When you're smiling...
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
There is a photograph in the Auschwitz book which I find as disturbing as any I've seen before. It's not a picture of death or torture or children waiting to die, upsetting as those are. This picture is of two men standing in sunlight, chatting, and smiling. All is right with the world, they seem to be saying. They have few worries. Certainly nothing that seems likely to impinge on their self-satisfaction.
The two men are Himmler and Auschwitz camp commandant Rudolf Hoess. Himmler is on an inspection visit and the men are no doubt discussing something trivial and laughing at a private joke. Yards away people will be dying. It is Himmler's smile in particular that is most distressing because it is the smile of a normal man, not that of a lunatic suddenly given power over the asylum. It is the smile of a man of limited ambition who has seen his horse come in second; it is the smile of a clerk rewarded with an extra day's leave. It is the smile of a man who expected - and hoped - that 20 million Russians would die as part of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, leaving more food for the Reich.
The two men are Himmler and Auschwitz camp commandant Rudolf Hoess. Himmler is on an inspection visit and the men are no doubt discussing something trivial and laughing at a private joke. Yards away people will be dying. It is Himmler's smile in particular that is most distressing because it is the smile of a normal man, not that of a lunatic suddenly given power over the asylum. It is the smile of a man of limited ambition who has seen his horse come in second; it is the smile of a clerk rewarded with an extra day's leave. It is the smile of a man who expected - and hoped - that 20 million Russians would die as part of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, leaving more food for the Reich.
