THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS
evident that things which for thousands of years the human imagina–
tion had banished to a realm beyond human competence, can be
manufactured right here on earth. Hell and purgatory, and even a
shadow of their perpetual duration, can be established by the most
modern methods of destruction and therapy. ·When people of this
sort, who are far more numerous in any large city than we like to
think,
see these films, or read reports of the same things, the thought
that comes to their minds is that the power of man is far greater than
they ever dared to think and that men can realize hellish fantasies
without making the sky fall or the earth open.
The one thing that cannot be reproduced is what made the
traditional conceptions of hell toler.able to man: the Last
J
udg–
rnent, the idea of an absolute standard of justice combined with the
infinite possibility of grace. For in the human estimation there is no
crime and no sin commensurable with the everlasting torments of
hell. Hence the discomfiture of common sense, which asks: What
crime must these people have committed in order to suffer so inhu–
manly? Hence also the absolute innocence of the victims: no man
ever deserved this. Hence finally the grotesque haphazardness with
which concentration camp victims were chosen in the perfected ter–
ror state: such "punishment" can, with equal justice and injustice,
be
inflicted on anyone.
Ill
In comparison with the ·insane end-result-concentration camp
society-the process by which men are prepared for this end, and the
methods by which individuals are adapted to these conditions, are
transparent and logical. The insane mass manufacture of corpses is
preceded by the historically and politically intelligible preparation of
living corpses.
In another connection it might be possible, indeed it would be
necessary, to describe this preparatory process as a consequence of
the political upheavals of our century. The impetus and, what is
more important, the silent consent to such unprecedented conditions
in the heart of Europe are the products of those events which in a
period of political disintegration suddenly and unexpectedly made
hundreds of thousands of human beings homeless, stateless, outlawed
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