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At the Crossroads between Psychiatry and the Holocaust

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by Mehak Burza

The Hall of Names in the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Site in Jerusalem, Israel, remembering some of the 6 million Jews murdered during World War II. Source: iStockPhoto.

In the decades following the First World War, discontent, inflation, and political infighting characterised Germany. Adolf Hitler, who would become one of the most infamous dictators in history, rode on the subsequent wave of popular discontent, eventually becoming Germany’s Chancellor in 1933 and unleashing a radical transformation of the German state. Linking Jewish people to the country’s defeat in 1918, the National Socialist Workers’ Party (NSDAP) gave new impetus to this age-old racial thinking. To historian Tim Grady, for example, the NSDAP became the embodiment of German defeat in the Great War.

Among many of the ideals of the Nazi party, the Volksgemeinschaft (or the people’s community) figured centrally within the NSDAP. With the ambition to create a kind of social solidarity, Nazism attempted to put forward a cohesive and unifying movement for all Germans, at least those acceptable under its ideals. This pursuit led to the promotion of the concept of the Volk (the nation’s people) and its associated notions of blood and soil (Blut und Boden), where they would dwell. The Artamanen-Gesellschaft (Artaman League) started in 1923 as a German agrarian and völkisch (folk)-oriented movement devoted to a blood-and-soil–inspired ruralism, intent on carrying out the reformation of society (Lebensreform. The League turned out to be firmly connected to, and was ultimately absorbed by, the Nazi Party and the aforementioned concepts of the German Volk and their associated place of belonging in the world, central to Nazi propaganda.

Among the Germans belonging to the Volksgemeinschaft, the superior race and racial hygiene were the Aryans featured most prominently, as the epitome of superiority reflected by their racial hygiene. As a race that was believed to have given birth to all European civilisations, including the German, typical Aryan features included fair skin, a strong physique, blue eyes, and blond hair. This idea of Aryanism became the foundation of the Nazi race theory. By contrast, the Jews became identified as unwanted elements within this future society. As a people collectively to blame for the German defeat in the First World War, they became the victims of a German revanchist movement. Excluded from the Volksgemeinschaft, the Jewish people became suitable and convenient scapegoats to explain any misery of the German people, particularly the loss of the German state’s property (territorial and financial) caused by stipulations of the Treaty of Versailles.

One of the Nazi propaganda posters depicting Jews as demons as compared to the superior and ideal Aryan race. Source: The Forward

Emerging in this climate, the eugenics movement, pioneered by Francis Galton – a psychologist working on the hereditary nature of intelligence – in 1883, , held that only people with superior characteristic traits should be allowed by society to procreate further. Years later in 1905, Alfred Ploetz, a German biologist, published his work The Fitness of Our Race and the Protection of the Weak which debilitated clinical attention to the frail and undesirables. Ploetz termed this as the theory of racial hygiene (Rassenhygiene). As a particular special notion of eugenics, this philosophy led to the formation of the International Society for Racial Hygiene (Gesellschaft fur Rassenhygiene) by Alfred’s brother-in -law, Ernst Rüdin in 1907. Rüdin, a psychiatrist and an advocate of racial hygiene, through his research into genealogy, reasoned that frail mindedness and its related issues were heritable, and could be forestalled through eugenics.

The 1917 photoplay, “The Black Stork”, edited and re-released in 1927 as “Are You Fit to Marry” further established the benefits of proper racial hygiene. Influenced by the notions of racial cleanliness and anti-Semitism, Hitler acknowledged that eugenic practices were important to eliminate degenerate components from the country’s blood stream. Besides Jews as the Unerwünschte (unwanted elements), the other, non-Jewish groups included Roma Sinti groups, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the disabled, and homosexuals.

An anti-Semitic sign that translates, as “Jews are unwanted here”. Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

The eugenic ideals were used to justify mass sterilisation on those persons the German state deemed unwanted. Moreover, in 1933, the sterilisation law was passed. Marriage laws followed, prohibiting union with the “ill suited”. A further measure that ensured the racial cleansing of the German nation was the enactment and adoption of The Nuremberg Laws on 15 September 1935. The Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, both passed in Nuremburg at the time ensured the exclusion of Jews from the Reich citizenship and further the Blood Protection Law forbade the marriage between Jewish and non-Jewish Germans. In this way, a eugenic thinking process and the idea of blood unity began to seep in and spread through the institutions across Germany.

The eugenic ideal was actualised in October 1939, when the Nazi Regime implemented Aktion T4 or the T4 Euthanasia Program. The name was taken after Tiergartenstrasse 4, the street address of the program’s coordinating office in Berlin. The program included practically the whole German mental network. Headed by physicists, Dr. Karl Brandt and Phillip Bouhler, an administration was set up with an order to execute anybody considered a useless eater. On one hand, where the Nazi regime treated the Jewish people as parasites and vermin, the psychiatric vocation treated them as genetic aberrations. Killed from the outset by starvation and deadly injection, then later suffocation by poison gas. Doctors supervised gassings in chambers in the guise of showers, utilising deadly carbon monoxide gas obtained from physicists. So successful was this endeavour that the program directors set up gas chambers at six existing psychiatric extermination centers in Germany and Austria.

To curb the proliferation of what the Nazis perceived as abnormal, defective, and flawed individuals, the psychiatrists, who were fervent eugenicists, killed their patients who otherwise appeared to be quite normal without any deformities, much to the violation of the ethics of the Hippocratic oath. A majority of the doctors who became skilled in the techniques of this kind of extermination later also operated the concentration camps.  However, as they realised that the carbon monoxide gas would not be successful for a large-scale mass extermination, they replaced it with Zyklon B. Used for fumigant purposes in the camp, it soon proved out to be an effective means for mass murder.

Conclusion

Commenting on psychiatric activities in Nazi regime, the German biologist, Benno Muller-Hill argues: “Almost no one stopped to think that something could be wrong with psychiatry […] The international scientific establishment reassured their German colleagues that it had indeed been the unpardonable misconduct of a few individuals, but it lay outside the scope of science.” As much as physical selection took place in the extermination camps the moment victims descended from the cattle trains, psychiatric selection played an important role within the hospital framework that preceded the Holocaust as it targeted those inmates of institutions who were thought fit for sterilisation and thus it was the psychiatrists who decided the reproductive potential of the individuals.

It remains thus important to infer that the intrinsic, fundamental standards of psychiatry were not just mirrored by Nazi extremism and racist bigotry, but they also envisioned, supported, and acted as an entering wedge into the Holocaust. Psychiatry, further helped establish the concept of the Volk as individuals within the body politic, advocating the expulsion of purportedly parasitic people from the country’s society. This subject of treating society to the detriment of the individual was vital to the corruption of medication and the defense of the annihilations. An underlying principle that was shared between both Holocaust and psychiatry was the concept of selection.

Mehak Burza is a doctoral research scholar of Holocaust Studies in the Department of English, Jamia University (New Delhi, India). Her thesis title is Literary Representations of The Holocaust; An Assessment. Her primary interests include Holocaust/Genocide Studies, Gender Studies, Holocaust Trauma and PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). She has presented papers in international conferences in Texas and Gettysburg. Her creative works have been published in Trouvaille Review, Visual Verse and Galaxy International Multidisciplinary Research Journal. She also translates from Hindi/Urdu into English and her translations are published in Purple Ink Magazine, the online magazine of Brown University, Los Angeles. She is also associated with LLIDS Journal as a peer reviewer, CLRI journal as an editor for research papers and as a copy editor (part time) in Journal of International Women’s Studies. Apart from academics she is trained classical dancer, with Kathak being her forte.

Genocide and its Relevance Today (Part II) – Remembering the Holocaust at 75

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by Hannah Rose

A look from inside the camp at the gatehouse of Auschwitz II (Birkenau) leading to the gas chambers (Image credit: Michel Zacharz/Wikimedia)

On 19 April 1945, leading BBC broadcaster Richard Dimbleby reported the scene at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, four days after its liberation by British Forces:

Dead bodies, some of them in decay, lay strewn about the road and along the rutted tracks. On each side of the road were brown wooden huts. There were faces at the windows; the bony, emaciated faces of starving women, too weak to come outside, propping themselves against the glass to see the daylight before they die. And they were dying, every hour and every minute. I saw men wandering dazedly along the road, stagger and fall. Someone else looked down at him, took him by the heels, and dragged him to the side of the road to join the other bodies lie unburied there.

At first, the BBC refused to broadcast Dimbleby’s report, believing it to be too implausible to be true. The Nazi’s systematic dehumanisation and persecution of six million Jews as well as the murder of five million LGBT+ individuals, people of Roma, and Cinti descent, political opponents and disabled individuals – even seventy-five years later – are facts that are still barely conceivable for the human mind.

The steady erosion of each of those victim’s humanity can be traced back to the the Nazi’s first attempts to exclude Jews from public life. These efforts culminated in the concentration and extermination camps, with Auschwitz-Birkenau featuring as the spiritual centre of the Nazi genocide. This journey from expressions of racial hatred to the extermination of a people provides valuable lessons for how the conditions which we create as a society on a micro-level can lay the foundation for large-scale oppression. In particular, we learn from the Holocaust that there were three types of people: the perpetrator, the victim, and the bystander. Without all of these categories fulfilling their respective function, Nazi antisemitism would not have been able to industrialise and expand to its infamous extent. It was only through the societal normalisation of the Nazi dehumanisation project that the conditions for genocide could be allowed to take root and develop. Therefore, it is only through mass resilience to prejudice that we can immunise our society. From education about the Holocaust, we all have not only an opportunity, but even more so a responsibility to play our part in preventing the road to genocide.

Although the crimes of the Nazis may appear self-evident, recent research of British adults published by ComRes reveals revisionist attitudes seeping once again through the fringes of our discourse. Of those surveyed, one third said they knew little or nothing about the Holocaust, and the same portion said that Jewish people usurp the Holocaust for their gain. Whilst often such beliefs come simply from a lack of education, some conspire that the facts are deliberately being skewed in order to benefit Jewish people or the state of Israel. Such rhetoric, present on both the far-right and the far-left, is reminiscent of the sinister conspiracy theories that allowed the Holocaust to happen in the first place.

Meanwhile, in mainstream European politics, the Holocaust has been a topic of hot debate. Particularly in Poland, where the Auschwitz-Birkenau were respectively located in the villages of Oświęcim and Brzezinka, that memory is an especially vivid one. Recent legislation which criminalised accounts of Polish complicity in Nazi genocide received global condemnation for its attempt to revise and remove blame for the Holocaust. It became illegal to refer to concentration or extermination camps in Poland as ‘Polish camps’ despite there being definitive evidence of complicity by some Poles and Polish institutions in these war crimes. Though this ruling was later overturned, the Polish government had already given the green light to historical revisionism and growing far-right sentiments in the country.

This issue is not isolated to the Jewish population of Europe. Mass demonisation of minorities has in the past been employed to perpetrate genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur. Currently, ethnic cleansing of the Yazidi people in Syria, the Rohingya in Myanmar, and the Uyghur people in China’s Xingjiang province is living proof that as a global community we have failed to sufficiently learn the lessons of the Holocaust.

In the year of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Belsen, Auschwitz, and the Jews of Europe more generally, remembrance must not be a noun, but a verb. In the age of alternative facts, deep fakes and the reshaping of information for political purposes, the state of knowledge itself will not prevent persecution. It is our responsibility not just to know, but to teach; not just to listen, but to repeat; not just to understand the lessons, but to action them.

Hannah Rose is the former elected President of the Union of Jewish Students in the UK, and spoke on this topic in Brussels on a panel with Holocaust survivors and diplomats from Israel, Germany, and the European Commission. In her previous roles, Hannah Rose worked as an MP’s staff for the chair of the APPG on Holocaust Education, and interned at the Holocaust Educational Trust. In April she led a bus of Jewish youth around Poland and to Bergen-Belsen for the anniversary of the liberation. Rose is currently enrolled in the MA Terrorism, Security, and Society programme at King’s College London. 

Genocide and its Relevance Today (Part I) – The Ongoing Relevance of Holocaust Education in German Migration Society: Why this Topic at all?

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by Elisabeth Beck

A passage through the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin (Image credit: Flickr/Jerzy Durczak)

The debate on migration is an emotionally charged one, particularly when that migration was forced. The same also applies to the discourse surrounding the culture of remembrance in Germany. The weight of such a discussion is further exacerbated when migration and memory are simultaneously present. Politicians and educators get involved in the discussion when it comes to the aims that Holocaust education ought to pursue in an immigration country, asking whether the participation of immigration and their prior life stories impact the objectives of that education in any meaningful way. People from different countries are socialised with various narratives about the Holocaust and, therefore, remember it differently – or not at all. Consequently, there is also a debate about the obligation for immigrants to learn about the ‘German’ past and to remember it in an assumed and specifically ‘German’ way. These various expectations from different players have created challenges for Holocaust education and, hence, the question arises as to how educational approaches in this field ought to look like in a society characterised by migration [1].

In 2017, of the 82.6 million people living in Germany, 19.3 million of them were seen or marked as ‘immigrants’ or had foreign backgrounds. In this light, Germany is a highly diverse country[2]. However, there are still people who reject this and seek to portray German society as a homogenous entity. Such a nation-state-oriented production of an ‘us’ – as a counterpart to an ‘other’, a ‘them’ – negates plurality which has been present even prior to the refugee crisis of 2015-2016. Global history is history of migration, and yet, this understanding is conflictual because discussing migration and forced migration remains highly complex and politically divided. The focus in social, scientific, and media debates on migration and integration is mostly on the linguistic and vocational training of immigrants and refugees. Because of this, little is known on how migration influences the way we remember, or on how education about the German past deals with processes of pluralisation. Even more so, it remains uncertain to what extent there exists a necessity of a ‘different’ or a rather more ‘contemporary’ method of remembrance.

When it comes to the Holocaust, there is a specific way of remembering the past in German society. In the past, the country developed and upheld a strongly institutionalised remembrance mechanism. This fulfills both political and social functions, from state integration, the identification with the political system, and consensus building to the creation of mass loyalty and stability assurance[3]. For this reason, history and its remembrance forms ‘our’ identity and the way we see ‘our’ society and ‘ourselves’, in stark contrast to the ‘the others’. Still, the construction of an ‘us’ refers to the rigid entity of nation and, in many cases, neglects the heterogeneity in society that results from migratory processes. In so doing, one of the biggest contemporary challenges is the inclusion of different perspectives in the education of history and the avoidance of the production of an ‘other’ (symbolised by such terms as ‘here’ and ‘there’ or ‘us’ and ‘them’). In short, Holocaust remembrance and Holocaust education in Germany needs to be open to new spheres and develop new forms of remembering and training in order to enable all people living in Germany to participate and conceptualise the country’s history.

Different communities and diverse groups remember ‘their’ past in various ways. Since remembrance is such a powerful resource, conflicts can emerge as a result of its different conceptualisation, e.g. in the form of victim hierarchies or ‘competitions’. In addition to the question of what plural remembrance can look like, the question of the legitimacy of remembering in general is also not uncommon in Germany. However, it is important to cope with fundamental societal changes and, therefore, with upcoming changes in Holocaust education and equally in genocide education. Discussing the reason why we ought to still remember at all and why we should think and educate about cruel pasts cannot be a solution.

Since the Holocaust is an event in history that shook the foundations of civilisation, Germany has a responsibility in remembering and not having to repeat the tragedies of the past[4]. This responsibility, however, arises not only from ‘being German’ or living in Germany. As human beings and critical individuals we all have the responsibility to prevent the occurrence of atrocities, namely any exclusion, discrimination, genocide, or ethnic cleansing in the world. This responsibility cannot be delegated to a national or state level. It must just as well be located within the individual. Recognising and developing this accountability is widely regarded as a challenge for education.

As such, education is an essential tool in the prevention of genocide by promoting knowledge about past violence. It does so by studying the causes, circumstances, dynamics, and consequences of such violent episodes in history; as well as developing skills, values, and attitudes in order to prevent group-targeted violence and genocide. Consequently, education needs to respond to changes in society by taking the diversity of people’s backgrounds and experiences with discrimination, exclusion, and the violation of human rights (often related to processes of migration– into account. This is particularly important in cases of forced migration caused by war and violent conflict, both underlining the necessity and urgency to address crimes against humanity in education.

Still, by including different views and perspectives of Holocaust education participants, challenges may occur. Educators need to face problems like anti-Semitism and discrimination with increasing frequency. The number of people harbouring anti-Semitic attitudes – such as Holocaust denial, is widespread, not only in the German right-wing extremist scene[5] but also in the region of the Middle East and North Africa where more than fifty per cent of refugees who fled to Germany in 2017 came from. Holocaust education cannot immunise against anti-Semitism but it can raise awareness and sensitise individuals to the different and in many cases traditional images of the enemy, and their different functions in respective societies. In so doing, Holocaust education in Germany can contribute to an increasing awareness of prejudices and stereotypes without demonising and putting refugees and migrants marked as ‘the others’ under general anti-Semitism.

Furthermore, research on this topic is mostly conducted in secondary school and training that usually takes place in school and through extracurricular youth education. Adults are rarely recipients of Holocaust education. In 2017, thirty-three per cent of the non-German population was at the age between 18 and 35 years. Therefore, it can be assumed that – depending on the latest migration movements in Germany – the majority of this community has not had access to the German educational system. Access to formal training is furthermore often limited and not available to every immigrant.

Consequently, immigrants and refugees living in Germany do not necessarily come in contact with Holocaust education in any formal way. They may not know about the meaning of the highly institutionalised Holocaust remembrance which is a key pillar in the formation of a presumed ‘German’ identity. This laguna presents a challenge to adult education because participants carry their own narratives and also victim discourses with them. These past experiences have a major impact on the education itself. Educators have to make sure that different narratives and family connections to the Holocaust are thematised. At the same time, they have to moderate and contextualise the different discourses in order to avoid a marginalisation or trivialisation of the Holocaust. Only a collaborative debate on the past – or rather different pasts – can help to highlight the relevance of this topic for German society and lead to a better understanding of the reason why it is important to remember – not only for German nationals but for every person living in Germany.

Equally important for developing a contemporary Holocaust education and genocide education for adults is the inclusion of various experiences of migration, discrimination, exclusion, and even the violation of human rights. The conceptualisation of a ‘Holocaust Education and Beyond’ that has an emancipatory effect and highlights the values of democracy and human rights is essential. Holocaust education has the aim of strengthening people into taking responsibility for their own actions in the present and future. Beyond that, Holocaust education as one of genocide education can provide knowledge and an ethical imperative for present and future actions by people. It can build bridges into the world in order to carry these ideas further to ensure a ‘Never Again!’[6] pertaining to any violation of human rights. Genocide being one of them.

[1] A migration society is characterized by the assumption that migration is a societal normality and that a society is influenced and shaped by migration processes. Therefore, every society is a migration society. Old and new affinities are negotiated conflictually. Contradictions of presumed clearly defined concepts of belonging, space and culture are identified, shown and deconstructed. However, set boundaries and limits are problematised by migration.

[2] With the term ‘diversity’ in this blog post I only refer to different ethnic backgrounds and diversity.

[3] Dietmar Schiller, “Politische Gedenktage in Deutschland. Zum Verhältnis von öffentlicher Erinnerung und politischer Kultur” in Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, 1993, B25/93, p. 32-39

[4] The responsibility for remembering results from the certainty that atrocities in history mostly started with latent terms of exclusion and discrimination. This is what has to be prevented by remembering the past since history does not repeat exactly the same way it happened (see for example Jörn Leonhard, Die Büchse der Pandora. Geschichte des Ersten Weltkriegs)

[5] The German Federal Ministry of the Interior indicates a number of 25.000 people for whom there are indications of a right-wing extremist endeavour.

[6] Theodor Adorno states in his essay “Education After Auschwitz”: “The premier demand upon all education is that Auschwitz not happen again. […] Every debate about the ideals of education is trivial and inconsequential compared to this single ideal: never again Auschwitz.” (emphasis added by the author)

Elisabeth Beck is a research associate at the Center for Flight and Migration and a PhD student in educational science at the Department of Adult Education and Extra-Curricular Education, both at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt. Her research interests include education in the context of heterogeneity, migration pedagogy, Holocaust education, human rights education, and civic studies. Furthermore, she is a lecturer at the University of Augsburg. During her PhD training, she also served as a research associate at the University of Augsburg, where she acquired her Master’s Degree. Her current research project focuses on new perspectives in Holocaust education in the German migration society.

Strife Series on Genocide and its Relevance Today – Introduction

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by Anna Plunkett

Arbeit macht frei, or work sets you free, the phrase appearing to those entering the Auschwitz concentration camp (Image credit: Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum)

This year, 27 January marked the seventy-fifth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, perhaps the most iconic symbol of the Holocaust. The camp was liberated by Ukrainian forces of the Soviet Union on the 27 January 1945. By the time these forces arrived much of the camp had been dismantled by the Nazi guards but many of its prisoners were too ill and too weak to leave the site of their illegal detainment and planned extermination. To many the liberation of this large and well-known concentration camp marked the end of the Holocaust, one of the darkest episodes of modern history. Nevertheless, the crime of genocide is far from one resigned only to the history books, as this series will show, it remains relevant to our analysis of the world today.

The Holocaust, saw the extermination of over six million Jews between 1933 and 1945 from across all parts of Europe. Whilst there is no denying the absolute destruction that decimated the Jewish community and other minority groups as part of ‘The Final Solution’ (1942-45), the crimes of the Holocaust do not stand alone. Genocide, the act of intentionally exterminating a population has occurred throughout history. The Genocide Convention, signed in 1951, was introduced after the Holocaust to try and protect populations from such acts of annihilation. However, with all its good intentions and international agreements, genocide remains a part of the reality of the contemporary era.

Historical cases of Genocide including the Armenian Genocide and the Genocide of the Indigenous Populations of the United States of America continue to impact their respective communities today. More contemporary cases include the 1994 Rwandan Genocide where violence escalated at such a dramatic rate the UN Peacekeeping forces were forced to evacuate. The aftermath of which forced the international community to reconsider their role and response to such atrocities within a globalised world.

This January, the International Court of Justice, a mechanism from within the United Nations, published its interim ruling on the case of Genocide within Myanmar. It found evidence to support the accusation of genocide put forward by The Gambia and has authorised a full investigation into the case. Genocide has become synonymous with the worst crimes humanity can face. In law, we have committed globally to protect populations from it. Yet, genocides continue to occur, and their effects are felt over the generations of affected populations. This series will highlight various cases of genocide, analysing the act itself and how the enacting of such crimes is still relevant today.

 

Publishing Schedule:

Part 1: Elisabeth Beck writes on the importance of Holocaust and Genocide Education within Germany and how this highly institutionalised form of learning requires adaptation to benefit Germany’s increasingly diverse population.

Part 2: Hannah Rose reflects on the 75 years of remembrance of the Holocaust, considering the importance of remembrance to the communities affected as well as younger generations, as a method of prevention, and as a reflection of crimes being committed against other minorities throughout the world.

Part 3: Karla Drpic will discuss the role of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia analysing both its successes and failures on the local and international level, before reflecting on what the future of reconciliation after genocide may look like for future generations.

Part 4: Mariana Boujikian questions the finality of the end of a genocide, analysing the transgenerational impact of genocidal acts on victimised groups through her research on the Armenian Genocide and its survivors in Brazil.

Part 5: Will focus on the failure of the UN mechanisms to respond to the ongoing genocide against the Rohingya, arguing that the statist system the UN employs has left it ineffective in engaging in the protection of persecuted populations.

Anna is a doctoral researcher at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. She received her BA in Politics and Economics from the University of York, before receiving a scholarship to continue her studies at York with an MA in Post-War Recovery. She was the recipient of the Guido Galli Award for her MA dissertation. Her primary interests include conflict and democracy at the sub-national level, understanding how various political orders are impacted by transitions at the sub-national level. Anna’s main area of focus is Myanmar’s ethnic borderlands and ongoing conflicts in the region. She has previously worked as a human rights researcher focusing on military impunity and its impact on the community in Myanmar.