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Like many great scientific riddles or puzzles, the solution to the problem of the Holocaust is not complex. What we witness is a repetition compulsion.
Hitler acted to repeat his own experience and those of his comrades in the First World War: innocent human beings transported in cattle cars to die.
The (very) young men sent to the Western Front (shown in the photo to the right)--so cheerful and optimistic--had no idea what their fate would be: that they would be slaughtered immediately upon reaching their destination.
Jews also were innocent (but more likely to have been aware that their fate would be death).
Do unto others as has been done unto you. Hitler was more brilliant than anyone can imagine (one can be brilliant and evil at the same time): he conceived of and brought into being a scenario whereby what happened to German soldiers would also happen to Jews.
The trauma of the First World War was repeated, but now Jews took the place of German soldiers.
Jews of the Holocaust symbolized the German soldier of the First World War: murdered by the German nation-state.
Hitler understood that "nations have the right to kill." If the German nation could kill its own soldiers without guilt (it would be a "sin to complain," Hitler declared)--why would the German nation not also have the right to kill the mortal enemy of the German people?
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| The boxcars that transported Jews to their deaths in the Holocaust were the same boxcars that transported German soldiers to their deaths in the First World War. |
German soldiers in cattle cars on their
way to the Western Front in France |
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| Robert Whalen reports that after four years of battle, 2,037,000 German soldiers had died; 4,300,000 were wounded; and 974,977 reported missing or wounded. Total casualties: 7,311,977. Jews killed during the Holocaust: approximately 5,933,900 (Dawidowicz). |
Jews from the Lodz ghetto board
trains for the death camp at Chelmno |
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