In the play “Wicked”, the Wizard of Oz voices an axiom appreciated and exploited by all of history’s notorious despots. “Divide et Impera” in Julius Ceasar’s words: “divide and rule” or more commonly “divide and conquer”. Divide your fellows into tribes, each with their own color or brand, or label. Create a mutual enemy and lead a crusade to conquer it. It need not even pose a credible threat. Turn it into a life-or-death situation — the sense of urgency unleashes unconditional support. Conquering, winning at-any-cost, is all that matters. The Wizard designates speaking animals as his unifying enemy. And with the mob riled up, inhumane treatment of fellows, 4-legged or 2-legged, wearing their metaphorical yellow stars is tolerated by the masses.
The tactic is tried and effective. Hitler’s unifying scapegoat groups, who by the way were responsible for all of Germany’s past difficulties, including losses in WW1 he claimed; included Jews, Bolsheviks, homosexuals, intellectuals, Gypsies, the mentally impaired, Jehovah’s Witnesses. But especially the Jews. At various times, we have singled out Catholics, the Irish, Italians, the Chinese, Native Americans, African Americans, communists, Muslims, Hispanics. So many enemy threats from which to choose.
In Germany, selected demographic groups were forced from their homes, robbed of their businesses and household belongings. Often the displaced persons: women, men, children were collected in temporary holding areas – ghettos – where they could be watched, controlled, and isolated from outside help. Next step was collecting, shipping the targeted people from the artificial ghettos, mainstream cities, towns, and farms to centralized camps – work camps – concentration camps. All of this activity took place in full view of the German citizens, some of whom profited by grabbing abandoned properties and services before the government machine could acquire them. Civilians spoke with disdain on the filth and squalor of the living conditions of the undesirables who had formerly been neighbors. No surprise since allocated quarters in unheated blocks bereft of electricity and running water were hideously overcrowded.
The Nazis did not invent concentration camps, they merely perfected the concept on an industrial scale. The Soviets had their Gulag. Cuba relocated tens of thousands of citizens in the 1890’s. South Africa concentrated some 200,000 Africans in the Boer Wars. Britain relocated and held tens of thousands of potential state enemies of German-Hungarian ancestry during WW1. In North America we sequestered Native Americans on reservations located in land that no one else could possibly want and held millions as slaves in concentration camps known as plantations. Then in 1942 we forcibly removed and imprisoned 120,000 U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry in desolations like Minidoka in Idaho, Topaz in the Delta, Ut desert, and Manzanar in CA. Each worth a visit.
Last phase of eradication was to transform mere concentration camps into dedicated death camps, the “final solution”, a term coined by the Nazis themselves, who re-invented the concept in modern times. Death came by starvation, sickness, overwork, beatings, torture, sadistic medical experiments, a bullet to the brain, or Zyclon-B gas (a cyanide-based pesticide). The compounds at Auschwitz were one of these. More than a 1-million prisoners are estimated to have been killed at these compounds
This year, 2025, marks eighty years since the scale of the horror at Auschwitz was undeniably made known to the world. Even the battle-hardened Soviet troops who first came across the facility were shocked by the methodical brutality. Of the 1.3-Million people sent to Auschwitz, a mere 8000 emaciated prisoners, mostly the stronger middle-aged men and mid-teens, remained. Horror that was so fresh and appalling and real in 1945 has faded over the decades to the point of abject denial and rewriting of past violences. That’s what we do when confronted with indefensible and shameful behavior and cruelty.
Fortunately, most of mankind’s misguided attempts at employing concentration camps – camps literal or in essence – as solutions to problems have not resulted in mass murder. But they invariably result in physical and mental suffering, loss, sorrow, pain, humiliation. I suspect that anyone with a conscience on the administering end, or permitting the travesty to go on will be smitten by these same human sensations that rob us of our core humanity. Unfortunately, the human tribal reaction that allows mass discrimination and forcible imprisonment and relocation in the first place is alive and well.
We must not forget what we civilized people are capable of, and we must react swiftly when even a shadow or inkling of the repeating pattern is peering through the barbed wire.