What I fear, here, is that you are taking seriously the self-justifications of a mass murderer. Was it somehow less obvious that people with disabilities didn't deserve to die in the 1930s than it is today?
Yes, actually.
Capacities for treatment were very different, then. So were options for working around disability. Added to that, attitudes were very different; many people today live active, independent lives who, a hundred years ago, would have been locked away in institutions, given no opportunities for education, and treated, overall, in ways that would nowadays be unacceptable for animals. See here, for example.
In Germany specifically, an extensive propaganda campaign had been taking place to persuade the populace that the disabled were a worthless burden on the state. The modern belief that people with disabilities have rights, and deserve to be assisted in ways sufficient to allow them to live as normal a life as possible, is a recent innovation.
When you use this kind of language, "he was sent to a place...called Treblinka"--no.
But he was. He didn't want to go there; he was ordered to go there. He didn't volunteer. He was sent there. This does not mean that his getting sent there was in any way equivalent to the circumstances of the Poles who were sent there. It just means he was told to go there. It doesn't even entail recognition of the fact that had he refused, he would have certainly died for it, and probably his wife and young children would have been killed too, which should be taken into account when looking at his non-resistance.
I'm not saying he was right, but... he was sent there.
Don't create a moral equivalence of passivity between the Nazis who took paying jobs to efficiently murder my people and the people whom THEY sent to Treblinka.
I'm not doing that. In the very next sentence I point out that he knew exactly what was going on - this makes his going there and working there an amoral act. He wasn't a victim - there's a reason I didn't use that word. The whole point of this essay is to make it clear that Stangl became evil. That it's possible for someone to start out decent and become one of the most evil individuals ever to walk the land. He was no longer a decent person by the time he got to Treblinka. He was evil. If he hated himself and his surroundings enough to be drinking himself into a stupor every day, it doesn't do a damn thing to mitigate against the fact that he was still doing absolutely evil things.
Maybe it couldn't be you. I'd argue you can't be sure of that, you can't know what your breaking point would be. You can't know how far you'd go to save the people you love most in the world, especially if you went there by tiny stages.
I know I don't know that - given the choice, I would rather die than commit a murder. I am sure of that. But what if my choice was to kill a child molester, or let my best friend die? I'd pull that trigger. It's not that hard a choice. But it could well be the first step on a path towards making seriously evil decisions without a qualm.
Passively accepting white privilege is not the same as finding more efficient ways to commit mass murder, it's true. I am not and never was denying that.
What I am saying is that it's at the other end of the same spectrum. The little, tiny wrongs add up, and if you let yourself accept them, and let the little wrongs become normal to you, so slightly bigger wrongs now seem smaller by comparison, you can end up making a series of adjustments that end with treating really quite big wrongs as normal.
Very, very few people fall as far as Stangl did, but very very few people have the chance.
It's not like it's inevitable - many people did, in fact, resist the Nazi regime, covertly or not. Many people were faced with similar choices to his and took risks, earlier, to keep from being compromised so much. But being mindful that that IS the path one takes is important.
no subject
I apologise. That was not my intention.
What I fear, here, is that you are taking seriously the self-justifications of a mass murderer. Was it somehow less obvious that people with disabilities didn't deserve to die in the 1930s than it is today?
Yes, actually.
Capacities for treatment were very different, then. So were options for working around disability. Added to that, attitudes were very different; many people today live active, independent lives who, a hundred years ago, would have been locked away in institutions, given no opportunities for education, and treated, overall, in ways that would nowadays be unacceptable for animals. See here, for example.
In Germany specifically, an extensive propaganda campaign had been taking place to persuade the populace that the disabled were a worthless burden on the state. The modern belief that people with disabilities have rights, and deserve to be assisted in ways sufficient to allow them to live as normal a life as possible, is a recent innovation.
When you use this kind of language, "he was sent to a place...called Treblinka"--no.
But he was. He didn't want to go there; he was ordered to go there. He didn't volunteer. He was sent there. This does not mean that his getting sent there was in any way equivalent to the circumstances of the Poles who were sent there. It just means he was told to go there. It doesn't even entail recognition of the fact that had he refused, he would have certainly died for it, and probably his wife and young children would have been killed too, which should be taken into account when looking at his non-resistance.
I'm not saying he was right, but... he was sent there.
Don't create a moral equivalence of passivity between the Nazis who took paying jobs to efficiently murder my people and the people whom THEY sent to Treblinka.
I'm not doing that. In the very next sentence I point out that he knew exactly what was going on - this makes his going there and working there an amoral act. He wasn't a victim - there's a reason I didn't use that word. The whole point of this essay is to make it clear that Stangl became evil. That it's possible for someone to start out decent and become one of the most evil individuals ever to walk the land. He was no longer a decent person by the time he got to Treblinka. He was evil. If he hated himself and his surroundings enough to be drinking himself into a stupor every day, it doesn't do a damn thing to mitigate against the fact that he was still doing absolutely evil things.
Maybe it couldn't be you. I'd argue you can't be sure of that, you can't know what your breaking point would be. You can't know how far you'd go to save the people you love most in the world, especially if you went there by tiny stages.
I know I don't know that - given the choice, I would rather die than commit a murder. I am sure of that. But what if my choice was to kill a child molester, or let my best friend die? I'd pull that trigger. It's not that hard a choice. But it could well be the first step on a path towards making seriously evil decisions without a qualm.
Passively accepting white privilege is not the same as finding more efficient ways to commit mass murder, it's true. I am not and never was denying that.
What I am saying is that it's at the other end of the same spectrum. The little, tiny wrongs add up, and if you let yourself accept them, and let the little wrongs become normal to you, so slightly bigger wrongs now seem smaller by comparison, you can end up making a series of adjustments that end with treating really quite big wrongs as normal.
Very, very few people fall as far as Stangl did, but very very few people have the chance.
It's not like it's inevitable - many people did, in fact, resist the Nazi regime, covertly or not. Many people were faced with similar choices to his and took risks, earlier, to keep from being compromised so much. But being mindful that that IS the path one takes is important.