La importancia de humanizarlos (a los alemanes, y al mal)

Por Kelly Moore

A posteriori, en nuestra sociedad moderna, es muy fácil culpar y demonizar a los que han participado de atrocidades a gran escala. A través del cine, de la literatura, del arte y quizá y sobre todo, de la educación, acciones colectivas como las de Armenia, Yugoslavia, Ruanda, Sudán y el tantas veces discutido holocausto judío son condenadas de manera vehemente. El morbo nos arrastra a ese misterio: nuestra capacidad para negar la humanidad de los otros, reducirlos a páginas en blanco de diarios antes que a las vibrantes historias humanas que en su momento vivieron.

Via hindsight ´modern society´ se encuentra muy facil culpar and
demonize participants of large scale atrocities. Through film,
literature, art and perhaps most importantly, public education, the
actions of collectives in Armenia, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sudan, and the
oft-discussed Jewish Holocaust are vehemently condemned. Our morbidity
draws us to this mystery: the capacity for humans to deny the humanity
of others, reduce them to blank pages of diaries rather than the
vibrant human stories they once were. These acts are
(unspeakable)(evil)(psychopathic). As Primo Levi makes clear (QUOTE
HIM) what the Germans did was deny an individual his own humanity, but
humanity has not only been deprived of the victim but also to the
criminals. Should we as educators not be careful to commit the same
mistake? In our quest to humanize the Jews of the Holocaust are we not
denying humanity to the criminals themselves?

Genocides are perpetrated over and over again. But genocides are just
the extreme of what is in fact, a daily occurence: Acts of ethnic
violence are perpetrated every day. Should we not try to understand
what drives the criminals? This begs the question: Within a school
setting discussing the Holocaust, how do we view the nature of the
PARTICIPANTS?

Students have a typical reaction to learning about the Holocaust:
Horror and a lack of comprehension. They will turn to familiar
paradigms for explanations. For some types of religious thinking, as
there often are, there exist easy answers and cookie-cutter scape
goats. For these individuals maybe the Holocaust is more digestible.
Tis perhaps the work of Satan in our worldly home. For others it
creates a crisis of faith, how could an all-powerful God have let this
happen? Yet, within this line of thought there is still the idea that
only some (unspeakable) evil could be behind what happened.

Secular thinkers are no less guilty. While morality maybe be more
(Chromatic, scaled, blended...) our refusal to understand (How could
this have happened? How could we have let this happen?) is no less
naïve. We explain away what happened as a freak of humanity, the
result of mob mentality and in our children´s literature about Germans
at this time focus almost exclusively on acts of kindness and humanity
of some while painting the participants as caricatures of real humans.
As though each Nazi were a prototype of Voldemort or Darth Vader.

This is not to say that there were not acts of heroism and compassion.
I only wish to say that even those who committed the (unspeakable)
were nothing more than humans...and that their actions are not
outliers. It is important to recognize what happened not as freak
phenomena but a very real problem in our daily lives. This is a much
better way to prevent our so-called dark sides from surfacing. To
meet them. Perhaps, it is most important to recognize ourselves in
the Germans...and be grateful that circumstances have not led us to
said choices.

Undisputably, one of the most loathed members of society is the
pedophile. Yet, when reading Nabakov´s Lolita, the reader finds his
human side. Could a greater understanding of the criminal help to
have prevented the crime?