If People can Learn to Hate, They can be Taught to Love

As I entered through the iron gate of the Buchenwald concentration camp, I was reminded of the words about Jesus in the Creed, which we recite each Sunday in the liturgy: ‘He descended into hell.’ This is how it felt. Every stone, every building, every piece of concrete in this place told a story of evil beyond description. Humanity’s capacity for violence, hatred and cruelty surprised me and shocked me. The mistreatment of others by the powerful was confronting and sickening. There is no living species on earth that can administer such atrocities on another of its own kind.   

The main entrance to the camp.

One of the first and largest concentration camps on German soil, Buchenwald concentration camp was the hopeless hell to over 110,000 Jews, non-Jewish Poles, Slovenes, the mentally ill and the physically disabled, religious and political prisoners, freemasons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, criminals, homosexuals and prisoners of war.

Although not technically an extermination camp, Buchenwald was the site of an extraordinary amount of deaths, at an estimated 56,545 prisoners. A primary cause of death was illness due to the harsh conditions and many were literally worked to death under the ‘extermination through labour’ policy, as prisoners only had the choice between slave labour and inevitable execution.

Cell number one in the camp's torture bunker was the cell where prisoners spent their last night before their execution at the crematorium.

Torture room.

It was confronting. Very confronting. And disturbing. In fact, I was deeply disturbed. A visit to a place like Buchenwald changes a person, but it’s necessary. Very necessary. These places should not be hidden away, or anesthetised in their presentation. They need to be raw and confronting to respect even a little bit the horrors experienced by so many.

Slaughter house at the crematorium. Most people were strangled to death by hand before they were cut up.

The Nazis used to cut off the prisoners' heads, shrink them to fist size and send them to each other as presents. 

Looking at the photos of the guards and prisoners, it hit me that these atrocities were done by people like me, to people like me. Perhaps this is what I found most confronting. These were no longer people hiding behind titles like ‘SS guards’ or ‘prisoners,’ but they had faces and body features and sympathetic eyes and biographical information next to their photos. Finally, the evil and the victim had faces.

And what I found most confronting out of all of this was that the majority of the SS guards looked just like me, with short blonde hair and blue eyes. As I looked at the photos of the SS guards at Buchenwald, I was reminded of the words that the barber in France who cut my hair said, as I stood up to leave and put on my sun glasses. He said jokingly in his broken English, ‘Sir, you look like a neo-Nazi.’

If I had lived in Nazi Germany, what would I have done? What would have been my response to the zeitgeist of the time? Would I have had the fortitude, wisdom and courage of someone like Dietrich Boenhoffer, Lutheran theologian and pastor, who vocally opposed Nazi Germany already from the early 1930s and who met his death at the hands of the Nazis at the Flossenburg concentration camp, after spending the previous two months at Buchenwald? At this very camp. Or would I have been one of the countless numbers of clergy who through silence condoned the horrors of the camps? Or even worse, God forbid!

Science fiction scholar John Clute has written much about fictional universes, or ‘pocket universes’ as he calls them. In a pocket universe, the world perceived seems to be the entire world. The classic generation-starship tale is one in which the descendants of the original crew members have forgotten the true nature of things and have instituted a repressive, taboo-governed society, which suppresses any attempt to discover the truth.

The pocket universe of the Buchenwald concentration camp.

Nazi Germany fell victim to a pocket universe. Through an orchestrated and relentless communication campaign by those in power, certain groups of people were targeted and demonised. As the years of demonisation continued, people started to forget the true nature of things and instituted a repressive, taboo-governed society, which suppressed any attempt to discover the truth. The stage was set for one of the most evil episodes in human history.

It sounds quite withdrawn from today’s society, doesn’t it? Or does it? I wonder what’s happening in our society today. Are we creating a pocket universe of our own? As you read this, you need to read very carefully to what I’m saying and what I’m not saying. What I’m not saying is that we are becoming another Nazi Germany. Correlations to Nazi Germany are thrown around indiscriminately and without measure. This is not what I’m saying at all.

But what I’m drawing a correlation with, is the way that our leaders are creating a pocket universe for their own political self-interests. Dr Peter Catt, the Dean of St John’s Cathedral, wrote recently about pocket universes. He said that the human capacity to create pocket universes is testament to the power of narrative. We can tell ourselves a story and then live as if it were true. We can create our own reality.

Rev Dr Peter Catt

For years powerful forces in the media and political parties have been spinning an untrue story about asylum seekers and an equally untrue story about us as a nation. We describe ourselves as generous and compassionate. Generous and compassionate, but also battling to cope – battling to cope with an invasion. Asylum seekers are illegal and queue jumpers, economic migrants supported in their mischief by nasty 'people smugglers' and an outdated international convention.

The smugglers are so wicked and we are so at risk from an invading force of overwhelming proportions that—as generous and compassionate as we are—we need to set the military on them. This story has become our truth and as a result good, decent people have become concerned and so want our leaders to take decisive action.

An untruthful portrayal of asylum seekers has become our truth. In our pocket universe those fleeing torture and persecution have become self-interested opportunists, illegally invading our generous nation, swarming over our borders and swamping our communities. By seeking to jump the queue, they have affronted our sense of fair play.

The universe that many Australians inhabit, however, is a completely different universe. It is a universe in which the bipartisanship that Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser demonstrated in their approach towards Indochinese refugees in the 1970s stands as a symbol of hope; a beacon which might yet draw our current politicians out of the pocket universe our nation has created for itself. In this universe, compassion and generosity still loom large as values that can make Australia…Australia.

Thanks to Dr Catt and many other voices of reason, perhaps we can also receive the fortitude, wisdom and courage to demand a fair go for refugees. We need to remember that they are refugees. Perhaps in the pocket world of our politicians they are illegals or criminals, but in the real world they are not. A horrible tragedy happened off the coast of Italy a couple of weeks ago, where 31 people died trying to reach Europe by boat. Not one European newsagency called these people anything but migrants. They weren’t even called refugees, let alone illegals or criminals. They were migrants.

The main gate of the Buchenwald concentration camp has the slogan Jedem das Seine formed into the steel. It literally means, ‘To each his own,’ but figuratively ‘Everyone gets what he deserves.’ The slogan is legible only from inside the camp. One needs to remember that the prisoners never walked out of the front gate, they only walked in. It was only the prison guards and the soldiers who walked out.

The text served as a reminder to the soldiers that what they were doing was justified. The soldiers deserved freedom and the ability to walk in and out of the concentration camp. The evil prisoners, however, deserved hell inside the camp’s fences and walls. And if they deserved hell, the soldiers and prison guards weren’t doing anything evil, they were only giving the prisoners what they deserved. In other words, it wasn’t unfair what they were doing.

We keep hearing that to treat refugees who are fleeing the atrocities of their home countries is justified, because they impose a threat on Australia’s national security. The two leaders of our main political parties, Rudd and Abbott, are in a race to see who can be the cruellest and meanest in their treatment of refugees.

It’s no longer a race to the bottom; it’s a race to the abyss of hell, the same abyss that laid the foundations of Nazi Germany all those years ago. It’s our very own pocket universe where a certain group of people is targeted and demonised. As the years of demonisation continue, people start to forget the true nature of things and the inhumane treatment of tens of thousands of men, women and children continues.

There is hope, however. In the words of the ever inspirational Nelson Mandela, ‘No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.’ Therefore, let us teach people to love. Let us teach our loved ones to love. And most importantly, let us teach ourselves to love. For love conquers all, even the pocket universes of our political leaders!