Recently we remembered a sad page in the history of humanity, we
recalled the liberation of prison camps and the people in them from the
nightmare of Nazi oppression and thuggery. Annually I try to remind
myself of the depth of depravity to which humanity can slip, even
humanity that justifies its inhumanity and brutality by science. The
Nazis showed the dark beastial side of humanity, the side we all have to
some degree (although most of us will never admit it). The Nazis were
more than thugs or brutes or even barbarians, they were humans that (in
C. S. Lewis' words from The Abolition of Man) were humans without magnanimity, "men without chests." Here are Lewis' own words about such people:
"They
are not distinguished from other men by any unusual skill in finding
truth nor any virginal ardour to pursue her. Indeed, it would be
strange if they were: a perservering devotion to truth, a nice of
intellectual honour, cannot be long maintained without the aid of
sentiment . . . It is not excess of thought but defect of fertile and
generous emotion that marks them out. Their heads are no bigger than
the ordinary: it is the atrophy of the chest beneath that makes them
seem so." (C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2001, p. 25).
These oppressors, these people were not less human than the rest of us, they just acted as
people without that emotion that makes our "better angels" show up
instead of the "brutes" in each of us. They became the "elites" who
judged other races in humanity as mere brutish nature to be studied.
They were Social Darwinists who wanted to keep their race pure, and who
ultimately participated in that which Lewis deems "the abolition of
man." They were people like us. In many ways we hate to admit, they
were us. As one survivor records the event of his liberation:
"The
full record of the pseudo-medical experimentations came to light.
Prisoners had been used as laboratory animals, without the humane
restrictions placed on vivisection. Hannah Arendt suggested that `the
camp was itself a vast laboratory in which the Nazis proved that there
is no limit to human depravity.' For it was remembered that these
experiments were not planned or conducted by identifiable psychopaths.
They were performed or supervised by professional scientists, trained in
what had been once considered peerless universities and medical
schools. Reverend Franklin Littell called them `technically competent
barbarians.' Indeed the procedures had the full approval and cooperation
of Berlin's Institute of Hygiene." (Sachar, Abram L. The Redemption of the Unwanted. New York: St. Martin's/Marek, 1983, pp. 8-10)
Let
us remember with sadness the number of innocents lost and the reality
of our own potentially brutish nature. Let us not forget that without
grace, we are all irredeemably lost. Could Dachau or Auschwitz (or the others) happen again? Only
if humans let it, only if we deny once again our own humanity and treat
our fellow humans as mere animals. Yes, it can happen again. Let's
pray that it doesn't. Let's make sure it doesn't.
This topic is heavy and sad. I don't apologize for that, but I do want to put the weight down now. Thanks for reading.
