Recently I decided to watch a documentary about the Ku Klux Klan. I still don't understand what possessed me to do this. I've watched documentaries about them before (there's a really good but short Louis Theroux one on the internet somewhere) and I recognised most of their answers to the questions they were asked. Same old failure to misunderstand the one-way nature of racism. Prejudice is bidirectional, true, but systemic racism remains firmly oppressive of the same groups as always. Same failure to grasp the concept of fighting back. Still terrified of any threat to their privilege.
There was one thing, however, that was new. The film-maker, Dan Murdoch, pointed to a portrait of Hitler and asked for an explanation of it. He was informed that "Hitler was a very smart man." Murdoch didn't seem too surprised at this. The guy's a white supremacist; of course he agrees with Hitler. Then the KKK member goes on to claim that the concentration camps were full of recreational opportunities: cafés, cinemas and even swimming pools. Apparently the Jews were refusing to work and Hitler was forcing them to. Never mind the fact that Jews - as well as women - weren't actually counted in employment figures in the 1930s, so if Hitler's plans to force every Jew out of work in favour of an Aryan was working, they had no way of knowing.
So there were two points in here that incensed me. The first of these is that the notion that Hitler possessed even average competence is an utter inaccuracy. He would sleep until one in the afternoon every day, go out drinking every night. His chief architect (who later became his ammunitions minister (I think)) was begged not to bring him any more floor plans because it was impossible to regain Hitler's attention once it had been drawn to a floor plan. He is painted as an authoritarian mastermind. He may have had authoritarian principles, but he massively lacked the commitment to put them into practice. He delegated almost all of his authorities to a ring of about five deputies who all competed for his attention. They figured whoever impressed him most could get the most lenience out of him. This led to an arms race of extravagance which could easily have been what led to the death camps. If Hitler had been a little more interested in getting involved, his inability to decipher policy may have saved millions of lives.
Secondly, I cannot believe there are people in this world who have been bypassed by every single film about the Second World War in which the Nazis are the bad guys. Somebody give him a copy of 'The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas'. In the film - I have read the book but it was a while ago - Bruno's father, a commandant of one of the camps, is shown a video of all the leisure activities available in the camps. He is perfectly aware of the 'final solution', invigorated by it in fact, but he still watches these videos with his men, most of whom are also aware of, and delighted by, how much of a farce the images are. Showing the KKK member that would almost be meta-fiction, but surely he would see that even the Nazis didn't believe the propaganda he is espousing.
And I know there aren't any swimming pools at Auschwitz. I've not just read about it in my Advanced Higher History textbook, or watched a movie about the Holocaust, or read a novel, or a poem. I have done all of these things - there's even a song by a metal band called 'Sabaton' I love called 'Inmate 4859' about one particular hero of the Holocaust. But I know these things because I have been there.
Last year, I was one of two sixth year pupils from my school to go with the Holocaust Educational Trust, along with hundreds of other pupils from other schools, to visit the sites of Auschwitz I and Auschwitz Birkenau. We left Glasgow for Poland at about seven in the morning and returned at about eleven at night - of the same day. I spent the day immersed in the history of the Holocaust, in the geography and in the emotion. That day was saturated with information, stories and sights, some of which stuck with me, some of which have fallen away.
One thing I remember explicitly is that at neither of the sites I visited was there a swimming pool. There weren't even toilets! At Birkenau, each hut had a bench with a row of holes in it. That was the 'toilet'. The inmates rarely had enough water to drink and I imagine they'd have had some sort of reaction if they'd gone swimming. Not to mention the state the water would end up in; they never showered, and as a result were constantly filthy. The only 'shower' they ever had wasn't even a shower, but a ruse to lure them into a gas chamber.
And at Auschwitz I, there was no swimming pool. There was a glass cabinet of prosthetic limbs, a wall of human hair, childrens' toys, clothes, portraits of inmates taken shortly after they'd arrived. Oh, they were smiling in those photos, you say? Yes, but this is because it was 1940 and most of them had been in front of a camera at most twice in their lives. It'd be like handing a child a 3DS while you prepared a room for their extermination.
Before the visit, we had a talk from Zigi Shipper, a Holocaust survivor, who lived through Auschwitz and was relocated to Britain after the war. Incidentally he has one of my favourite lines about immigration ever: "Someone says to me, do you see yourself as British? I say, I'm more British than you! They say, what are you on about? I say, I chose to be here, you are only here because this is where your mother happened to give birth to you." He spoke to us about his experience, his childhood. He hasn't studied the Holocaust and discovered there were no swimming pools. He remembers that there were no swimming pools.
We also had a Rabbi as a tour guide. He was from London and told us about a time when protesters had marched past the door of his synagogue with signs saying 'Hitler Was Right'. As well as the implication that Hitler was the brains behind the operation, the inaccuracy of this statement is incalculable, to most of us. We learned at primary school what happened in the camps. We learnt over and over again at varying stages of historical or ethical education at secondary school. I have a friend from the internet who asked me why we always focus on the Holocaust, and not older genocides that are never mentioned any more. I think, perhaps, the answer lies in that KKK member's response.
He is an uneducated, racist, ignorant twat. I'm not pretending he represents even a significant minority of the Western population. Most people are very different from him. Sure, most people have forgotten past wars when even larger numbers of people were exterminated, when whole cities were laid to waste. But it is seventy years since liberation, and for the most part Auschwitz has been kept intact. There is still hope, in film, in literature, in visual art, to keep a clear record of what happened during World War II. And we have to keep learning about it and teaching about it, because this is what separates us from uneducated, racist, ignorant twats.
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