Auschwitz, Immigration, and the Currents of Cruelty

The infamous "Arbeit macht frei" gate at Auschwitz (June 2018)

Last week I visited Auschwitz.  I was in Kraków, Poland for a conference (details here).  Visiting the site of a former Nazi death camp is not exactly a fun vacation activity, but I thought visiting would be well, what, exactly?  Meaningful? Worthwhile? Important?

It was all of that and more: deeply moving, educational, horrifying, profoundly unsettling…

The site gets over two million visitors per year.  It’s busy.  I was able to get on an English language tour.  One thing that impressed me is how much care the curators and the tour guides take to present the evidence of what happened as a way to counteract Holocaust deniers and other unsavory types.

The evidence is brutal.  There is a massive pile of human hair taken from people before they were murdered in gas chambers (the hair was to be used for industrial purposes).  There are piles of glasses.  Luggage. Housewares. Babies’ shoes.

One might wonder what happens if you go to jail inside a concentration camp.  We toured prison cells of unimaginable cruelty, including some that require standing upright in the dark overnight with three other prisoners.  We saw a wall where prisoners were shot and a rack where people were lynched as examples to their fellow prisoners.

You see all of this before you see the gas chambers.  Before you see the train tracks at the Birkenau site where human beings were unloaded and either worked to death or immediately murdered.  We toured a barracks where malnourished women were forced to sleep five to a bunk on hard wood or the cold ground without heat, ventilation, or sanitation, waking every day for weeks or months until exhaustion and poor conditions killed them.

Over one million people, mostly Jews, were deliberately and systematically murdered in the spot I visited.  The sheer cruelty of it is abhorrent.  I almost wept several times on the tour.  I’m almost weeping now just thinking about it over a week later.

The effect Auschwitz has had on me is still unfolding.  It’s an experience I won’t ever forget.

Part of the experience has unfolded after my return to the United States.

For several weeks in May and June of 2018 the official policy of my government was to separate children from parents who committed misdemeanors or who were seeking asylum.  While this policy has maybe ended, it’s not clear that the immigration policies that remain, which include the possibility of indefinite family detention, are much better.

Parts of the US immigration process have been cruel and racist since the 19^th century up through the present day (yes, even during the Obama administration). It’s worth remembering that.  But I think what horrified many – but sadly, far from all – Americans in the last couple weeks is that our immigration policy included deliberate cruelty toward innocent children.  It’s all the more cruel because the “immigration crisis” touted by the President and others does not exist or is at least greatly exaggerated (for example, undocumented immigration has declined in the last two decades). 

I find most comparisons between contemporary governments and German Nazism to be hyperbolic and ultimately counter productive.  I feel the same way about any direct equivalence between Auschwitz and current US immigration policies.  They’re not exactly the same, and it’s worth remembering that.

But there is a more subtle point to be made: both current US immigration policy and Nazism are caught up in the currents of cruelty.  Auschwitz is a place where the currents of cruelty ran faster and fiercer than almost anywhere else in human history, but those currents are nonetheless propelling policies that separated children from their parents and continue to treat asylum seekers like violent criminals.

I say this knowing full well that the internet has evolved into a profoundly unsubtle place. I’m likely to be misunderstood both by my friends on the left and by random right-wing/libertarian types.

So let me try to be clear.  The Holocaust and US immigration policies are not the same thing, but they spring from a common source.  I don’t know what causes humans to be cruel to one another.  But the effects of cruelty are all too obvious.

The political theorist Judith Shklar thought a lot about cruelty (see an article on her thought and US immigration policies here).  One of her points is that governments use public cruelty as a means to an end.  What are the ends of the current US government?  Try as I might, the official answer (“law and order”) falls short for me as an adequate explanation, and deeper, more disturbing answers present themselves. 

Much of the rhetoric of the American immigration debate has always struck me as a deeply racist denial of the basic humanity of immigrants, many who are trying to escape unimaginable cruelty in their countries of origin.  At least when it comes to certain kinds of immigrants.  Norwegian immigrants like my great-grandmother or Slovenian immigrants like Melania Trump are hardly thought of as immigrants at all.  Next time you hear someone ranting about how immigrants are ruining America, try replacing “illegals” with “brown people.”  I doubt you’ll notice much difference.

I don’t want to join the chorus of “this is not America,” not in a county built on genocide and slavery that continues to incarcerate a higher percentage of its population than any other nation on Earth.  Freedom, equality, and democracy are American values to aspire to, but cruelty, bigotry, and racism have too often been our reality.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t have reasonable discussions about immigration.  I’m just saying that we can do better.  Wherever the discussion leads us, we need to remember that we’re talking about human beings.  It’s a simple point, but one we sadly often forget.

Shklar is also famous for her definition of a liberal as someone for whom cruelty is the greatest evil (“liberal” here is more in an classical political philosophy sense than in the senses you find in the American mainstream or snarky memes for leftist millennials).  For Shklar, a major purpose of government is to protect citizens from cruelty, both from other citizens and from the government itself. 

Shklar’s definition resonates with me a lot; cruelty is the thing that bothers me most.  I don’t care if you think I’m dumb, fat, ugly, lazy, or incompetent, but I would hate for you to think I was cruel.  I figure the universe is cruel enough without other humans making it worse.  One of our American Sages used to sing, “Don’t Be Cruel.”  I think that’s pretty good as imperatives go.

But even if you disagree with Shklar and Elvis, you have to wonder: When a government is inflicting rather than preventing cruelty, why is it doing so?  What greater good is being served?  Is this greater good, in fact, good?

If visiting Auschwitz taught me anything, it’s this: if your political and moral principles require deliberate cruelty toward children, maybe it’s time to turn to philosophy, to rethink your principles, to avoid being swept away by the currents of cruelty.