Fragmentation & Annihilation During the Holocaust
As Hannah Arendt writes in The Origins of Totalitarianism, the horrors of the Holocaust remain in our “close and yet distant past,” in which time obscures the trauma from our immediate consciousness, yet the enduring guilt of inaction allows us to continue questioning the ways in which millions of Jews were executed under Nazi rule (123). According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “the Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators”, meaning that Nazi racism merged with the economic and political ideologies of the German people to promote the Jewish genocide and mass killings of millions of Germans. It’s difficult to comprehend how the Nazi regime and sympathizers were capable of murdering millions of people with the compliance of the majority of the population—how were Hitler and his Nazi regime able to execute their horrific plans of destruction? How did the minority group of racist Germans and Hitler supporters spread their ideologies throughout Germany and eventually gain power?
This is where the ideology of totalitarianism comes into play, the centralizing of government power and the spreading of propaganda to inspire fear in all Germans. With the combination of government suppression and fear for their quality of life, Germans became indifferent to the political agenda of the Nazi regime. The move towards centralized, authoritarian leadership promoted a “diminution of the power of opposition” (which would later lead to the erasure and censorship of anti-Nazi activists) claimed to work “beyond the strife of parties and particular interests, and by men who claimed to speak for the nation as a whole” (Arendt, 153). The sinister establishment of the Nazi regime in political and cultural institutions was disguised in “language…bound to attract and delude precisely those persons who still retained a spark of political idealism” (Arendt, p. 153). Thus, a majority of the population bought into the Nazi-propagated rhetoric, believing that Germans would prosper as a result of eliminating fabricated threats (i.e. the Jews, homosexuals, the disabled and other marginalized groups considered outside of German norms).
The influence of imperialist politicians and racial doctrines targeting ‘alien peoples’ who did not fit the Aryan profile “made it appear as though imperialism alone [was] able to settle the grave domestic, social and economic problems of modern times” that left Germany vulnerable to internal decay and the influence of foreign powers (Arendt, 157). The aggressive use of propaganda facilitated nationwide fear of the other, fear of poverty, and fear of death throughout Germany. The total breakdown of truth and the insertion of Nazi-fabricated reality enabled the extermination of both ideas and people considered against the ‘progress’ of Germany. The multiple layers of diverging and complex versions of the ‘truth’ made Germans rely on the rumors and words of a small few as “they do not believe in anything visible within the reality of their existence…totalitarian propaganda relies on fantasy” (351). It is only through the writings of Jewish people and Holocaust survivors that the true depth of horror and despair of that era are brought to life.
The diary entries of Victor Klemperer, a German Jew who lived through the era of the Third Reich, observed firsthand “the sense of justice…lost everywhere in Germany… being systematically destroyed” by the Nazi regime and German indifference towards the disappearances of thousands of Jews (Klemperer, 113). In his entries, Klemperer writes of the growing dangers he faces as a Jewish man, slowly coming to the realization that he has become a target of the government’s aggression. Even as a German-born man, the alienation of Jewish people and the divisions erected through Nazi propaganda impact Klemperer’s daily life. He loses his job, he and his wife fall ill and grow weary with age, and he lives in fear for his life at all times, expressing the hopelessness of his situation by writing “we are prisoners without hope of rescue” (Klemperer, 136). The most disturbing takeaway from Klemperer’s writing is in the details, the small daily interactions that change with time as people ostracize him more and more in his work and personal life. Through the progression of propaganda and the Third Reich taking control of the country, “in every aspect of the destruction of culture, Jew-baiting, internal tyranny, Hitler rules with ever worse creatures” (Klemperer, 116).
The writings of both Arendt and Klemperer allude to Germany philosopher’s Frederic Nietzsche’s theory regarding the herd mentality clearly reflected in the history of the holocaust. He alludes to the power of conformity, the blind acceptance of power and the narrative of what is good and evil (Gay Science, 279). Nazi propaganda coupled with the economic and political concerns of most Germans, created a vulnerable space in German history where the country was susceptible to the tyrannical leadership of a man who disguised his hateful actions as progressive policy for the betterment of Germany. As Klemperer writes in an entry:
“…many otherwise well-meaning people, dulled to injustice inside the country and in particular not properly appreciating the misfortune of the Jews, have begun to halfway acquiesce to Hitler. Their opinion: If at the cost of going backward internally, he restores Germany’s power externally, then this cost is worthwhile. Conditions at home can always be made good later—politics is just not a clean affair” (127).
The promise of a better future for Germany and the erasure of Jewish identities in the public sphere allowed people to become unresponsive to the atrocities being committed near their homes, the millions murdered within sight.
The famous film Night and Fog by French director Alain Resnais aims to portray the horrors of the Holocaust in vivid detail. After the censorship of the Nazi regime, the complicit actions of Nazi sympathizers and the silencing of millions of Jewish voices, Resnais uses a combination of archived footage and on-set concentration camp footage to capture the horrific reality of Nazi Germany. It was important for Resnais to humanize the Jewish internees, so often reduced to numbers and just a few casualties out of the many. The humanization of Jewish people and documentation of their daily lives, reminiscent of the daily life observations of Klemperer, at beginning of film, makes dehumanization and dead bodies at the end more disturbing at the end. The use of torture and violence on the Jewish people required a total negation of the humanity of the abused and the erasure of the humanity of the Nazi abusers. The film desperately asks “who is responsible”, a haunting admission of the apathy of the past and a warning against repeating such actions in the future.
By reviewing the hidden history of apathy and complicity during the Holocaust through the works of Jewish German authors and activists, the veils of the Nazi propaganda disintegrate, revealing only the horrific realities of Nazi Germany. The establishment of a fascist regime in Germany led by Hitler and the Third Reich allowed for Germans to place trust in a central power to remove the issues impacting the quality of life in Germany, however, the blame for Germany’s failings was placed on marginalized, non-Aryan groups. The indifference to the violence inflicted upon the Jewish community for the sake of self-preservation is a warning towards the dangers of trusting in a totalitarian power, promoting xenophobic hate speech and remaining apathetic towards the violence against others.
Arendt, Hannah. The Origins Of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World
1968.Print.
Klemperer, Victor. “1935.” I Will Bear Witness: A Diary Of the Nazi Years
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm,Kaufmann, Walter,The Gay Science: With A Prelude In Rhymes
And An Appendix Of Songs. New York: Random House [1974]. Print.
Night and Fog. Dir. Alain Resnais, 1956.
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