{"id":13426,"date":"2020-12-20T10:45:15","date_gmt":"2020-12-20T09:45:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mwehle.eu\/wp\/?p=13426"},"modified":"2020-12-20T10:45:15","modified_gmt":"2020-12-20T09:45:15","slug":"13426","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/?p=13426","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>They were educated men of their time. That is the crux of the question whenever we ponder the meaning of Western Civilization after Auschwitz. Our evolution has outpaced our understanding; we can no longer assume that we have a full grasp of the workings of our social institutions, bureaucratic structures, or technology.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;\">\u2014Raul Hilberg, \u2018Significance of the Holocaust\u2019, in <em>The Holocaust: Ideology, Bureaucracy, and Genocide<\/em>, ed. Henry Friedlander &amp; Sybil Milton (Millwood, NY: Kraus International Publications, <span class=\"\" style=\"white-space: nowrap;\">1980), 101\u20132<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>The ideology and system which gave rise to [Auschwitz] remains intact. This means that the nation-state itself is out of control and capable of triggering acts of social cannibalism on an undreamed-of scale. If not checked, it can consume an entire civilization in fire. It cannot carry a humanitarian mission; its trespasses cannot be checked by legal and moral codes, it has no conscience.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;\">\u2014Henry L. Feingold, &#8222;How Unique Is the Holocaust?,&#8220; in <em>Critical Issues of the Holocaust<\/em>, ed. Alex Grohman and Daniel Landes (Los Angeles: Simon Wiesenthal Center and Rossel Books, 1983), <span class=\"\" style=\"white-space: nowrap;\">p. 397<\/span>, cited in Zygmunt Bauman,\u00a0<i>Modernity and the Holocaust<\/i>, (Cambridge: Polity Press, <span class=\"\" style=\"white-space: nowrap;\">1989), 86<\/span>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>I was struck by these excerpts in July of 2019 when reading Bauman&#8217;s <i>Modernity and the Holocaust<\/i>. Today the &#8222;we&#8220;, &#8222;our social institutions, bureaucratic structures&#8220;, &#8222;the nation-state itself is out of control&#8220; all stand out for me. Whose institutions? Whose control?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>They were educated men of their time. That is the crux of the question whenever we ponder the meaning of Western Civilization after Auschwitz. Our evolution has outpaced our understanding; we can no longer assume that we have a full &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/?p=13426\">Weiterlesen <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13426\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}