The Holocaust: a challenge to the ordinary

What we fail to realise is that genocide is a pattern that, although thankfully rare, is not contained solely in the black and white pictures of the 1940s. As history has shown, the fires resurface again and again.

(Photo: W. Vullhorst, CC BY 2.0)

Too close to home

The steppes of Armenia, the wastelands of Poland, the towns of the former Yugoslavia, the roadsides of Rwanda, the camps of Xinjiang, the Rohingya villages in Myanmar. The backdrops of genocide. A word, first coined by the lawyer and survivor Raphael Lemkin, that makes the spine re-adjust with unease and compels hushed tones. Hushed tones because, far from being a crime done to others in distant lands; genocide is far too close to home. A crime that ordinary people commit.

This year, the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust reminds us that ordinary people are the instruments of and antidote against genocide. The words 'ordinary' and 'genocide' are oxymoronic – they do not belong with each other. A challenge visually encapsulated when Oskar Gröning, the 'accountant of Auschwitz', and then most recently Josef Schuetz, a concentration camp guard, were found respectively complicit in being accessories to tens of thousands of murders. Far from Richard III-esque portrayals of evil, the two defendants were very elderly, one in a wheelchair and one bespectacled, but both noticeably and shockingly ordinary.

Whether it was choosing to stay serving at the camps, wanting to blend in or taking orders robotically (or worse with eagerness), the two former Nazis were legally and morally condemned. The scary part is that there is a Gröning or Scheutz in all of us. Comfortably by-standing while horrific crimes take place without personal or collective activism. Hannah Arendt's 'banality of evil' comes to mind. While looking at Adolf Eichmann during his 1961 trail in Jerusalem, Arendt wanted to describe the distance between the immeasurable evil for which Eichmann was condemned and the ordinariness of his character. I would contend that there were and are many of these banal evil do-ers, who participate in systems of oppression and then genocide, but present as the ordinary person on the street.

Adolf Eichmann at his 1961 trail in Jerusalem, Photo: The Huntington (CC BY 2.0)

Evil is unspectacular but always human

Hannah Arendt

Steps to genocide

The liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto, the murdering of Tutsis at checkpoints, the sexual violence against Rohingya, the mass graves of Srebrencia. The active violence of genocide hits the headlines, but it is often the inaction or the passive cooperation of ordinary people that pave the way, enable even, the final act of violence. This sleepwalking into a state of genocide is a threat all too present. A threat starkly presented when looking at the treatment of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller (GRT) communities in Europe.

The historic and present-day treatment of GRT people shows a disturbing escalating racism, often inflicted by ordinary people. For example, many European populations have grown up with stereotypes and discriminative language against GRT communities. As Dr Gregory H. Stanton describes in his ten steps to genocide, such behaviour would be described as classification – the constructing of a 'them' and 'us' narrative. One only needs to see Italian politicians luring voters with promises of expelling Roma or even comedians making jokes about the Roma and Sinti Holocaust to demonstrate that our ordinary lives are surrounded by discrimination against GRT people.

Stanton goes on to describe the knock-on stages of classification, including discrimination and dehumanisation. There are snapshots throughout Europe of Roma rights being trampled. I have written extensively about the segregation of Roma children in Czech schools, but anti-Roma sentiment also includes barriers to obtaining quality state or private housing, threats of statelessness, health inequality and more. Such multi-dimensional discrimination leads to whole communities being dehumanised in the eyes of ordinary people, making the denial of human rights and then persecution all the easier. For me, the deaths of Stanislav Tomáš in Czechia and, recently, a 16 year old Macedonian Romani boy - both at the hands of police - strike me as symbols of hostile societies acting to discriminate and then culminating in deadly persecution.

The ordinary decision

If ordinary people are content with taking a comfortable by-standing position whilst the discrimination and persecution of GRT communities continues, what hope is there, if genocidal action was one day taken, that many would not stay silent? I am no societal psychologist or Holocaust scholar, but I do fear. I fear, from reading countless reports, that we as a society accept discriminative language as being 'passable', keep quiet when certain groups are targeted by the government or even go-along with the status quo simply because 'it doesn't affect me'.

What we fail to realise is that genocide is a pattern that, although thankfully rare, is not contained solely in the black and white pictures of the 1940s. As history has shown, the fires resurface again and again. We need to learn as a society how to quell the flames of hatred - whether through simply calling out normalised racism or being part of a collective movement - in order to prevent the inferno of genocide from taking hold. A profound challenge to the ordinary.

The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust's theme this year is 'Ordinary People', and I would urge you to have a look at their online re