Holocaust Memorial Day

 Tomorrow, 27th January, is Holocaust Memorial Day.

On pages 141 et seq of his "Is this a Man?"  Primo Levi describes how prisoners  in Auschwitz were selected for execution.

Today is working Sunday, Arbeitsonntag: we work  until 1pm.then we return to the camp for the shower, shave and general  control for skin disease and lice. And in the yards everyone  knew mysteriously  that the selection  would be today.

The news arrived, as always  surrounded  by a halo  of contradictory  or suspect details . . . Room has to be made for an enormous convoy  arriving from the Ponzan ghetto. . .The young tell the young  that all the old ones will be chosen.  The healthy tell the healthy that only the ill will be chosen.  Specialists will be excluded.  German Jews will be excluded.  Low Numbers will be excluded.  You will be chosen.  I will be excluded.

When their turn for the selection comes Levi and the fellow members of his dormitory strip naked and are herded into a small.  From there they must, one at a time, step outdoors and walk a short distance back to the dormitory.  Each must carry a card a card  with his number on it.  

The Blockältester has closed the connecting door  and has opened the other two  which lead from the dormitory  and the Tagesraum outside.  Here in front of the two doors stands the arbiter of our fate, an SS subaltern.  On his right is the Blockältester, on his left the quartermaster of the hut.  Each one of us as he comes naked out of the Tagesraum  into the cold October air, has to run the few steps  between the two doors, give the card to the SS man and enter the dormitory door.  The SS man, in the fraction of a second between two successive crossings, with a glance at one's back and front, judges everyone's fate, and in turn gives the card to the man  on his right or his left, and this is the life or death of  for each of us.

. . .

Jammed in the charnel-house  of the Tagesraum I gradually feel the pressure around me slacken, and in a short time it was my turn.  Like everyone, I passed by with a brisk and elastic step, trying to hold my head high,  my chest forward and my muscles contracted and conspicuous.  With the corner of my eye I tried to look behind my shoulders, and my card seemed to end on the right.

As we gradually come back into the dormitory  we are allowed to dress ourselves.  Nobody yet knows with certainty his own fate, it has first of all to be established  whether the condemned card are those on the right or the left.

It turned out to be the left, so Levi survived.

The above is a horrifying illustration of the depths to which man's inhumanity to man can reach when we lose our reason, are told lies by  "the authorities",  believe myths (fake news?) and look for scapegoats.  In both the US and the UK we are a long way from those depths, but we are taking the first steps.  

In two weeks time there is every likelihood that at lest 34 US Senators will decide, in spite of the real events they witnessed and the publicised  evidence on tape, that Donald Trump's urging  of his followers to invade Congress and prevent the confirmation of Biden's Presidency, and which caused five deaths, was not  after all  a "high crime." and so Trump will get away with it.