Chapter 11 Facing today's Auschwitz

Yesterday—January 27, 2005, we watched the open-air commemoration ceremony of Auschwitz concentration camp on TV: heavy snow fell, the concentration camp was covered with ice and snow, and the black barbed wire was shocking. Sixty years ago, 6 million Jews, including 1.5 million children, were systematically massacred by the Nazis in just a few years.Although people today are shocked by the evil of human nature and have actively reflected on it, how the international community should establish an effective mechanism to stop similar vicious massacres raised by this incident is not a solved problem.

one First of all, "human nature is evil" is not easy to overcome. Evil often has a "good" packaging.The full name of Hitler's Nazi Party was "National Socialist Workers' Party".Hitler was able to come to power, relying on one of the slogans is "everyone has food and everyone has a job".Therefore, it seems that this party is "for the country, for the poor, and for society".But "coaching the many and persecuting the few" is the way to success for almost all Holocaust tragedies. Another Nazi package is "science".Under the guise of "science", Hitler introduced the eugenics research, which flourished at the beginning of the last century, into the field of social transformation.Moreover, under the "absolute rationality" after sweeping away human nature, it is possible to "eliminate inferior people" by logically deriving "for the benefit of the majority"

conclusion.So the Nazi scientists killed the patients in the German mental hospital and the mentally handicapped children in the nursery in batches with peace of mind. "Hitler's Evil" was able to succeed because human beings have weaknesses.Deep down, many people are either willing to believe that they are superior to others, or they are willing to make others "scapegoats" for their own safety, and so on.When voices of opposition and humanity are suppressed, and the evil and madness of individual people cater to the weakness of the majority, it may quickly become the evil and madness of the group.And only with the support of group evil can the massacre be realized.

"Hitler's evil" is a typical example, and the "Holocaust" suffered by the Jews is not an isolated case in history.Because as long as the "Nazi conditions" are met, the Holocaust may happen at any time.Therefore, in the sixty years after World War II, the international community has always faced a difficult problem: what should we do if there is a "new Hitler and the Holocaust"? two The reason why the problem became a problem is related to the focus of the international community after World War II, and its root cause is also related to the world situation at that time.

The Holocaust of the Jews roughly coincides with World War II.Hitler's murder of Jews and invasion of other countries overlapped.Sixty years ago, due to the progress of the war against aggression, the concentration camps were liberated, and the Holocaust was revealed, which shocked the world.But without that background, it probably still wouldn't have been dealt with forcefully enough as an isolated incident. One of the main reasons for saying this is that at that time countries saw the danger of national subjugation, and anti-aggression naturally became the most urgent thing.Therefore, the United Nations was established after the war. Its most important body is the Security Council. Its main task is to maintain world peace, that is, how to avoid new aggression and new world wars, and does not include how to prevent massacres.When revealing the Holocaust, countries emphasized Hitler's cruelty and madness, shocked by the extreme evil of human nature, but did not deeply review the responsibility and dereliction of duty of the international community, so it is impossible to further prevent the massacre from the system of international organizations The carnage made a difference.

There are many reasons why there is no in-depth review of the Holocaust, and it also indirectly reflects many problems in the international community itself.Some countries, for example, can be said to be indirectly responsible for the Holocaust.At the commemoration ceremony in Auschwitz yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin attended and spoke.As we all know, the Soviet army became the liberator of the Auschwitz concentration camp in the process of defeating the German army in Poland.Putin also mentioned that the former Soviet Union was the country that suffered the most from World War II, because the Soviet Union had the most soldiers who died in World War II. A considerable part of the victims in Auschwitz were Soviet prisoners of war.It's all true.It would have been easier if the commemoration had been a war memorial to the victory over Nazi Germany.But when it comes to the Holocaust, it's not that simple.Because that's not the whole truth.

Another fact is that when Hitler rose aggressively, Stalin signed the German-Soviet peace treaty with Germany, not only sold out the location of Auschwitz - Poland, but also discussed how to carve up Poland.Therefore, it can also be said that Stalin bears the unshirkable responsibility for the existence of Auschwitz itself.At the same time, among the victims of Auschwitz, there were a large number of Jews transferred from Czechoslovakia by the Nazis. They fell into the hands of the Germans and died in Auschwitz. One of the results of the "Munich Agreement" that sold Czechoslovakia to Hitler.Germany's persecution of the Jews had already taken place when these countries sold out Czechoslovakia and Poland.One of the weaknesses of man is his reluctance to face his own sin.Therefore, these facts also prevented the allies at that time from in-depth review of the "Massacre" incident.

Due to Hitler's insatiable appetite, the flames of war ignited across Europe and involved the Soviet Union, Britain, and France in the war. Only then did they become the force in the "World War II" anti-fascist war and the savior of the Jews.That is to say, the salvation of the Jews at that time was not intentional by the awakened human beings, but an unexpected result of the "World War II".A typical example is the Soviet Union at that time.Even before the rise of the Nazis, Stalin began a persecution of his own subjects, including torture and the Holocaust.Before the German army occupied Poland, the Soviet Union occupied Poland and secretly massacred 14,700 Polish officers and 11,000 Polish citizens who were captured and imprisoned.Therefore, among the so-called "World War II" allies, the Soviet Union would not be willing to have a mechanism to contain the "Holocaust" in the post-war international institutions in the first place.However, due to the fear of wars of aggression, the natural result is the emphasis on sovereign states, and "interference in internal affairs" has become a negative word like "quasi-aggression".

Therefore, the reflection on the "Holocaust" after "World War II" is actually limited, even vague and misleading.It makes people mistakenly believe that anti-racial persecution, anti-holocaust, and liberation of Jews are one of the goals of the anti-fascist war.It conceals the fact that if Hitler did not invade other countries at that time, but closed the door and built concentration camps in the country, persecuted, tortured and massacred the Jews, then they would not be able to take advantage of the war to be rescued, as long as Hitler wanted to, They will all be killed.

three After World War II, the international community was unable to deeply reflect on the Holocaust, and thus was unable to establish an effective mechanism to stop it. As a result, the Holocaust was repeated. Today, people use the "past tense" in commemoration, which always rises from abstraction to theory; we always feel that we should reflect on how human beings have done such things before, and we can never let it happen again.In fact, while people are obsessed with "remembering the lessons of history" and their rise is almost empty, the tragedy of the massacre has been happening all the time.For example, in 1994, fifty years after the liberation of Auschwitz, the genocide occurred in Rwanda. During the mere 100 days when UN Secretary-General Kofi Kofi Annan decided whether the UN "needed" to intervene, there were nearly a hundred Thousands of people were massacred.

Annan's hesitation is very natural, because it is "internal affairs".The United Nations established after World War II did not authorize him to "intervene in internal affairs". Therefore, the massacre can only be "humanely appealed" and cannot be stopped by force.Only six years ago, in 1999, Kosovo, the former Yugoslavia, massacred and deported Albanians, resulting in the largest refugee flow since World War II.The United Nations is still "out of control", although the fuse of the two world wars was ignited in the Balkans.People prefer to discuss the lessons of the Holocaust in a literary context. However, after Auschwitz, how to establish an effective mechanism for the international community to monitor and stop the Holocaust has never been resolved, and it has become a difficult problem for sixty years.People are very sensitive to whether there will be poetry after Auschwitz, but they are very insensitive to whether the Holocaust can be stopped after Auschwitz. On January 27, 2005, the same day as the 60th anniversary of Auschwitz, we saw on TV that a member of the US Congress led a delegation from all walks of life to inspect the border between Sudan and Chad refugee camps and make a report.It was the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan that led to the flight of a large number of refugees.The delegation detailed the horrors in Sudan and called for international intervention.On the same day, on the one hand, at the Auschwitz commemoration, representatives of various countries appealed: "The tragedy must not be allowed to repeat itself"; on the other hand, in the face of the ongoing massacre, everyone still did nothing.Therefore, what a Jew who survived the Holocaust said at the commemorative meeting sounded particularly thrilling: the indifference of Western society to the ethnic cleansing of the Nazis made the Jews still unable to let go. Only Kofi Annan knew full well that without the sharp weapon of the system in his hands, slogans would become empty words.Annan said very realistically that "it cannot be repeated" is easier said than done.Therefore, Annan could only regretfully remind the participants that, sixty years after the tragic end of Auschwitz, mass murder is still alive in this world. And "regrettably, the world has failed more than once to stop the Holocaust and ethnic cleansing". This is a reality we should face on the sixtieth anniversary of the Holocaust.