The Muselmann

Apocalyptic Religion

2007-11-21T11:23:00.000-04:00

from review of "Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia"

German Nazism, which Gray describes as "negative utopianism", combined apocalyptic fantasies and demoization with perverted racial science.

the plasticity of the real

2007-09-07T13:39:00.000-03:00

"Art is an instant that endures without a future."

"An artist is one who is fascinated by the plasticity of the real."

We seem to have given much thought to possibility of art after the Holocaust, but is it indeed vulgar to consider art as existing within the camps? The survivors speak of life in the camps as having all memory, all reflection, all hope driven from their consciousness by the incessant terror and brutalization. The minds and spirits held room for only pain thought for survival. So is there an affinity to art in the unending "instants that endure without a future?"

On the other hand, the camps were a place of extreme rigidity, in which the only plasticity allowed was a very explosive and unpredictable plasticity that did not lend itself to fascination. There was no instant or place for art whatsoever.

Modern Organization

2007-07-25T10:06:00.000-03:00

The concentration camp is a part of the history of modern society. The destructive power of modern technology was tested on the battlefields of mass war, with the slaughterhouses of the concentration camps serving as a proving ground for the destructive power of modern organization. The modern era liberated humanity from incomprehensible forces, yet at the same time immensely increased the power of human beings to kill. Measured against this hypertrophy, earlier forms of power seem fragmentary, irrational, crude in their means and limited in their scope.
Wolfgang Sofsky, THE ORDER OF TERROR, 1993.

In terms of this project, I have largely neglected this aspect of the camps situation and failed to explore its new and unique aspects. How the slaughterhouses were not just factories for "manufacturing corpses", but were destructive of humanity on many other levels: consciously, methodically developing techniques for ravaging the universal structures within which human beings move — their relations to the world, to others, and to themselves. They used terror to redefine work, time, death.

I must freely admit that I do not comprehend the motivation or intention of the development of this system that seems bent purely on wrecking destruction. That may be my main motivation for setting out on this project.

What lessons of organization, for better or for ill, have we learned from the camps? About the power of terror, about the force of organization, that we presume upon today? Will there ever be a future in which the techniques of the camps will seem to us fragmentary and crude?

...securely lodged within the city's interior...

2007-05-18T16:35:00.000-03:00

The camp, which is now securely lodged within the city’s interior, is the new political norm of life on this planet. Giorgio Agamben, "Homo Sacer".

This statement most immediately brings us imagine vestiges of the Auschwitz camps seeping through and into remote corners of our urban landscape. Like a kind of lurking memory that won't go away. But I think Agamben is suggesting that the camps are more foundational to the 21st century city. So I thought, perhaps it would be more appropriate to imagine elements from today surfacing inside the camps of 1943.

"However this war may end, we have won this war against you..."

2006-12-16T08:20:00.000-04:00

The generic speech given by SS militiamen to camp prisoners as recounted in Simon Wiesenthal's The Murderers Are Among Us:

However this war may end, we have won the war against you; none of you will be left to bear witness, but even if someone were to survive, the world would not believe him. There will perhaps be suspcions, discussions, research by historians, but there will be no certainties, because we will destroy the evidence together with you. And even if some proff should remain and some of you survive, people will say that the events you describe are too monstrous to be believed: they will say that there are exaggerations of Allied propoganda and will believe us, who will deny everything, and not you. We will be the ones to dictate the history of the Camps.

It is difficult to imagine German troops acknowledging the monstrosity of their own deeds and at the same planning to destroy all evidence out of some sense of shame. What were they thinking they could "get away with"? And why? Was it some kind of drunken sense of power that defied the taboo of murder and brutality? What was the real nature of their "program" that it focussed such effort and resources. It seems the real war was not against the Allies but against the Jews, Gypsies, the disabled — all those who could not contribute to the glorious future of the German race [as the Chosen People?]

The Museum at Auschwitz

2006-11-18T12:15:00.000-04:00

From an interview with Jacqueline Lichtenstein:

When I visited the Museum at AUSCHWITZ, I stood in front of the display cases. What I saw there were images from contemporary art and I found that absolutely terrifying. Looking at the exhibits of suitcases, prosthetics, children's toys, I didn't feel frightened. I didn't collapse. I wasn't completely overcome the way I had been walking around the camp. No. In the Museum, I suddenly had the impression I was in a museum of contemporary art. I took the train back, telling myself that they had won! They had won since they'd produced forms of perception that are all of a piece with the mode of destruction they made their own.

I guess I would add to this questions about whether we are fully aware of these forms of perception and how we have failed to produce alternatives. The above quote is from Art and Fear by Paul Virilio, who argues that contemporary art is essentially "pitiless".

Personal Actions

2006-11-11T11:45:00.000-04:00

According to Wolfgang Sofsky in The Order of Terror, the removal of any possibility of action on the part of the prisoners was one of the major factors in the process of dehumanization. With no possibility of action, one's future, one's sense of identity, one's social interaction -- all disappear. All the strategies of detainment [concentration] have this as a basic principle that is inflicted on all prisoners.

The irony is that in the war crimes trials that followed, the most consistent line of defense presented by the camp guards and officers, the major rationale for such inhumane actions, was -- they too had no choice in terms of personal action. "They had been educated in absolute obedience, hierarchy, nationalism; imbued with slogans, intoxicated with ceremonies and demonstrations. Their decisions were not theirs because the regime in which they grew up did not permit autonomous decisions; their ability to decide had been amputated." [Levi, The Drowned and the Saved]

"Running to the wire"

2006-11-05T12:10:00.000-04:00

The situation of the prisoner was such that only a very few chose to "run to the wire", meaning to commit suicide by coming in contact with the high-voltage barbed wire.

Reaching the wire was a sure way to escape the camp, but there was always the chance one would be caught before reaching the fence, and then be thrown into the bunker. This would be a death more difficult and more painful than the wire.

On one hand, the SS could have no objective to acts of suicide. The fewer prisoners they had to kill off themselves, the better. But unsuccessful suicide attempts were given very severe punishment: beating at the whipping post or solitary confinement in the bunker [which very few survived]. These measures were intended to deter others from attempting the same to prevent the short-circuiting of the fence, which had to be recharged. They also were intended to reinforce the power of the camp boundary. But above all, the punishments were targeted to deter this final act of attempted self-determination.

Suicide was the ultimate act of the human will. Suicides insulted power by their martyrdom, robbing it of the decision over their own deaths. And these martyrs carried out this decision at the boundaries of the camp, precisely at the spatial point where power believed it had finally vanquished freedom.

Discovering the "Muselmann"

2006-10-24T11:10:00.000-03:00

I had recently been very intrigued by a book called "The Time That Remains", written by Giorgio Agamben.

The Muselmann

2006-10-19T22:20:00.000-03:00

Muselmann was the term applied to inmates who had been broken psychically and physically by life in the concentration camps.

The Muselmann was a destroyed man/woman, a victim of gradual extermination. A prisoner who only received camp food, who had no possibility to “organise” a bit more to eat, wasted away within a few weeks. Steady hunger led to chronic weakness, the muscles dwindled, the vital functions were reduced to a minimum, the pulse decelerated, blood-pressure and temperature dropped, the body started to shiver from cold. The respiration slowed down, the voice became low, each movement was a great exertion.

Hunger and diarrhoea accelerated the decline. Each gesture was uncoordinated and flighty. When sitting, the trunk staggered. The Muselmann made mechanic movements without reason. When he had to walk, he could not lift his legs any more.

The Muselmann no longer was the master of his own body . He got oedema and abscesses, he was covered with dirt all over and began to stink. The Muselmann appeared as follows:

Extremely thin, dim eyes, apathetic, sad facial expression, grey-coloured skin which looked like hard paper. The hair was rough, dull and used to break easily. The head seemed longish, cheek-bone and eye socket appeared very clearly. But also the spiritual, intellectual and emotional activities decreased radically. The prisoner lost his memory and his ability to concentrate. His conscience was fixed on food only. Hunger phantasies covered the horrible starvation. He only realized things directly in front of his eyes and only heard when word were shouted loudly. Without restistance, we was struck and hit. In the final phase, he even did not feel any hunger nor pain any more. The “Muselmann” perished because he could not go on. He was the symbol for mass-dying, a death of hunger, of being left alone, of killing the soul, a living corpse.