Why and how the Holocaust happened — a community discussion
Confined to ghettos where families were ultimately ripped apart, some were sent to camps to perform slave labor. In these places, their exhausted and tortured bodies relinquished life. Millions of them were also murdered in mass shootings, some of them clinging to their children. Millions more were methodically packed into freight trains, destined to suffocate in the gas chambers. And in a fate unimaginably horrific, the selected would endure hideous experiments to be rescued only by death.
The systematic genocide of six million Jews during World War II was completed in stages. And on April 30, 1945, when Adolph Hitler finally put a bullet in his own head, every arm of Nazi Germany’s bureaucracy was involved in the logistics of mass murder.
In the nearly seven decades following the murder of a multitude — the perplexities, the duplicities, the paradoxes and the ironies are merged inside the questions: How can this happen? Why?
In a community exchange, members of the public are encouraged to attend a presentation entitled “The Holocaust and Human Behavior,” to be conducted by Joe Chlebecek, Rainy River Community College history instructor, and Darryl Hall, RRCC sociology and psychology instructor. It begins at 6:30 p.m. Thursday in the RRCC theater. The instructors will open the presentation with their views.
The Nazi “Final Solution” has been theorized to be the result of a fatal attraction made possible in the midst of a great national crisis. But long before the outbreak of WWII — the seeds for the Holocaust were planted when the Germans legislated that Jews could be removed from civil society. And persecution of the Jews began centuries before that, long before there was a megalomaniac known as “the Fuehrer.” And years of anti-Semitic propaganda has left its mark.
Chlebecek told The Journal that several significant elements were at play when the German people pledged their allegiance to Hitler, who was really quite an ordinary, if not pitiable, figure.
“In fact, Hitler never won a majority,” he said. “And the genocide of the Jews was always in the Nazis’ plan, as was stated at the Nuremburg Trials.
“And Germany was just devastated by the Great Depression,” Chlebecek explained. “Their economy was worthless. They had a desperate need for a scapegoat.
“The average, ordinary German suffered from extreme anti-Semitism,” Chlebecek said. “Jew hating goes way back — centuries. In the Middle Ages, they taught their kids that Jews kidnap children and drink their blood.”
But the issues of who is persecuted and who leads that persecution are not as critical in understanding human behavior as are the issues of group conformity, propaganda, oppression and other conditions that can flip the switch, says Chlebecek.
From his RRCC office, Hall told The Journal, “A people’s culture is tied to inequality. It’s common to believe that a culture exists separately from power. In fact, it’s a reflection of power and helps maintain it.”
Chlebecek said that students are often bewildered over genocide, asking, “How could people do that?”
“Anyone can behave this way,” the historian claims. “It’s about a country’s environmental psychology. Why did Harry Truman join the Ku Klux Klan?” he poses. “Because it wasn’t presented as it ultimately turned out,” he answers. “The truth is we’re all capable of it, even though we don’t like to think so.”
In fact, there are multiple examples of crimes against humanity; most unfolded while the world watched. Among numerous references are the now-romanticized slaughterings in the Roman Colosseum; Pol Pot’s extermination of Cambodians; Saddam Hussein’s ethnic cleansing of the Kurds; Idi Amin’s mass killings; and the genocide of the Native American people committed by the United States — not to mention the bonds of slavery inflicted upon captive Africans.
And atrocities continue around the globe. Meanwhile, racism runs rampant and subtle references are socially acceptable in everyday conversations with phrases such as “He ‘jewed’ me down,” or “I got ‘gyped.’”
“How long can we hide behind the American definition of genocide?” Chlebecek asks.
Hall said that for genocide to occur, a bureaucratization of the process takes place. “An unthinkable kind of outcome is standardized in routine,” he said, “where the process is about efficiency rather than morality.”
History’s scholars say Hitler’s leadership was possible because of Germany’s economic and social climate. While it has been acceptable to believe that average Germans did not know of the mass murdering, mounting evidence suggests the contrary.
Hall, whose academic interests include group dynamics, persuasion, conformity and authority, says examples of group advocacy are apparent in everyday life.
“It’s interesting to see this group-dynamic where people can come to fall in line,” Hall said. “For instance, in jury deliberations where the holdout (juror) comes to accept the rest of group.” Hall said this conformity, on another scale, was also demonstrated in the disastrous Challenger explosion when scientists came forward and said they had known there were technical problems, but “subordinated their views to go along with the excitement of the group.”
It must also be remembered that there were pockets of German resistance, underground opposition, and failed assassination attempts on Hitler, such as the disastrous Operation Valkyrie. There are extraordinary examples of German courage such as in Oskar Schindler. There were also thousands of Germans who did not belong to any political party nor did they adore Hitler — but still many believed he was the only one to solve Germany’s problems.
Hitler appeared to have two primary motives: To gain power in the East and to rid the world of Jews. “In the 1930s-40s, his (genocide) plan was easy because the foundation was already there,” Chlebecek said. “He just put the Aryan spin on it.”
But why did the German people have such faith in him? Because they needed to, say the behaviorists.
Hitler was an abnormal man — but he wasn’t mad, reported the psychiatrists who examined him. However, he was sly, implementing his genocide plan only by word of mouth, and building the gas chambers in unoccupied areas of Germany for more secrecy. He was not military trained and often did not have the respect of his soldiers.
Hitler came from a long line of illigitimates, Chlebecek said, and had grown up suspecting that he, himself, was Jewish. With a plethora of personal demons, the self-loathing narcissist seemed to live a double life. Author George Victor chronicles Hitler’s defective personality in the book “The Pathology of Evil.”
There were rumors of self-castration, Chlebecek added, noting that Hitler hated to be examined. He was taking massive amounts of drugs every day.
Only 55 years old in 1945, Hitler had aged prematurely and was a pathetic figure by the time the Soviets closed in on his concrete bunker. The myths of his invincibility and the thousand-year Reich were shattered.
When Chlebecek attended a 2008 graduate seminar on the Holocaust, he met the fascinating Holocaust survivor Sonia Weitz, a woman who outlived five death camps and went on to found the Holocaust Center in Boston. Weitz wrote the book, “I Promised I Would Tell.” From a family of 84 of which every one was sent to the death camps, Weitz and her sister were the only two who survived.
Chlebecek spoke with Weitz personally. “It was riveting,” he said, noting that he asked her how he could convince his students, in one semester, that the Holocaust happened.
“The evidence is overwhelming,” Weitz told him.
The history instructor, whose career was sparked by family stories of his own eastern European Gypsy ancestry, said most students are very interested in the topic of the Jewish Holocaust.
Both instructors noted the power that the film industry has in educating — both negatively and positively. Some modern movies are stunning in their illustration of crimes against humanity, Chlebecek said. He noted in particular Steven Spielberg’s masterful decision in the black and white epic, “Schindler’s List,” to colorize just one image — that of a little Jewish girl who becomes a victim. “It knocks you over,” he said.
The Jewish Holocaust is the most intensely written-about topic in history, say the instructors, who encourage WWII enthusiasts to join the discussion Thursday. Those who attend should bring their questions and their ideas.
“This is something the entire community could benefit from,” Hall said. “It goes beyond the issue of the Holocaust, to ethnic relations. It’s a really important part of fostering communication in the community.”
Survivor Weitz has traveled internationally with her message, “You must be an upstander, not a bystander. What might start small can become something of the Holocaust.”
“We are liberating our minds from ignorance,” Chlebecek said. “We need to remember.”
The Milgram Study on Group Conformity
Many experts agree that without group conformity, atrocities such as the Jewish Holocaust could never occur.
The 1960s Milgram experiment on obedience measured the willingness of participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience. Milgram's testing suggests that millions of Holocaust accomplices might have been merely following orders, despite violating their deepest moral beliefs.
If you go:
WHAT: “The Holocaust and Human Behavior” presented for the community by RRCC
WHEN: 6:30-8 p.m. Thursday. Refreshments at 6 p.m.
WHERE: Rainy River Community College Theater
WHY: Drawings will be held for the following Holocaust related materials: Sonia Weitz books, DVDs of the movies “Schindler’s List,” “The Pianist,” “The Diary of Anne Frank” and “Escape From Sobibor;” the books “Hunting Eichmann,” and “The Diary of Anne Frank.”
