A WONDERFUL REFLECTION BY ANA RUBIO

A memory for the victims

 

 

Sixty-seven years after the Second War World, we are still asking ourselves how to remember properly the millions of people who were killed in that period of time. Currently, a lot of people ask themselves: what is the aim of that remembrance?; why should we remember such an evil era?; what’s for?

The Holocaust was not only a Jewish tragedy. Eleven million people were annihilated and murdered in concentration camps. Four million of them were Jews; the rest belonged to “races” as gypsies, Slavs, Latinos… others were sorted as handicapped, incurable patients and so on. All of them were labeled as “lives unworthy to live”. But, how should we classify these other victims of the Holocaust, nowadays? Maybe as the so-called, “collateral damages”?

Nazism never fought against a collective, but against the whole humanity. For Nazi people, humankind was something distasteful and repulsive. It was a stigma. The thing is that, they were looking for a sort of creature who couldn’t think by itself, who was able to sacrifice its own life in favor of the Third Reich, it means, the Führer. They wanted some kind of automatons without personality or autonomy; people ready to be manipulated by them; people whose identity were to be a membership of a special Mass, the chosen one (the Volk). People capable of putting others down; to make them feel stupid and inferior. And they often made a game and a joke of it.

In this context, remember it is extremely important. We can’t forget any single victim; we can’t forget how the human being became a being without a soul, without a conscience, without any sympathy at all. They were absolutely crass, that is, rude and insensitive. The main reasons for remembering are: firstly, to avoid these kind of events now and in the future; those evil events don’t have to happen again and on the other hand, humanity has the duty today to restore victims’ identity and dignity. Then, remembrance is in order to ask for justice, but not for a correct political one. Remembrance demands an alterative justice, that is, a justice in favor of everyone. A sort of justice whose objective is to restore humanity in every person, victim or murderer.

Of course, it doesn’t mean not to punish criminal people, but to make them understand the evil nature of their crimes. Evil in Auschwitz is the attempt to make evil disappear, namely the crime of criminal acts and consciousness. It searches for control over all conduct and all criteria of value and moral.

 

The exercised Evil has no moral responsibility in man. Criminal man is not longer a monster, even by way of the "Portrait of Dorian Grey". Evil makes not villain people repugnant or disgusting in their interiority or exteriority. In other words, Evil is as non-reflection of the human representation of "Dracula". The human figure of this character cannot be reflected in the mirror because it no longer exists; Dracula is pure Evil. Then Evil takes root in the depths of each being. It has spent their being and it is presented in its annihilator purity as being, as well.

 

So, accepting this Evil people are isolated from reality as a corporeal, knowing, thinking and reflective self.  Evil that, at first, is "doing" in people criminal actions, as a routine becomes a direction of the inner as well as the outer being as a sadistic omnipotence, its main life principle. Sadism turns out to be an aspect of omnipotence –control over lives, an endeavor to stamp out one’s own will. Because of this, the human being becomes a mere man heartless, unthinking, dependent, fascinated and voluntarily possessed by Evil.

 

            Let us consider what they defended that they didn’t think that their acts were bad; they only obeyed orders. It meant that they didn’t need to ask themselves for the reasons for and the right or wrong of the facts, as well. It was not their business at all that they didn’t want any responsibility. Responsibility is related to freedom. Only free people can be responsible and we can’t forget that they were not free to choose anything; they were automatons! However, what it’s true is that they freely chose their condition of no human being and that makes them guilty and responsible of each of their crimes.

 

 

Ana Rubio

Doctor in Theology

Master in Philosophy