Thoughts on the Holocaust

I visited Washington DC to attend a professional conference.  The conference was valuable and informative, and I was able to network and see old friends.  The last day allowed some time to visit the Holocaust museum, which, despite having visited DC before and living there many years ago, I had never toured.  I went with a good friend of mine, with a “this will be fun” attitude which may have been more flippant than the subject warranted.  We were quickly sobered; we started as tourists on a sunny day and became quiet, introspective observers of historical travesty and tragedy.

The museum is designed such that you start from the 4^th floor by taking an elevator, and progress through the exhibits which are arranged sequentially, with information starting largely around 1933.

The exhibits rely heavily both on written and pictorial representation of historical events; actual photographs, news stories, videos and three dimensional objects are partnered with narrative summaries of the events being depicted.  A distinct timeline is portrayed, with events becoming increasingly distressing and unbelievable, starting with Adolph Hitler’s assumption to power and the incredibly rapid unfolding of his agenda.  The persecution of the Jews and other undesirable people—homosexuals, Roma (gypsies), communists, physically or psychologically unfit individuals—intensifies over time, with the bulk of the Nazi persecution centering on the Jews.  Persecution began with economic sanctions in the form of boycotts followed by the gradual whittling away of the basic rights of citizens and of human beings, and finally the incarceration of innocent people followed by their mass murder via firing squad, gas or simply through starvation and overwork.  

The displays incorporate many, many real and named individuals and families.  Museum goers are handed a small passport-looking document upon arrival, which contains the name and historical information about one victim of the holocaust.  One particularly memorable portion of the museum housed photographs culled from a particular geographic region, displayed on 4 walls of a room which soared 3 stories up, reminiscent of a large chimney.  The photos were striking black and white images, family photos or snapshots of friends—a beautiful triad of women, apparently mother and daughters; a laughing group of teenagers lounging together on a beach; a young girl with a bob haircut riding a bicycle; the portrait of an older man; a formal family portrait with multiple generations of people.  All ultimately victims of the persecution, inhuman treatment, incarceration and murder perpetrated by the Nazi party in the name of racial purification.  The exhibits detailed the medical experiments, devastating working and living conditions of both the ghettos and the concentration camps, selective extermination of people based upon their physical weaknesses as well as their race and ethnicity.  A life-sized reproduction of a concentration camp building is displayed complete with an actual 3-bunk bed, where 5-6 people slept in what must have been 18-24 inch wide sections.  The bowls used by concentration camp victims are on display—bowls used for food, water and to relieve oneself at night. 

An entire wall depicts a miniature of the gas chambers of a concentration camp.  The depicted people are only 6 inches high, but the entire display covers probably a space 18 feet wide by 6 feet deep.  The entire display is in a shade of stucco-gray, the only colors the shadows cast between individual victims or by the structures themselves. The process by which people were herded like cattle, forced to strip naked, and then gassed in chambers crowded shoulder to shoulder to shoulder to shoulder, is displayed in vivid 3-D.  The tiny scale does nothing to diminish the horror.  Later exhibits showed images and reproductions of the crematoriums, and then videos taken by the allied forces, depicting mounds of emaciated and rotting bodies which had to be disposed of by the liberating armies.  The horrific images are almost beyond belief; it is no wonder that General Eisenhower demanded that such photos and videos be taken, so that there was no way to deny the reality of the travesty which had happened. 

Interspersed were discussions of American apathy, opportunities to make different choices which could have impacted both the war and the persecution occurring within Nazi dominated Europe.  Why didn’t we allow in more refugees?  Why did we not bomb Auschwitz, knowing about Auschwitz, knowing the activities which were going on and even when bombing runs literally passed over?  The depiction was that of a nation caught between Pollyanna-esque perspectives of human goodness and a desire not to rock the global boat.

Also interspersed were stories of brave people who resisted and those who helped:  Germans who intentionally broke the boycott of Jewish businesses, those who housed Jewish families and arranged for transport of Jews to safety.  The White Rose society of German students, protesting atrocities perpetrated by their peers.  The Danes who paid to transport hundreds of Jews to Switzerland.  The Jews and other persecuted peoples who rose up in defiance while trapped in ghettos, choosing to die fighting rather than be transported to concentration camps.  These were points of light shining with piercing brilliance in this dark display—stories which stood in stark contrast to the inhuman actions and the apathetic inactions of so many others.  The stories seemed to ask—who would you be?  What would you do?  I like to believe that I would be brave and proactive, self-sacrificing and noble, but I also know that the sucking-pull of the anonymous, safe, amorphous crowd is very strong.  Standing up for justice, being indignant on behalf of the persecuted, acting to protect the innocent persecuted—these are easy to do in the light of hindsight, with my human rights robustly protected and my personal resources and position well established and secure. 

The slippery slope leading to genocide is also easy to see in hindsight. Economic sanctions progressively increasing in oppressiveness; persecution starting with contempt, leading to name calling to bullying to destruction of property to secretive killings to blatant, public murders to mass extermination.   But like the proverbial frog being slowly boiled in the proverbial pot, would we recognize it if we were ever in the middle of such a timeline again?  Or do we shout like the proverbial boy-who-cried-wolf, with every petty meanness and every imagined slight being hyperbolically inflated to the level of the Nazi “Final Solution.”  Such hyperbole worries me more, I think, as it is part of what makes it so hard to see and feel the real danger signals.  The startle reflex of alarm directed at discrimination and dehumanization becomes a distracted, contemptuous eye-rolling as the complaints of the victims are revealed as petty inconveniences or intentionally manufactured episodes of meanness.  At a certain point, real cries of real victims suffering real persecution and harm will be unheard by the ears and eyes which have become calloused and closed.

I believe that any time human beings are dehumanized, we set the stage for horrific abuses.  When certain people are denied basic rights, basic protections, basic kindnesses which are proffered without question to other groups of people, we are tolerating the mindset that led to Auschwitz and Dachau.    When we declare certain individuals who are biologically human as somehow less-than-human, and therefore as undeserving of human rights, we plant the seed of genocide. 

Where I see the greatest evidence that biological human beings are being systematically denied rights as human beings is with legalized abortion within the United States.  The discussion is consistently framed as one of women’s health, which is a bait-and-switch discussion. I do not object to women getting reproductive healthcare, to include birth control and postnatal care; I don’t object to treatments for STDs nor for frank discussions about how sexual diseases are transmitted and how babies are made.  This isn’t about a prudish distaste for sexuality, nor is it about a war on women.  Women are—for better or for worse—the bodies in which babies are conceived and grow.  It is both a terrible burden and an amazing miracle, but it cannot be escaped. 

The discussion should be centering around the personhood and humanity of the fetus and the mother, but those discussions are not going on; we are only hearing about the personhood of the mother.  There is no question that fetuses capable of survival outside of the womb are being aborted.  Surgical procedures are being done on babies in utero to prevent children from being born with heart defects  - but babies that same age and development are aborted daily.  Infants born weeks and even months prematurely are surviving—after great expenses in medical time, effort and money—but those same infants could have legally been aborted.  We would be disgusted and appalled if a mother entered a NICU and hacked her premature infant to death, but we daily allow the abortion of undesired infants at a comparable gestational age.  Technology is being developed for an artificial uterus to allow survival of even earlier premature infants.  The difference between the babies who live and those who are aborted is that some of them are unwanted:  they are an inconvenience, an unaffordable expense, physically imperfect or simply imperfectly timed; they are forced to pay for the sins of their parents, never declared guilty but punished anyway.  There is no due process for the unborn.

For millions of unborn babies, they are declared un-people.  Biologically human, but not really human; not entitled to any inalienable rights, but subject to the conveniences, timeline, agenda and constraints of another.  Rationale for abortion may be as simple as gender, or as complex as the presence of an expensive, debilitating disease.  An aborted baby may simply represent an obstruction to career advancement, a potential liability to a relationship, or an impossible-to-conceive expense.

“Lives unworthy of life.” This was a phrase highlighted at the Holocaust museum, I believe spoken by Josef Goebbels, the German propagandist.  These “lives unworthy of life” included the physically disabled, those with mental illness, those with unacceptable sexual orientation, those with undesirable race and family history—the Jews, Roma, and others.  These were lives—people, human beings both biologically human and deserving legal human rights—but they were deemed unworthy of life, they were not allowed to live.  They were inconvenient, they were expensive and not a productive part of the German national economy or not a part of their proud national identity.  The rationale used to justify “The Final Solution” is comparable to that used within the abortion debate—these fetuses are undesirable, inconvenient, expensive, defective.  Jews living in Poland were certainly an inconvenience to the Nazi regime; homosexuals, Roma and those with mental illness or physical deformity were deemed defective under Hitler’s pograms for racial purification; successful Jewish enterprises and family businesses were deemed a threat to Aryan economic success. 

The Social Darwinian philosophy which led to Jewish extermination also spawned the abortion industry and the modern arguments to support unlimited, legal abortion.  Margaret Sanger supported abortion as a way of imposing populationcontrol on undesirable races.  This is never discussed in public forums where Sanger is revered, but this is a mischaracterization of her ideals.  In an era where all past heroes are being judged by modern standards—where civil war statues are being toppled and literary awards rescinded due to insensitive content—it is amazing that Sanger survives as a saint.  Abortion clinics still disproportionately exist in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods, and abortion claims a disproportionate number of minority babies.  It appears that Sanger’s ideals are still being achieved.

The shocking revelation that Planned Parenthood was selling aborted fetus organs was buried with amazing rapidity.  These were not spurious claims; grand jury investigation and testimony revealed them to be true.  The desirability of these organs should convict us—the only reason they have value is that they are HUMAN tissue, HUMAN organs!  We are appalled by the cruel Nazi experimentation on Jews and other victims, we are disgusted by physicians who betrayed their oath to protect and heal—yet we allow the trafficking of human body parts for experimental purposes, sold by abortion doctors who have betrayed similar oaths. 

The quote by Martin Neimohr should haunt all of us.  “First they came for the socialists…then the trade unionists…then the Jews…then they came for me….”.

First they came for the babies who were a product of incest and rape…then they came for the babies who were physically deformed….then they came for the babies who would be an inconvenience to the social life and economic productivity of the parents….

We live in a society where healthcare is becoming increasingly expensive and where there is a continual cry against overpopulation and the strain on Mother Earth.  How far might we be from a situation in which a woman on government assistance and Medicare being told that the baby she is carrying has a heart defect which will be extremely costly to treat—and therefore abortion is the required treatment?  How far might we be from an elderly person, no longer self-sufficient, without loved ones to provide care, diagnosed with a rapidly progressing form of dementia for which there is no treatment….a prisoner, incarcerated for the 7^th time for violent crimes and for whom no reform attempt has shown a glimmer of success....a child with severe developmental disabilities being deemed unworthy of the treatment dollars and time required to sustain her….a patient with an aggressive expensive-to-treat cancer….an accident victim with permanent brain damage….all being told that euthanasia, a simple painless shot or an inexpensive pill, is the answer….the required treatment…the “final solution….”.  The ethical framework is there.  We give more value to those who are desirable, those who are functional and “contribute.”  Social reforms are tying the fates of all people closer together, but economic constraints still exist and if the deciding factor-- for medical care or overarching quality of life-- is no longer what can the individual afford but what will society choose to distribute, what will the deciding factor become when a choice must be made on how to distribute scarce resources?

This is why I am anti-abortion.  Why I am pro-life.  I am not just pro-life-in-the-womb, I am pro-life because human beings are created in the image of God, they were created with inalienable rights and the right to life is absolutely one of those rights.  If we strip away those rights from any human being, all of us are at greater risk of having those right stripped away.  Our culture of abortion sets the stage for discrimination of any kind--another way of labeling people as undesirable or unworthy.  If we cannot uphold the intrinsic value of all human life, any category of human being is at risk for discriminatory destruction.  As a white woman, relatively well educated, healthy and a productive member of society, a tax-payer upon whom society relies—I’m pretty safe.  For now.  But I see the writing on the wall, I see the path to damnation being paved right in front of us—paved with the blood of aborted infants, just as slippers for Nazi officials were stuffed with the human hair of Jewish death-camp victims.