VOICES OF REFLECTION
I will not kiss the arm that wields the weighty scepter,
Nor the brazen knee, the earthen feet of demiqods in desperate
hours;
If only I could raise my voice to be a blazing torch
Amidst the darkened desert of the world, and thunder: JUSTICE! JUSTICE! JUSTICE!GERTRUD KOLMAR
The Holocaust did not result from random violence carried out by hooligans. It was instead a state-sponsored program of population elimination made possible by modern technological capabilities and political structures. The Nazi destruction process required and received cooperation from virtually every sector of German society. For the most part, those who permitted or carried out the orders were ordinary, decent folk, but many of them did extraordinary things. Teachers and writers helped to till the soil where Hitler's virulent antisemitism took root; their students reaped the wasteful harvest. Lawyers helped to draft and enforce the laws that isolated Jews and set them up for the kill. Artists polished the propaganda that made Hitler's policies persuasive to so many. Driven by their eugenic imperatives and biomedical visions, physicians implemented sterilization programs and experimented with the gassing of lebensunwertes Leben, "life unworthy of life." Scientists performed research and tested their racist and sexist theories on those branded sub- or nonhuman by German science. Some business executives found that Nazi concentration camps could provide cheap labor. Turning the Nazi slogan Arbeit macht frei (Work makes one free) into a
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Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com
Publication information:
Book title: Different Voices:Women and the Holocaust.
Contributors: Carol Rittner - Editor, John K. Roth - Editor.
Publisher: Paragon House.
Place of publication: St. Paul, MN.
Publication year: 1993.
Page number: 319.
This material is protected by copyright and, with the exception of fair use, may not be further copied, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means.
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