
Interview with an Auschwitz Guard: 'I Do Not Feel Like a Criminal' - spindritf
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/spiegel-interview-with-a-91-year-old-former-auschwitz-guard-a-988127.html
======
rdtsc
This reminds me of (the somewhat controversial) Eichmann in Jerusalem by
Hannah Arendt. She was the one who coined the phrase the "banality of evil".
The coldness and lack of emotion present is not unlike how Arendt was
describing Eichmann.

It seems she was criticized for not showing enough sympathy and or seemingly
dismissing the evilness of Eichmann. But in a way the opposite even more
scary. That he was not mentally ill, and rabidly antisemitic, but rather
stupid and ordinary. Not unlike many authoritarian followers plugged into a
large bureaucratic system. He would have ascended just as successfully up the
ladder in Stalin's bureaucratic machine or Pol Pot's.

~~~
Steko
Leonard Cohen's 1971 poem made the point much more succinctly:

 _All There is to Know About Adolph Eichmann

EYES:……………………………………Medium

HAIR:……………………………………Medium

WEIGHT:………………………………Medium

HEIGHT:………………………………Medium

DISTINGUISHING FEATURES…None

NUMBER OF FINGERS:………..Ten

NUMBER OF TOES………………Ten

INTELLIGENCE…………………….Medium

What did you expect?

Talons?

Oversize incisors?

Green saliva?

Madness?_

~~~
arjie
Stunning. We want to portray evil as exceptional, different from us in obvious
perceivable ways, but it is not.

~~~
BillFranklin
Wow, that Leonard Cohen poem. It's true for the Nazi leadership too;
explaining Hitler as a madman diminishes the horror of his actions. Point is,
he was a sane man. It's only by admitting that he was one of us that helps us
not repeat history.

~~~
coldtea
Plus, he had a huge following who shared the same beliefs. Not just in German
population, but also in the ruiling and upper classes of Europe, the US and
Latin America.

And, of course, it's not like his actions were that different than things like
the slavery of African Americans, the colonization and enslavement of 2/3 of
the world by the European colonial powers (with tens of millions of dead, and
heinous acts of torture and mass murder), etc.

------
idlewords
"I never did harm to any Jew," says a former _guard at Auschwitz_.

The guy sleeps well at night. He invited his wife and neighbor, who have all
heard it before, to listen to the interview. He stood in front of a permanent
bonfire of people, with a gun, and imagines himself as a victim. The power of
rationalization is terrifying. And the smarter you are, the better you are at
it.

~~~
haberman
Would you have had the courage to desert under threat of getting shot? I'm not
sure I would.

I feel quite certain that I couldn't possibly be brainwashed to do a thing
like that willingly. But under threat of pain and death I'm not sure I would
be capable of standing up to that kind of force. I honestly don't know what I
would do.

On the other hand, my conscience would most certainly _not_ be clear in the
aftermath.

------
lafar6502
Its remarkable how you can apply engineering / industrial methods to a mass
killing facility so almost nobody feels guilty. Certainly the construction
workers can't be blamed that they built the crematoria, railways can't be
blamed for transporting people to death camp, chemists for inventing the
Zyklon-B gas or guards for making sure nobody escapes. Everyone just did their
job pretending that it's OK if you don't hurt anybody personally. I dont want
to judge them, evil sometimes happens just because it's allowed to happen.

~~~
thrw234902
It was prisoners in camps who build crematoria and operated infrastructure.
Soldiers were drafted (involuntary) and would get shot for not following
orders. Some guards in camp were even Jewish. Nobody pretended anything, they
just wanted to live a bit longer.

Just compare it with US prisons or Gaza, everyone is fine with those today.

~~~
coldtea
> _It was prisoners in camps who build crematoria and operated infrastructure.
> Soldiers were drafted (involuntary) and would get shot for not following
> orders._

If only it was that clear cut.

Actually higher personel, as well as guards and soldiers were known to be
extremely sadistic, from using women as sex slaves (the "joy divisions"), to
cruel games with killing, maiming prisoners for fun, and everything in
between.

It wasn't just "following orders". There was sadistic enjoyment, and sense of
a higher race getting rid of unwanted parasites in lots of these people.

That some prisones built crematoria and operated infrastructure (under threat
of death) is just a technical detail.

~~~
encoderer
Also, the camps themselves were built by businessmen. Hitler had strong ties
to German business. He gave many handouts to business over the years,
including labor conscription.

~~~
coldtea
Another perhaps little known to some fact is that tons of people, especially
businessmen and politicians, viewed Hitler favorably in the US, until they
entered the war. Including his views on Jews etc.

He was a kind of their mascot against "the reds" and against unruly workers
and working classes in the US.

Also, contrary to some belief, before and even during the war, the US mostly
could not care less about the plight of Jews at the time, even when it was
known what was happening to them. E.g

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_antisemitism_in_the_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_antisemitism_in_the_United_States#The_Holocaust)

------
calibraxis
Interesting point. If you have a gun to your head, and disobedience has
virtually no effect except suicide, then you have virtually no responsibility.

Compare to those of us who are complicit (even if tacitly) in all sorts of
crimes, from war to global climate destruction to mass incarceration. Much
more responsible than this Auschwitz guard, since we have more freedom to act
effectively.

(Assuming he's truthful, and couldn't frag his Nazi commanders nor organize
his peers.)

~~~
tptacek
There is nothing in this comment I agree with at all. That doesn't mean I
think it's bad; it's just startling to me how different someone else's
worldview could be.

~~~
srean
I am responding here just for context, it is not directed at you. The parent
comment is evidently not popular. It has already been pointed out in comments
that many did actually martyr themselves rather than follow the orders or be a
cog in the system. However what really annoys me is the insincerity of the
"holier than thou" position adopted by many here. Yes, some of those who are
commenting here would, I think, martyr themselves in such situations, but I
doubt if the majority would. I seriously doubt, if even 50% of those
commenting here from that patronizing position would do any different, and I
am being generous. Its not about just those who have left such comments, I
wonder how many among our own peers would take a moral stand in light of the
consequences, particularly when I see people grumble and moan self righteously
about even petty inconveniences. Again, I know some would, I know one or two
people among my peers of whom I have absolutely no doubt that they would
sacrifice themselves, and it fills me with a sense of respect for these people
that I cannot even begin to describe. I would like to think that even if I
dont sacrifice myself I would find a way to squirm out, but that is perhaps
wishful thinking, unless you are put in that situation you never know yourself
well enough.

Many people were in the same position as Kiriakou, Snowden, Manning, many were
fully aware of the wrongs that were going on, how many put up a resistance at
a cost to themselves ?

Do I consider John Yoo to have committed worse acts than this guy, well,
absolutely, assuming his account is truthful.

A nonignorable artifact is that we turned out to be on the winning side. Had
the winners and the world order been different, Wolfowitz and their ilk would
have been the new Eichmann's in the then popular narrative.

@tptacek Just to be clear I am not making a case for a moral equivalence, far
from it. The only connection is that many people were in a position where they
could have mitigated wanton civilian casualties and gross miscarriage of
justice, if they chose to adopt certain personal inconveniences. However very
few actually did. A sizeable portion of US were dead against the Iraq war, but
among them many still continued to fund some of it with taxes, why ? because
among other things, not paying taxes would cause considerable inconvenience.

And again this not by any means directed at you. I am not an US citizen but
had I been one, I would have paid the taxes anyway and rationalized it away
that taxes does good and very little of that is funding the war.

~~~
Tomte
> Yes, some of those who are commenting here would, I

> think, martyr themselves in such situations, but I doubt

> if the majority would.

This.

I thought about it yesterday, and I believe the most important difference
between people living "in the situation" and commentators today is this: we
know the Nazis lost the war big time.

1\. I truly believe that quite a few people would try to act if they knew the
war was coming to an end, their action would be seen as heroic, and therefore
they either live as heroes or at least be remembered as such. Conversely, it's
not tempting to act if you're going to be vilified when the Nazis win and rule
the world.

2\. Wasn't it clear by 1944 (or whenever) that the Nazis would lose? In a way
yes, but if you want to argue that, think about Syria. A year ago it was clear
that Assad was finished, he would certainly lose his power and quite possibly
his life. Today he's not only in power (over a smaller Syria), but some in the
West are actually wondering if we shouldn't include him in a coalition against
IS. Now that he gave up his chemical weapons, we're clearly fine with whatever
he's doing.

------
lostlogin
Interesting how his pension is being docked. It's surprising that he hasn't
been sentenced yet this can happen.

------
PythonicAlpha
The big mystery is, that even total "normal" people can become "beasts".

The problem is, that we are so far away from all that, that we think, we are
immune to such things ... but we are not. Because humans are essentially the
same today as yesterday. The only thing we could/should do is, remember what
happened in the past. But we do the opposite: We make unnatural beasts of
those people, that existed in the past -- some fairy-tale like creatures, that
existed only in a nightmare of humanity.

But it was no nightmare and it can come back to us very quickly. Look into the
nearer past -- what happened even in the "peaceful" Europe (e.g. Yugoslavia)
-- humans can easily be beasts again and much easier, when we think, that it
all was a fairy-tale.

~~~
Zigurd
It's not a mystery, it is a science: Flags, uniforms, medals, oaths, "unit
cohesion," etc. are all designed to make a killer out of you or me if there is
a need for it.

There are psychologists living and working in the US who designed torture
programs.

~~~
PythonicAlpha
Totally correct. By mystery, I wanted to say something different: Most people
will not believe, how little is needed to make a beast out of "normal people".

Apropos science: the EU decided, that in the future, costs of the military
will now be accounted for in the same category as investments into science,
universities or infrastructure. Thus, countries of the EU can put more money
into weapons without missing the EU targets for investments into the future.
Sometimes politics can just be a totally dirty business.

------
trhway
people can evaluate their behavior either by relative yardsticks - law and
morals of the group/society they belong too - or by absolute yardsticks of
good and evil, like don't kill, etc... Using the relative ones is easier and
gets you comfortably to the advanced age. Thus evolutionary the relative ones
prevail inside given group/society. There is though some kind of correctional
feedback at work that when the relative yardsticks of a given group/society
drift too far from the absolute ones, the whole group/society is eliminated
(or some kind of catastrophically adjusted) from the race.

~~~
idlewords
This is the silliest kind of evolutionary psychology. People had kids in their
teens and twenties. Who exactly was being purged for a belief in absolute good
and evil before they could reproduce?

Sometimes morality isn't about biology.

------
jqm
Of course not. Being "criminal" is relative to the society one inhabits.

That being said, he ought to feel badly about what was being done and his part
in it. Conscience is higher than, and apart from, being criminal.

I feel badly about some of the things my society is doing right now. I regret
my part in it, but short of drastic (and probably technically "criminal")
measures, there is little I feel I can do. Just small things, and these don't
seem to matter much. So I'm just doing the less bad that I reasonably can. But
I still feel bad about some of the things we do.

~~~
PythonicAlpha
The sad thing is, when societies, that helped to defend against the dark sides
of humanity, erode so much. ;(

------
lunz
Try Claude Lanzmann's "Shoah". It's a very unusual documentary without any
material from historical film archives. He talked to jewish survivors, to
their neighbours and also to Nazis, that were discovered by him. He filmed
many locations as they were in the 70's (when the documentary was finished)
and much much more. The documentary is about 10 hours long, and it took him
several years to create. Lanzmann participated in the french résistance.

------
atmosx
I happen to live in a country where Nazism is on the rise and everyone might
have to eventually _pick sides_. I hope not, but Greece right now looks very
much Germany in 1930 and if things do not change drastically in the next 5
years, I'm not sure how we're gonna void a Nazi regime.

The fact that this guy doesn't feel guilty, makes me sad. To me he is a
racist, killer. There are situations in life, where you have to pick-sides.
You can't play Switzerland when the whole world around you goes in ruins. At
least to me, is not acceptable and says a lot about your character.

~~~
Houshalter
It's easy to say that behind a computer screen. It's much harder to choose to
die for your beliefs, especially if doing so doesn't even help your cause.
Realistically a single guard would not have been able to do much.

To say it say it "says a lot about your character" is ridiculous. The vast
majority of people didn't resist.

~~~
atmosx
To me this case is extreme, so my judgment and measures are extreme. Of course
it's easier said than done, but that doesn't change anything.

The vast majority of which population? Are you referring to Europeans or
Germans alone?

------
Qantourisc
I always wonder: shoot the man giving orders ?

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
It sounds so simple, and yet it has happened so rarely.

~~~
arjie
Curiously, at least a few cases of killing your own officer are recorded when
it's in your own immediate interest.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragging](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragging)

I suppose the soldiers asked to do bad things (like this man) rationalize it
away.

~~~
Houshalter
Well fragging was common on the front lines because it had plausible
deniability of the enemy throwing a grenade back. In a prison camp far away
from the front, it's more difficult to explain, and harder to get away with.

