Stopping the Banality of Evil

My father reminded me of a phrase today: the banality of evil (Edward S Herman/Hannah Arendt).  Today I saw that as well as the scale on which evil can operate. 

Today is my second day in Poland and, for me, one of the main reasons to visit was the camp outside Oswiecim known more commonly as Auschwitz.  The numbers are well known, around 1.5 million killed including at least 1.1 million Jews.  Terrifying and impossible to imagine death on such a scale. 

And it is not that this is my first encounter to human loss on such a scale: I have seen the graves on all sides in both world wars to the concentration camps at Dachau and, particularly, in Struthof in Alsace, France.  The scale of the suffering is huger there, but so much greater at this camp. 

On arrival I was surprised: Auschwitz is in a surprisingly urban setting.  It is a little smaller than I had expected.  The rooms describing the death (particularly in the death block) were chilling.  And yet the thing that stuck me was the permanent nature of the camp.  One imagines wood sheds but here were 2 storey brick buildings: this was a long-term elimination of a race and the nature of the project surprising.  But these houses also reminded me of the 19^th Century Work Houses one sees in the UK and Belgium/the Netherlands.  Blocks to house large populations needed for major industrial projects.  The normal used in a truly awful way: the banality of evil. 

Some 3kms from here is Birkenau, more often seen as part of Auschwitz and labelled as Auschwitz II but actually quite distinct and the only camp created solely to kill people.  This was more what is expected: the sidings where people were removed from cattle wagons and selected for death or work; the cold, basic, accommodation designed for animals not humans; a vast scale taking 20 minutes brisk walk to cross any boundary.  Awful. 

Yet, one of the most striking moment for me was the shower block.  The 1 in 4 selected for imprisonment rather than instant death were processed here and we could follow their passage: undressing, losing their hair, washing, dried and allocated new clothes then being sent to a camp.  Daily tasks here each flowed easily on from the last in a ruthlessly designed example of organisation efficiency which aimed to dehumanise and terrify the individual ahead of their residence at the camp.  The banality of evil. 

And this is tangible history; the camp closed only 7 years before my Father was born.  This is not some historical event but truly living history.  Only 8 years after Auschwitz was closed, was Europe trying to form the European Coal and Steel Community.  The leaders of countries at war which had committed atrocities such as these were trying to find a way forward, trying to find a “durable peace”.  The fact it has stopped war for a generations though mass death has still been seen too close to its shores.  

Standing there, amongst the horrors that had happened, it reminded me of the need for us a European citizens and, more fundamentally, as human beings to stop evil ever becoming banal again.