circumstances that he practically cannot know or feel that he is doing wrong ... As if in the last moments he [Eichmann] was summing up the lessons that were taught to us in the course of a long course of human malice - the lessons of the terrible, challenging words and thoughts of the banality of evil.

Arendt's words about the "banality of evil" remain relevant today, because genocide is still going on around the world, and torture and terrorism do not disappear. We prefer not to think about this glaring fact and consider the madness of villains and the senseless violence of tyrants to be the result of their personal predisposition. Seeing the flexibility with which social forces can induce normal people to do terrible things, Arendt was the first to challenge this view.

Torturers and executioners: pathological personalities or situational imperative?

There is no doubt that the systematic torture to which some people subject others is an expression of one of the darkest sides of human nature. Of course, my colleagues and I reasoned, among tormentors who have been doing dirty deeds day after day for years, one can sometimes find a predisposition to evil. This is exactly what we found in Brazil - here the torture of "subversives" and "enemies of the state" has been a common practice for many years. This dirty business, with government approval, was usually handled by the police.

We started with those who tortured, trying, firstly, to look into their souls, and secondly, to deal with the circumstances that formed them. Then we spread our analytical nets even wider and captured their comrades-in-arms, who themselves or at the behest of their superiors chose another executioner job: members of the death battalions. The policemen and soldiers of the death battalions had a “common enemy”: men, women and children who, although they lived in the same country and could even be their neighbors, but, according to the System, threatened national security - for example, they were socialists and communists . Some had to be killed outright; others who may have had secret information must first be forced to give it up under torture and then killed.

In carrying out this task, the torturers could rely in part on the products of the "evil genius", materialized in the form of instruments and methods of torture, which were perfected over the centuries, starting with the time of the Inquisition, and then by the governments of different countries. However, in dealing with special enemies, a certain amount of improvisation was needed in order to break their will with the least effort. Some victims protested their innocence, refused to admit their guilt, or were so stubborn that even the most brutal torture did not frighten them. The tormentors did not immediately acquire a knack for their craft. To do this, they needed time and an understanding of human weaknesses. The task of the death battalions, on the contrary, was simple and understandable. Hooded to hide their faces, armed with weapons and supported by a group, they could carry out their civic duty swiftly and impersonally: "just business, nothing personal." But for the master's shoulder work, his work was never just a business. Torture is always related to personal relationships; it is important for the tormentor to understand what kind of torture should be used, what should be their intensity in relation to a particular person and a certain moment. Wrong or not strong enough torture - and there will be no confession. Too much pressure and the victim will die before he can confess. In both cases, the tormentor will not achieve his goal and will incur the wrath of his superiors. The ability to determine the correct types and degrees of torture, providing the necessary information, brought a solid reward and encouragement from the authorities.

What kind of people can do such things? Perhaps they must be sadistic and complete sociopaths to tear apart the flesh of their fellows, day after day, for many years? Perhaps these "knife and ax workers" belong to a different breed than the rest of humanity? Maybe it's just bad seeds from which bad fruits have grown? Or are they completely normal people who have been programmed to do all these unfortunate acts with the help of some well-known and uncomplicated training programs? Is it possible to identify a set of external conditions, situational variables that turn people into torturers and murderers? If the cause of their atrocities is not internal defects, but some external forces - political, economic, social, historical and empirical, methods of training in police schools, then one could draw some general conclusions, independent of a particular culture and environment, and find some principles associated with such a deplorable transformation of the human personality.

Brazilian sociologist and expert Martha Huggins, Greek psychologist and torture expert Mika Haritos-Faturos, and I conducted in-depth interviews with dozens of former police officers who were personally involved in torture in various Brazilian cities. (For an overview of the methods and a detailed description of the results of this study, see here.) Mika previously conducted a similar study on the personalities of military torturers during the military junta in Greece, and our results largely coincided with the findings of her study. We have found that sadists are selected from the training group by instructors who are looking for those who are out of control, take pleasure in hurting others, and therefore easily forget the purpose for which they need to receive recognition. However, based on all the data we collected, we came to the conclusion that both the torturers-cops and the executioners from the death squads were most often completely ordinary people and did not have any deviations from the norm, at least before they began to play their new role. At the same time, they did not show any destructive tendencies or pathologies for many years after completing the “mission of death”. Their personality transformations are entirely attributable to a variety of situational and systemic factors, such as the training they received prior to entering this role, the camaraderie of the group; adoption of the ideology of national security; the imposed belief that socialists and communists are enemies of the state. Other situational factors that contribute to a new style of behavior - the ability to feel chosen, higher and better than other people, awards and honors for completing a special task, its secrecy - only comrades in arms know about what is happening; and, finally, constant pressure from superiors, which demands results, despite fatigue or personal problems.

We have described many cases that confirm the mediocrity and normality of people who participated in the most heinous actions, with government authorization and with the covert support of the CIA during the Cold War (1964-1985) against communism. A report entitled "Torture in Brazil", published with the participation of the Catholic Diocese of São Paulo, provides details that Brazilian police officers were trained in methods of torture by CIA agents. These data support our data on systematic training in interrogation and torture techniques at the School of the Americas, which trained agents and policemen from countries that fought during the Cold War against a common enemy - communism.

However, my colleagues and I believe that such acts can be repeated at any moment, in any country where there is an obsession about a threat to national security. And before, to the horrors and extremes engendered by the current “war on terrorism,” another endless war was waged in many major cities: the “war on crime.” In the New York City Police Department, this "war" gave rise to the phenomenon of "NYPD commandos". This special team of policemen had to catch alleged rapists, thieves and robbers. To do this, they were given complete freedom of action. They could use any means. They wore T-shirts with a special motto: "There is no better hunt than the hunt for a man", and came up with a special battle cry: "The night is ours." This professional culture was reminiscent of the savage cop culture in Brazil that we studied. One of the most notorious atrocities of the New York commandos was the murder of an African immigrant (Amadou Diallo from Guinea). He tried to pull out his wallet to get his ID, and he was shot over 40 times. Occasionally, "tricks happen," but usually there are known situational and systemic forces contributing to such accidents.

We are bombed by "ideal soldiers" and "ordinary British guys"

It is worth giving two more examples of the "normality" of the participants in the massacres. The first example is the results of an in-depth study of the suicide air pirates who carried out the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, which killed almost 3,000 innocent civilians. The second example is London police reports of suicide bombers suspected of planning terrorist attacks on the London Underground and on buses in June 2005, when several dozen people were killed and injured.

The portraits of several terrorists who took part in the September 11th attacks, created on the basis of careful research by reporter Terry McDermot and described in the book Perfect Soldiers, once again emphasize that they were completely ordinary people who led completely ordinary lives. The study led McDermott to the ominous conclusion: "Maybe there are still a lot of people like that in the world." One review of this book brings us back to the thesis of the banality of evil, adapted for the era of global terrorism. Reviewer The New York Times Michiko Kakutani offers a chilling postscript: “The 9/11 caricature of ‘evil geniuses’ and ‘wild-eyed fanatics’ is being replaced by the Ideal Soldier, a surprisingly normal person who could very well be our neighbor or sit next to us. in airplane".

This scenario was realized with frightening accuracy during attacks on London public transport, which were carried out by a team of suicide bombers, "ordinary killers", unseen passengers on the tube or bus. To their friends, family and neighbors in the northern city of Leeds, these young Muslims were "ordinary British lads". There was nothing in their past that indicated they were dangerous; indeed, they were so "ordinary" that they easily found work and took a completely worthy place in society. One of them was a professional cricketer who even gave up drinking and dating women for the sake of a pious life. The other turned out to be the son of a local businessman who owned a diner. Another was a social educator who worked with disabled children, recently became a father and moved to a new house with his family. Unlike the hijackers in the United States, who aroused some suspicion from the start because they were foreigners and tried to learn how to fly a plane, all these people grew up in the UK and never came to the attention of the police. “It doesn't look like him at all. Someone must have brainwashed him and made him do it,” said a friend of one of them.

“The worst thing about suicide bombers is that they are completely normal,” writes Andrew Silk, an expert on the subject. He notes that the forensic examination of the bodies of the dead suicide bombers did not reveal traces of alcohol or drugs. They did their job with a clear mind and dedication. And every time there's another school shooting, like there was at Columbine High School in the United States, those who thought they knew the perpetrator well tend to say, "He was such a good boy, from a good family." … It is impossible to believe that he did it.” This brings us back to the question I raised in the first chapter: how well do we know other people? And then, as a consequence, the question arises: do we know ourselves well, do we know how we would behave in a new situation, under the pressure of sinister situational forces?