I was struck by this photo for several reasons. It’s from Bełżec, which the SS had so erased from existence that it had been plowed under and planted, with a lone watchman left playing farmer to report on the Soviet approach. When I was there last November the memorial was a wide hillside of ash, but the museum held photographs of Bełżec in operation. It had been a literal factory of death. No camp this: there were no streets of barracks as at Auschwitz or Bergen-Belsen, but instead industrial earth-moving equipment to dig the needed pits for mass graves. Supporting structures would have included a canteen. These two industrial murderers are happily lifting mugs in a bar. I was reminded of the SS canteen where I had lunch at Flossenbürg.
Both these men survived the war and neither „faced justice“. After a decade in the NSDAP how did they explain their actions to their families, to themselves?
American media yesterday carried a US officer’s regrets at the US drone killing of 30 Afghani farmers. The officer set responsibility for the murders at the feet of ISIS. The friend of a friend accepted his rationale: if those people would only stop shooting at us we wouldn’t have to kill so many of them.
Americans I know seem cheerfully, bitterly, resignedly, cynically, relievedly, hopeless. This strikes me as a luxury we’ve no right to.
