Why power a Jewish guardian to decide on the one member of the family who could be spared from rapid dying? Why not make a logical, environment friendly, bureaucratic alternative to pick out the very best employee for some camp operate?
This wasn’t about logic, Toland determined. This was illogical Evil, forcing readers to gaze into the logic of the demonic.
That type of Evil is rarely mentioned on this new Occasions piece. Thus, the piece is “haunted,” as we are saying right here at GetReligion.
Sure, the straightforward, clear details about the businesslike work of the bureaucrats is horrible. The Adolf Eichmann notes on the assembly developed right into a coverage doc and survived the Nazi shredders, buried within the recordsdata of an “below secretary” within the German Overseas Workplace whose identify was Martin Luther.
Solely one in every of 30 copies of his 15-page protocol, marked in crimson as “secret” on the primary web page, survived. It was found by American troopers among the many recordsdata of the Overseas Ministry after the battle. …
“With applicable prior authorization from the Führer, emigration has now been changed by evacuation of the Jews to the East as one other potential answer,” the protocol famous. “In the midst of this last answer of the Jewish query, roughly 11 million Jews can be considered.” …
“The evacuated Jews will first be taken, group by group, to so-called transit ghettos, from the place they are going to be transported onward to the East,” it continued. “As regards to the way through which the ultimate answer can be carried out in these European territories which we now both management or affect, it has been recommended that the pertinent specialists within the Overseas Ministry ought to talk to the accountable official of the Safety Police and the SD.”
It was the language of bureaucrats. However there was by no means any doubt what the doc was laying out: “The whole elimination of the European Jews,” as Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s chief propagandist, wrote in his diary after studying the minutes.
Are any of the specialists and historians who’re discussing this eightieth anniversary asking questions that transcend blots of ink on the pages of a bureaucrat’s memo?
I’ll assume that the reply is “sure,” as a result of I discover it laborious to consider that it’s unattainable to ponder this topic in purely logical, “secular” phrases. Did anybody ask about this “ghost”?
FIRST IMAGE: Display shot from YouTube, drawn from “Sophie’s Selection.”