Where Does Evil Begin?

The second essay for my original blog that I wrote was about my running into someone that was convinced that the Holocaust was a fraud. I wrote of my utter amazement at the whole concept. Since that time I have done a good deal of research on the computer about that time in history and I have also seen a number of documentaries about the subject.

I‘ve visited a number of white power sites and just shake my head at the things I read on them. I think most of you remember David Duke. He’s the guy that put a corporate face on the White Supremacist movement. Clean cut, business suit and educated. He actually won a seat in the Louisiana State House of Representatives. Oh, by the way, he was also the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

David Duke brings up an interesting point about these hate mongers. At some point in his life, he was just a guy. Someone we’ve all known in our lives. Someone we’ve gone to school with, played games with or had a beer with. He was once a child without a care in the world and somehow, somewhere, there was a disconnect from what I, and many others, feel is a sense of decency.

What made me think of this was a program I saw the other day about a German Officer during WWII by the name of Karl Hoeker. Someone had held on to a personal photo album of his and sent it to one of the Holocaust Centers for display and study. The photos were of him in social and “work” situations. The social ones were of him with friends, on picnics and out having something to eat with fellow officers. Just your basic scenes from what seems like a normal life.
That’s the part that gets to me. At some point, something happened. When the thought of a madman is brought up in this country the first name that comes to the mind of many of my generation is Charles Manson. Though in fact, he was never convicted of killing anyone, he is the epitome of evil to many. Guess what? He was a baby once, just like you and me. Where did it go wrong? Is there any way to find the point that the above folks’ minds went to the “dark side”?

Of the three names mentioned above, the one I find most fascinating is Hoeker, the German officer. Being Jewish, I have an emotional investment to the actions of the Third Reich. Apart from that though, he is the only one of the three that wasn’t at the head of the class per se. He wasn’t in charge. He was, though this is not excusing him in any way, taking orders from above. Does anyone really think that at that time in history he could have survived if he refused any of the orders given? It’s easy to say, sitting here right now, that you or I would have never done any of the things those people were told to do. We weren’t there. We don’t really know what it was like.

We all read in amazement when some hate group destroys a church or synagogue but let’s imagine that the vandalism is state sponsored. Imagine that you are told, day after day, that the cause of all your problems was this group or that group. Actually, I hadn’t thought about it until now but we get a lot of that kind of talk about illegal immigrants right now. Alright, try to put yourself in the steps of an unemployed worker. You’re having a really hard time feeding your children. The electricity is on the verge of being turned off. The stack of bills on the table only gets bigger. You turn on the news and you hear about some report from the government that says the reason for all your troubles were people with the letter P in their first name. You think, that’s crazy. But then you find that every day it’s all over the news, all the politicians are making speeches about it. All your friends are talking about those damn P people.

Reading the above scenario doesn’t do the issue justice. It seems so ludicrous to think that we, or anyone, could fall into this type of brainwashing. But it happened. Nobody can truly believe that all the citizens of Germany were these horrible people we see in all the old films. Something happened. There was a point where the switch was flicked over and lives changed forever. They came to believe that the Jews were the cause of all their problems. At some point though, they were just a bunch of guys.