In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.
From the start the proportion of asocials in the camp was about one-third of the total population, and throughout the first years prostitutes, homeless and __ork-shy_ women continued to pour in through the gates. Overcrowding in the asocial blocks increased fast, order collapsed, and then followed squalor and disease._Although we learn a lot about what the political prisoners thought of the asocials, we learn nothing of what the asocials thought of them. Unlike the political women, they left no memoirs. Speaking out after the war would mean revealing the reason for imprisonment in the first place, and incurring more shame. Had compensation been available they might have seen a reason to come forward, but none was offered._The German associations set up after the war to help camp survivors were dominated by political prisoners. And whether they were based in the communist East or in the West, these bodies saw no reason to help __social_ survivors. Such prisoners had not been arrested as __ighters_ against the fascists, so whatever their suffering none of them qualified for financial or any other kind of help. Nor were the Western Allies interested in their fate. Although thousands of asocials died at Ravensbrück, not a single black- or green-triangle survivor was called upon to give evidence for the Hamburg War Crimes trials, or at any later trials._As a result these women simply disappeared: the red-light districts they came from had been flattened by Allied bombs, so nobody knew where they went. For many decades, Holocaust researchers also considered the asocials_ stories irrelevant; they barely rate mention in camp histories. Finding survivors amongst this group was doubly hard because they formed no associations, nor veterans_ groups. Today, door-knocking down the Düsseldorf Bahndamm, one of the few pre-war red-light districts not destroyed, brings only angry shouts of __et off my patch'.
Ravensbrück: Life and Death in Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women
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From the start the proportion of asocials in the camp was about one-third of the total population, and throughout the first years prostitutes, homeless and __ork-shy_ women continued to pour in through the gates. Overcrowding in the asocial blocks increased fast, order collapsed, and then followed squalor and disease._Although we learn a lot about what the political prisoners thought of the asocials, we learn nothing of what the asocials thought of them. Unlike the political women, they left no memoirs. Speaking out after the war would mean revealing the reason for imprisonment in the first place, and incurring more shame. Had compensation been available they might have seen a reason to come forward, but none was offered._The German associations set up after the war to help camp survivors were dominated by political prisoners. And whether they were based in the communist East or in the West, these bodies saw no reason to help __social_ survivors. Such prisoners had not been arrested as __ighters_ against the fascists, so whatever their suffering none of them qualified for financial or any other kind of help. Nor were the Western Allies interested in their fate. Although thousands of asocials died at Ravensbrück, not a single black- or green-triangle survivor was called upon to give evidence for the Hamburg War Crimes trials, or at any later trials._As a result these women simply disappeared: the red-light districts they came from had been flattened by Allied bombs, so nobody knew where they went. For many decades, Holocaust researchers also considered the asocials_ stories irrelevant; they barely rate mention in camp histories. Finding survivors amongst this group was doubly hard because they formed no associations, nor veterans_ groups. Today, door-knocking down the Düsseldorf Bahndamm, one of the few pre-war red-light districts not destroyed, brings only angry shouts of __et off my patch'.
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There are no self-proclaimed villains, only regiments of self-proclaimed saints. Victorious historians rule where good or evil lies. We abjure labels. We fight for money and an indefinable pride. The politics, the ethics, the moralities, are irrelevant.
But other hordes would come, and other false prophets. Our feeble efforts to ameliorate man__ lot would be but vaguely continued by our successors; the seeds of error and of ruin contained even in what is good would, on the contrary, increase to monstrous proportions in the course of centuries. A world wearied of us would seek other masters; what had seemed to us wise would be pointless for them, what we had found beautiful they would abominate. Like the initiate to Mithraism the human race has need, perhaps, of a periodical bloodbath and descent into the grave. I could see the return of barbaric codes, of implacable gods, of unquestioned despotism of savage chieftains, a world broken up into enemy states and eternally prey to insecurity. Other sentinels menaced by arrows would patrol the walls of future cities; the stupid, cruel, and obscene game would go on, and the human species in growing older would doubtless add new refinements of horror. Our epoch, the faults and limitations of which I knew better than anyone else would perhaps be considered one day, by contrast, as one of the golden ages of man.
To paraphrase Hannah Arendt__s portrayed in the recently released movie of the same name__he Nazi war criminal__ actions stemmed from her well-known phrase __anality of evil,_ not as a result of mental illness but as a result of a lack of thinking. Their greatest error was delegating the process of thinking and decision-making to their higher ups. In Rudolf Höss__ case, this would have been his superiors, particularly Heinrich Himmler. To many this conclusion is troubling, for it suggests that if everyday, __ormal,_ sane men and women are capable of evil, then the atrocities perpetrated during the Holocaust and other genocides could be repeated today and into the future.Yet, this is exactly the lesson we must learn from the war criminals at Nuremberg. We must be ever wary of those who do not take responsibility for their actions. And we ourselves must be extra vigilant, particularly in this day of accelerated technological power, heightened state surveillance, and global corporate reach, that we do not delegate our thinking to others.
Everyone,_ Caitlin said, cradling her wine glass, __s the hero of his own story. That goes double for fanatics. Some of the greatest horrors in history were perpetrated by people who insisted, all the way to damnation__ door, that they fought on the side of the angels.
Those are the bad guys, right?___epends on who wins, I guess.