Motions

International Holocaust Remembrance Day

The Hon. C.M. SCRIVEN (16:36): I move:

That this council—

1. Notes that 27 January was International Holocaust Remembrance Day; and

2. Rejects and condemns any form of racial discrimination and anti-Semitism.

In November 2005, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 27 January, the day on which Auschwitz was liberated, as International Remembrance Day to mark the Holocaust. Six million Jews were murdered in an act of unspeakable genocidal barbarism. So, too, were homosexual men, Roma gypsies, people with a disability and political dissidents, among others.

We know that in the camps the old or those with less physical capacity—that is the most vulnerable—were killed first. People often ask how could it have happened? How could people, no different to ourselves, have been involved, have stood by, have tolerated such atrocious treatment of a whole group of people?

The theme of the Holocaust remembrance and educational activities this year was Holocaust Remembrance: Demand and Defend Your Human Rights. This theme encourages youth to learn from the lessons of the Holocaust. We, too, must learn. To be able to learn, we must take the time to look at what led to the terrible events of the Holocaust. I place on the record my appreciation for the many people who have researched and written on this topic over the years, many of whose work I have drawn on for this contribution today.

In January 1942, in the outer Berlin suburb of Wannsee, a meeting was convened by Reinhard Heydrich, the Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia. He had been appointed as the authority for the preparation of the final solution of the Jewish question in Europe. Responsibility for handling the final solution would lie with him and Himmler, 'Without regard for geographic boundaries.' In total, 11 million Jews would be targeted for extermination.

Without a whimper, the 13 officials signed off on the final solution, which would, 'cleanse the German living space of Jews in a legal manner.' This was a key moment in a series of events that would see the murder of 6 million Jews—abhorrent behaviour almost beyond our comprehension. The Holocaust Museum has video footage of Nazi doctors experimenting on those considered insane and those with a physical disability. Highly educated professionals crossed the threshold in 1930s Germany, believing some people's lives of so little value they could be ended with state sanction.

Of the 13 German ministers and senior public servants assembled, nine had PhDs, masters' degrees and the best university education that Europe had to offer at the time. Adolf Eichmann, Heydrich's henchman in charge of implementing all this, said at his trial that Heydrich had expected opposition to the plan from the bureaucrats, not only did they not resist, he said, they embraced the heinous idea with enthusiasm. How could this be? The American Declaration of Independence states:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men…

Alan Moore was at the Bergen-Belsen death camp in April 1945. He took photos of the appalling tragedy he saw because he knew that otherwise no-one would believe him—no-one would believe it. Alan Moore said:

…we must remind ourselves not only of why we fought wars but that of which human kind is capable and the circumstances that lead to it.

Much has been written about the circumstances that led to the Holocaust, but one thing is definitely clear: the Holocaust could only happen because a whole segment of our population was dehumanised. Dehumanisation is a psychological process whereby opponents view each other as less than human and thus not deserving of moral consideration nor humane treatment. This can lead to increased violence, human rights violations, war crimes and genocide. International non-governmental organisations consider a dehumanising speech as one of the precursors to genocide. An article by Allison Skinner in The Conversation stated:

Once someone is dehumanised, we usually deny them the consideration, compassion and empathy that we typically give other people. It can relax our instinctive aversion to aggression and violence.

So how was this done, and what can we learn? Evidence shows that it was a long campaign of demonising Jewish people. First, they must not be called people. Do not use the word 'person'. Nazi propaganda called Jewish people animals, parasites or pests. A University of Canterbury paper explained:

Modern media were efficiently employed to spread Nazi beliefs. Emotive speeches and new legislative measures were broadcast on the radio. Propaganda was printed and circulated, while cinematography captured the imaginations of many Germans and represented the Jews' alleged animal nature.

It goes on:

With a wealth of resources available to his purposes, Hitler was able to form and strengthen an ideology that had every appearance of being credible, necessary, righteous and legitimate. The use of new technologies appealed to a sense of progress, of being up to date as part of the nation's self-improvement.

Reclassified as non-humans the Jews were excluded from the ranks of humanity and their lives deemed both undesirable and expendable. There is a strong relationship between language and the dehumanising process that appears to justify atrocity against fellow humans. A vocabulary of detachment, rationalisation and euphemism hastened the Nazi invasion of German hearts, minds and consciousness.

Through the use of subhuman terminology, Nazi soldiers and doctors often became able to think of themselves as pest exterminators rather than human executioners. The Jews were determined to have no rights at all, for the supposed good of the German nation. After a brief visit to a ghetto in November 1939 Goebbels alleged that these Jews were not human beings but animals and so Germany faced not a humanitarian but a 'surgical task'.

This perception of the Jews negated any anxieties that could arise with their genocide. The notion of a surgical task also implied a health emergency and tied the representation of Jews as animals together with the critical state of Germany's national health. We owe it to the six million Jewish people who died to understand how dehumanising language was used so that we avoid ever going down a similar path.

Judges at the Nuremberg war crimes trials considered that dehumanising language and 'obscene racial libels' of the anti-Semitic Der Sturmer important enough to have 'perverted the attitudes of countless Germans towards and incited genocidal acts against the Jewish people'. The Nazis changed the perception of a Jew from being a someone to being a mere something. From this vantage point the Jews were completely dispensable.

Amazingly, Himmler was emphatically opposed to the hunting of animals as a sport, questioning how it could be possible to 'find pleasure in shooting from behind cover at poor creatures browsing on the edge of a wood, innocent, defenceless, and unsuspecting?' It is amazing that Himmler could oppose hunting for sport and even call it 'pure murder', yet he saw the German hunting of the Jews as the necessary removal of threatening non-human animals, a group of dangerous things. Euphemisms enabled mass murder and cruel torture. This is what dehumanising language leads to. But this also was written about the Jewish prisoners in the death camps:

Prisoners often formed small groups within their barracks or with those with whom they had known outside the camps’ confines:

In such groups men again became human beings, after the humiliation suffered in the toil of the day…Despite the prison stripes and the shorn skulls, they were able to look their fellows in the face, beholding the same sorrow and the same pride, and drawing renewed strength…

No-one should ever have to fight to prove their humanness. All are created equal. If we sincerely believe this—and I certainly hope that everyone here does—we must be ever vigilant against the dehumanising language that is an enabler of discrimination and violence. If we hear another human referred to as a parasite, we are hearing the words of Nazism. If we hear someone defined by their ability, we are learning the thinking of pre-war Germany. When we hear a change of perception from being a someone to a mere something, we are hearing the same view that led to Jews being thought of as dispensable.

By recognising the humanity of every person, regardless of race or creed, regardless of ability or age, we will honour those victims of the Holocaust who were treated so appallingly. When we reject and condemn the language of racial discrimination and anti-Semitism we are defending everyone's human rights. Observing this 27 January remembrance day will mean nothing unless we ensure that we never let the journey begin that ended in the atrocity and tragedy that was the Holocaust.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. I.K. Hunter.