Gitta Sereny - The banality of evil
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- čas přidán 18. 09. 2011
- To listen to more of Gitta Sereny’s stories, go to the playlist: • Gitta Sereny - Working...
From her earliest experiences as a welfare officer looking after concentration camp survivors, Gitta Sereny (1921-2012) was fascinated by the Holocaust and the nature of those who had engineered this systematic genocide. She went on to write "Into That Darkness", a work based on her conversations with Franz Stangl, the commandant of Treblinka death camp, and later wrote a critically-acclaimed biography of Hitler's main architect and close friend, Albert Speer.
All the internet experts criticising Gitta Sereny. First, go read her book "Into That Darkness". She interviewed Stangl for over 70 hours. She was an incredibly insightful, dispassionate journalist with a sharp mind and a piercing intellect. Her books about Albert Speer and Mary Bell are equally as remarkable. When we look at what she uncovers in these books, we look at the shadow side of ourselves and that is the importance of her talking to and trying to understand these people. Class dismissed.
I think Gitta was one of the greatest historians I have ever read on Nazi Germany. May she rest in peace.
Wonderful lady. Ive just discovered her work !
The book Into That Darkness is a compelling read and will stand the test of time. much acclaimed author.
She was simply a facilitator for Franz Stangl's journey of facing the choices he made and horror that he was a part of. It's a great book. It's an exploration of the failures of humanity.
Many stupid comments here....read her books! She´s an very intelligent woman.
very correct!!! but this not a good example of her smartness
Agree.
gitta died recently. her work will live on esp. her work on speer and, her even more powerful document, on child killer mary bell. everyone should read at least one of her books. her understanding of mankind was unique. she leaves a gap in the art of finding the real truth.
❤❤❤❤❤ she was the best !
Thanks for posting; have read several of her books. Her book on Speer is great.
RIP Gitta. Your insight and work on Speer and Stangl will be remembered. Brilliant writer!
"It was very important to be the somebody that they became ....
because of the uniform."
I am of the opinion That The Effect of Terror on the Jewish Civilians led to a kind of Shock, or as if frozen by fear they seemed to go easily to their deaths, Like a disbelief, Also How can Women or kids organise themselves to resist Mechanised Genocide. Its Quite logical to think these poor people could not help themselves. But i Respect Sereny.....
Well said and I agree.
Many here obviously do not understand Sereny at all. Reading her books would be a start and might make some unwisely imputing anti Jewish motives to their misunderstanding.
Agreed. Read her on Stangl and Speer and there's no exculpation. Great writer.
Our greatest or perhaps even our only responsibility is to care for other people and for ourselves. Causing harm to other sentient beings is, if only we were not so ignorant, only causing pain and suffering to ourselves. It's a bit like polluting the environment - it will harm the doer as well as those it is done to. This life is NOT about doing a job well, rather it is about making a better world for those around us now and for those who will one day replace us. Cheers.
Well said Garry
tz tz tz. one can clearly realize that a lot of people here didn´t read the books of Gitta Sereny....they didn´t understand what she said on the video...pfffuii....
I greatly respect Gitta Sereny’s books, but I’m _absolutely shocked_ at her attitude about the non-aggression of the Jewish people, overall….how did she not know that the Jewish leaders they revered were tricked into giving them all up, by assurances (LIES) that the Nazis were happy to just let them leave???? Sereny misses a crucial point, which she should have learned watching the trial of Adolfo Eichmann. It was made clear by documents from the Foreign Office, the entity which was responsible for allowing Eichmann to take each newly conquered country’s Jewish population to their deaths, that the Jewish leaders were tricked into helping compile all the names of their congregations with the constant assurance that nothing bad was going to happen to them. Then, when family members arrived at the death camps, they were forced to write postcards home assuring their family members that they were in a lovely place and that when required to leave themselves, the family members should come without causing difficulty, not knowing that the people writing the cards were dead by the time they received the cards. In ghettos, people who escaped fully understood that all of their family would immediately be hanged, so they didn’t! In Germany, the rights of German Jews were taken slowly over several years before the mass killings began, which numbed resistance by people who had _ABSOLUTELY NO CONCEPTION of the evil,awaiting them,_ and the only people who escaped either had other than German citizenship or, if German, they had to pay a lot of money to get out. And there _was_ isolated resistance, in the Warsaw ghetto, for example, but *even the leaders of powerful Allied nations could not believe the stories they were hearing, because they couldn’t grasp the concept that such a civilized nation as Germany would DO such a thing!!* Really, my respect for Sereny has taken a huge hit after watching this.
The foreign people simply don’t grasp how evil people can be. Once they have full power and authority on someone’s life, they turn into another human being.
read the books you voracious reader
Very nice observation. I'm sorry I can't get into the debate but I'm still reading and learning and watching. Pop cultures shown in movies and films (I saw "The One" and "The Pianist") shown that they knew people weren't coming back from trains and trains were empty. The Jewish people knew something were done to their family and friends there in camps (definitely not Madagascar). They knew. Words were even spread outside (Witold Pilecki and people like him told the allies but no body outside Germany occupied lands really take it seriously) until they were confirmed when Germany lost the wars in the half way. Wannsee conference was held on a high level in an afternoon but still such large scale cannot be kept secret to all civilians.
This video....
is more important than people realize.
9 years later. You are absolutely right. It's happening right now.
People weren't aware enough...
Well is not about banality of evil is about mediocrity of evil. Like Eichmann and this Stangl. On the other hand this mass of people come in extermination camps in very harsh and extenuating condition that made them more unthinking maybe numb by exhaustion . It's easy knowing how they end to ask why they didn't react violently but then things where not clear unfortunately until last moment.
absolutely. i've read many books on the holocaust, but' into that darkness' haunts me still, probably because stangl fits hannah arendt,s description of eichmann 'the banality of evil' equally, and it is gave me the conviction that people commit terrible things through the idea of duty, and each step down that path can never be re-traced, until the individual realises what he has done has been monstrous, and they have destroyed themselves in destroying others.
Read her books...know the nature of reality.
yes, and often misunderstood.
‘decently’ what by beating the inmates with bull whips and setting them on fire? What about the Dog Barrie that was trained to bite prisoners in the groin? Was that decent?
dear Stangl was not involved, you don't understand the labor division of the SS, need to read more
This is Ludwig Von Mises stepdaughter?
I was sickened by her barely conceiled contempt for the jews, their Non-resistance according to her. I think the most obvious answer is usually the correct one: occams razor. The reason they did not resist was because they had been decieved into thinking that they were in a work camp. Many also considered the Germans to be a cultured and civillised people (which essentially they are) so would not indulge in mass-murder; we now know different. I think other societies are capable of genocide and a part of us does not want believe in mans ability to commit evil.. The reason for non-resistance? belief in the goodness of people.
I think you misunderstand her completely. I'm reading one of her books now ('The German Trauma') - what comes out is absolutely not that she has any contempt for the Jews in any way. For example, she details the extent to which the Nazis went to deceive people when they were being transported; even if they were afraid and had doubts or had heard rumours, they really could not have imagined what awaited them.
I think you are badly missing misinterpreting Sereny by attributing "contempt for the Jews to her). She fled the Nazis because she was connected to the French resistance, and spent years helping Jewish orphans reunite with their families.
Keep in her mind that Sereny was very particular about the wording she chooses, and is quite unusual in that she deeply analyzes people and their motivations.
Sereny was very clear….she either had no knowledge of the evil and extremely devious ways in which most of the Jews were tricked (which I cannot understand), or she didn’t believe the evidence, much of it brought out during the trial of Adolf Eichmann based on documents from the Nazi Foreign Office archives. I’ve watched nearly every minute of that trial which is available here of CZcams, and have also read about and studied the Holocaust for 40 years-I am not Jewish, if that matters-and the ways in which the German Jewish people lost their rights to everything took years, bit by bit, over nearly a decade. Huge numbers of them tried to get out of Germany, but foreign countries had quotas for emigration or, after a certain period, the Jewish people had to pay incredible sums of money to get out. But there were also German Jews who simply refused to believe their country, which had granted them full citizenship in the 1880s, was really bent on their destruction and elimination….they _could not_ conceptualize what was happening. Jewish men who won the Iron Cross for gallantry in WWI would repeat, “The Nazis don’t mean _ME;_ I fought for this country, *I AM A GERMAN!!!* I can’t go into all of the enormous pressure placed on newly occupied countries to give up their Jewish populations, or the enormous deceit used to get the Jewish leaders of those countries to assist them into giving up their people, as well as the deceits forced on family members to limit anxiety and possible revolt once they were removed, but I cannot understand how Sereny could have missed this!! I’ve read nearly all of her books, but her comments here have made me lose a huge amount of respect for her.
@@samberesford6578 There is no misunderstanding Sereny here, _none whatsoever._ Read my comment to see why, if you’re interested.
@@tl4340 Just so you know, “missing misinterpreting” doesn’t make sense. But beyond that, there is _no misinterpreting_ Sereny here. She made a huge and brutal statement about the only victims of unspeakably brutal institutionalized murder and genocide of which we are aware in history, which is completely unfounded, shocking, and disheartening. Please read my stand-alone comment.
I was thinking of buying one of her books and now I am glad I didn't. How does she know that camp victims all went quietly to their deaths? She can only speculate, but even in light of the facts, a better form of speculation is even possible..one based on the fact that the poor bastards had been riding on trains for days, packed in like animals, with no food or water, when they reached their destination they were exhausted and very few possessed the will or strength to fight with a heavily armed and brutal enemy who often whipped and mutilated them into submission. Of course if she had ridden on a cattle wagon and been deprived of the necessities of life and then been confronted by machine gun towers and armed guards, sure, she would have put up a brave fight. Not. No time at all for her bullshit.
l felt the same way. Really stupid ignorant remark.
+The Rejection Artist People did go quietly to there death, unaware and unbelieving of the true horror that awaited them. It's hard for us to understand why. I think it was collective denial. We as humans do this, "if I just keep my head down and do what I'm told, I might get through this", as opposed to recognising that i've entered a secret and abhorent industrialised murder factory. When you see footage from from nazi "round ups" in russia and people walk and run to the edge of the pits, where quite obviously they'll be executed and you wonder why nobody protests, screams and begs. You see the same with ISIS and the mass execution of Iraqi soldiers. I watched an insightful doc' recently called Death Camp Treblinka:Survivor Stories. I hope you get to watch it.
How does she know? She interviewed the commandant of Treblinka extensively, that's how.
read the books!!!!
People do their jobs as decently as possible...
because if they didn't...they'd be in trouble.
The people don't care of the job that they're doing....is evil.
That's not the point.
The point is....that they did the job as decently as possible....
just so that those people who did the job as decently as possible....
didn't get in trouble for NOT doing their jobs as decently as possible.
Fuck what's moral....just do the job....RIGHT!
Isn't it ironic that a woman that keeps denying she is Jewish has the Most Jewish face possible, and that on top of the fact that she and her family fled Austria, because they were chased away from their by the Nazis, Because of their Jewish background, and Not because of any other reasons. She wouldn't fool anyone, she can say she's catholic, protestant and whatever, it's meaningless, she is ethnically Jewish, she can change her surname, religion, but her face tells it all.
Also the way she talks, the mannerism of her speech, her approach to things, it leaks out of all directions....
yeah no kidding, hey people that are awakening on the internet, heres one more jewish lie.. wow thanks im convinced now allied govt.
Really? Do some more reading sir. Read They Fought Back. She implies they didn't have the brains to fight back. She is demeaning & ugly in her implications. I'm a Historian on this Holocaust over 45 yrs & in "The Community" she is known for what she truly is/was. Been studying other Holocausts last 20 yrs.The idea of 'never again' is a futile idea, as we practice mass killings; ongoing,daily,around the world.You have your opinion, I have mine. Such is life. Good Day Sir.God protect our USA.