On Monday, Ralph, a surviver of the Nazi Genocide came to talk to our class. He talked about Mr. Samuel, a middle-class Englishman who had saved his life through the kindertransport. Yesterday we saw a video of a man who had been a former Hitler-youth, and had been so fanatical that he had tried to continue fighting even after Germany had surrendered.
I personally consider Ralph to be a surviver, and do not consider the members of the Hitler youth to be perpetrators in the sense that we are defining them.
What do you think? Ralph considers himself a surviver, but he escaped while very young. Is there an age limit? An amount of suffering one has to undergo?
Although the Hitler youth were essentially brainwashed, is it a person's responsibility to think for themselves at some point? If you do consider him a perpetrator, would he have been more or less culpable had he known his actions were wrong, but had done them to survive?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
I too consider Ralph to be a survivor of the Holocaust despite the fact that he left Germany at a young age and was never imprisoned in one of the concentration camps. Nonetheless, his life was greatly altered as a result of what was happening to the Jews and he escaped under the regime that was ultimately responsible for the Holocaust.
On the subject of the Hitler Youth, I do not consider then to be complete bystanders nor complete perpetrators. If it is possible to do, I would consider the Hitler Youth perpetrators of violent crimes, but not to the extent that those who were leading and teaching the Hitler Youth were. I partially consider the Hitler Youth to be perpetrators because I think that to some degree they had to know that they were committing crimes because if they truly did not believe in what they were doing then they would have resisted in some form. I also recognize that there was an element of brainwashing that occurred, which is why I am hesitant to classify them as just perpetrators, because when compared to other perpetrators they do not match up the same. This all makes me wonder if it is possible to have an individual who is a perpetrator and not a perpetrator at the same time?
I am going to address the points about the Hitler youth specifically. My essay is partly about the role of interrogators (essentially torturers and murderers) in S-21, a prison in Cambodia during the genocide under Pol Pot's regime. I realized that the interrogators were in similar positions as the Hitler youth in that they were clearly perpetrators in genocide by directly participating and committing horrible acts, and yet at the same time they were victims to the genocide. Many kids in the Hitler Youth were forced into it, such as the current Pope, under strict penalty for noncompliance. The interrogators of S-21 were also forced into their actions under penalty of imprisonment and death. Both of these instances show that it is entirely possible to be a perpetrator and a victim in the same genocide. The real issue comes when attempting to try these individuals in court, because they are neither entirely innocent nor entirely guilty. In the case of the Hitler Youth, I do not think they should be punished under the law for their actions, both because of their young age at the time and their dual role as victim and perpetrator.
A small tangent: in the Center today, Ravi showed a film about the impact of the Iraq war on veterans, and part of it was veterans talking about their experiences in boot camp. I never realized this before, but the strategies of the current boot camps in the US bear a chilling resemblance to those of the Hitler Youth. The most blatant similarity was the use song (the veterans talked about songs that glorified shooting down a group of Iraqi school kids and other attrocities) to implant ideas into the singers heads and give them a feeling of being part of a greater whole. The way the veterans described their experiences at boot camp was almost the same as the way the people in the film we saw in class described their experiences with the Hitler Youth. If you will recall, the man at the end of the film on Hitler Youth warned that the possibility of something like the Hitler Youth reoccuring was great, and I will go so far as to say that it is happening again, right now, in our own country. American young people (not as young as the Hitler Youth, but still in late teens, and 20s) are being brainwashed to become killing machines for the purpose of the war, the same as what happened during WWII in Germany. Any thoughts?
**Sorry, I can't remember the name of the film Ravi showed, but if you ask him he can probably lend it to you, or at least tell you the name if you want to know.
Jordan, I agree with your statement that something similar to the Hitler Youth could happen again today, but I am not sure that it is happening right now in the sense that the soldiers are being brainwashed to believe that a genocide is justified. Some soldiers depending on personal experience may already have believed war was justified, while believing genocide is justified without any brainwashing is less likely. However, I do agree that if these methods were so effective before, they could be again, and that it would certainly be possible for soldiers today to be made to agree with something as awful as genocide. On the other hand, these people are still young, but they are not necessarily children either, by which I mean not as impressionable, but then changes in impressionability happen for different people at different ages. Hypothetically if the methods used with the Hitler Youth and the US boot camps were precisely the same in every way except for the age of those being subjected to them, should the methods be judged as equally criminal for both ages? Should an older group of German soldiers (Hitler youth involved or otherwise) who performed the exact same acts as younger soldiers be held more accountable than the younger soldiers? Since everyone goes through different maturing experiences, how can the line be drawn between being mature enough to be held responsible for these actions, as opposed to not being held accountable? (Morally and legally)
i consider the Hitler Youth perpetrators. they were presented with an option to murder and they didn't ask why or disagree with killing. they chose to take life away, but they could have also extended it.
the book i read for class had a section on Paul Rusesabagina and the Hotel des Milles Collines. the film "Hotel Rwanda" is based on the story of Paul housing a thousand or so refugees during the Rwandan genocide.
Rusesabagina said that he does not consider himself an extraordinary man. he refused to work with the government because he simply disagreed with killing. i think that was the point of Ralph's presentation: anybody can save a life. all humans are ordinary. when presented with the choice of killing, upstanders refuse and perpetrators don't.
Post a Comment