written in 2001
http://www3.sympatico.ca/mighty1/essays/erspamer1.htmWomen Before Hell's Gate: Survivors of the Holocaust and their Memoirs
Part I
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...It therefore became necessary to assault the detainees psychologically by divorcing them from any sense of their identity as human beings. The techniques of this dehumanization process are vividly described in various survivor memoirs. The goals of this essay are threefold: to examine the philosophy behind the dehumanization of Holocaust victims, to examine specific techniques of dehumanization as reflected in Holocaust literature, and finally to examine the ways in which some Holocaust survivors were able to resist these processes of dehumanization by rehumanizing themselves and maintaining their will to live.
In examining the philosophy behind these practices of dehumanization, it is profitable to turn to the analyses offered by Theodor W. Adorno, a major 20th-century philosopher. In his 1966 essay, "Erziehung nach Auschwitz," he declares the following: the most important task of education is the prevention of future Auschwitzes.2 Adorno then proceeds to indict the barbarism that constituted Auschwitz as the very antithesis of education and holds that Auschwitz was the result of powerful societal tendencies that continue to exist. The genocide had its roots in the resurrection of an aggressive nationalism that had its origins in the late 19th century.3 Indeed, the notion of a state based on religious, ethnic, and cultural homogeneity was a reactionary product of that time whose influence continues today.
Adorno rightly viewed the Nazi genocide as a major ethical issue of the twentieth century. On the other hand, the road that led to Auschwitz was mired in pseudo-ethical a prioris. The postulate that German National Socialism could be based upon any concept of ethics, no matter how far-flung, may seem incongruous at first glance. However, the French historian Léon Poliakov points out that Nazism possessed a perverse religiosity. He states that religion has three basic elements: "the perception of a higher power, the submission to that power, and the establishment of relations with it . . ."4 Hitler was the higher power and in order to mythologize that power he had to create a pseudo-dichotomy between good and evil by portraying the Jewish people as devils incarnate.
The ethical assumptions of Nazism have also been examined by the theologian Peter J. Haas in his 1988 book, Morality after Auschwitz. Haas maintains that there was a Nazi ethic, i.e., a codified system for differentiating between good and evil. The Nazi apparatus was the "governing norm" of the entire German "civilization."5 The Nazi ethic was, according to Haas, based upon the concept of a "just war."6 This Nazi pseudo-ethic demonized the Jews and relegated them to being viewed as a sub-species of humanity. The Nazi ethic stressed the importance of religious, ethnic, and cultural homogeneity, concepts borrowed from racist philosophies which flourished during the 19th century.
much more....
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