Echoes

Levi forwards the claim that the most demonic crime the Nazis committed was not their acts of mass murder but their ability to take some of the Jewish prisoners and transmit the guilt their heinous crimes upon them as well. Rather they are taking this select group of innocents to hell with them by forcing them to disregard their humanity as well. This reading contained the most chilling statement I have ever read: “We, the master race, are your destroyers, but you are no better than we are; if we so wish, and we do so wish, we can destroy not only your bodies but also your souls, just as we have destroyed ours.” (53-54) Levi’s thinking is that while the Nazis could destroy their victims’ bodies but their victims will always be superior to them, as they are still human and they die human, unlike the monsters that put them to death. But in making them lie to their own kind, to send them to their death then to throw them into a furnace as if they were burning spoiled crops, they strip that innocence and steal the victims’ souls. They turn the innocents into the monsters that they are. Levi described the state of such men after weeks of working with the SS, these people were in a constant daze, in a delicate balance between life and death, sanity and insanity, existence and obscurity. In doing this they also brought out the worst of man, some men will sell their soul to merely grasp to life for a few more months. Clearly this is the greatest crime the Nazis perpetrated. It is one to steal the life of another, but it is a completely different thing to not only take that but to turn them into some twisted monster, capable of even the most heinous acts. The quote above still echoes in my mind and perhaps stands out to me as the most tragic statement coupled with action in human history.