Evil in the world
( Articles published in Heraldo de Aragón following the 60th anniversary in 2005 of the liberation of Auschwitz, the jihadist attacks of July 7, 2005 in London and the terrorism practiced by ETA at the same time and being different situations and cases they all have in common to be brutal manifestations of evil in our times, both current and recent)
The truth of Auschwitz
On January 27th we commemorated the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the extermination camp complex organized by the Nazis in Poland, which we usually call Auschwitz. For this reason many commemorative ceremonies took place and the media did not fail to include explanatory or testimonial texts in their editions. All this is all very well, but we know that this date will pass and Auschwitz will once again be a rare name that vaguely evokes mass murder and genocide and not for everyone. I have hardly seen in all these commemorations that the fundamental question has arisen: what is Auschwitz? The question was rather another: What was Auschwitz?. To reduce Auschwitz to pure historiography is not to understand the fundamental part that the holocaust plays in any reflection about the human condition in our time. Our culture, as Adorno meant, can no longer be the same after Auschwitz.
In any case the commemoration has come to favor the construction of a memory, a false memory, about Auschwitz and in all this very similar to Schindler's list, the famous film of Spielberg. Let us read Imre Kertész, Nobel Prize winner in literature and survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald and listen to him when in his book A Moment of Silence in the Wall states: "It is clear that the American Spielberg, who, by the way, had not yet been born at the time of the war, has no idea - nor can he have it- of the real reality of a Nazi concentration camp. Why then does he strive to portray on the screen a world unknown to him in such a way that every detail seems authentic?" All of us, the vast majority, who were not there cannot remember Auschwitz. The truth of Auschwitz or that of Mauthausen or that of Buchenwald, namely the truth of the holocaust, can only be reached by those who were there and survived to tell it. Some, like Primo Levi, Jean Améry, Paul Celan or Tadeusz Borowski, succumbed after telling us and took their lives.. Let's listen to all of them.
Today visiting Auschwitz is an experience dominated by the impossible of "being there". I know because I was there in July of the year 2000 and I didn't find any sense in everything I saw. I would say Auschwitz or more precisely, what is still standing and ready before us, of what was once the great complex built and organized by the Nazis for mass murder, is today an inscrutable vision.
Those of the former extermination camps that have been preserved, at least in part, are today places of memory visited by thousands of people and where commemorative events regularly take place. This is the case of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek, Mauthausen or Buchenwald, among others. There are spaces and objects that were part of the system of the fields and the final solution, such as barbed wire, towers, barracks, latrines, cells, gas chambers, crematoriums and fireplaces. Over time, in addition, monuments have been built or commemorative plaques have been placed. Finally there are, especially in Auschwitz, museums where a multiplicity of objects are exhibited in large display cases, from the suitcases brought by the deportees to their shoes or used gas cans Zyklon B. Everything is organized to transfer to the visitor the evocation of events that in the vast majority of cases did not live. Certainly such a visit is daunting because it is intended as a museum of horror before which we cannot remain indifferent. Tears come easily and the silence is so thick that there is no one to pierce it. However, what can we come to know? and what is the point of all this for us? After the visit, when we have left behind the place that evokes terror and massacre, we return to a world where Auschwitz has no place.
Also Kertész criticizes Spielberg when he concludes his film suggesting that despite everything and thanks to the salvation of some and the piety of one, human dignity has been restored, saved despite everything by his example. Schindler's list ultimately moralizes the narrative by concluding with a positive message and so Kertész criticizes it so much as he considers it intended to "expel" - this is the term he himself uses‑ to the holocaust from the realm of man's experiences. It was - it would seem- something terrible but it already happened. From Auschwitz, however, she was touched and already forever humanity itself. For all these reasons, it is unacceptable that we do not incorporate Auschwitz into any understanding of human experience that attempts to account for this epoch and perhaps also for our destiny. In our days, fifty years later, this is Auschwitz, as Adorno warned us and more recently and among others, Imre Kertész. It is the great truth of our time and it is thanks to the texts that have left us those who were there and survived to coo"ntarla. His writings are Auschwitz and unfortunately very little is read.
The "Holocaust effect"
When the Americans liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp, General Patton, in view of the terrible Nazi massacres, ordered that part of the population of Weimar, a town located next to the camp, He passed by the huge piles of corpses left behind by the SS in their hasty flight. German civilians paraded before the corpses and mass graves and were forced to look closely at the horror.
Imre Kertész was there. Nobel Prize in Literature in 2002, Hungarian and Jewish, he was first in Auschwitz and was transferred to Buchenwald afterwards. There he saw the inhabitants of Weimar parade before the corpses and so he tells in his book 'A moment of silence in the wall': "Suddenly I am struck by a spectacle: ladies and gentlemen are approaching the hillside (...) Behind the group come some American uniforms. They arrive at the mass grave, become mute and surround it a little (...) The faces turn towards the American officers, raise some arms, extend at shoulder height, fall again on the thighs and rise again. The heads shake in denial (...) They knew nothing. No one knew anything." The entire scene is now an evocation that Kertész tries to recreate and interpret: "Now what to do with this image? It is appropriate to form a moral judgment if that is what I desire. But that's not the truth of the scene. Indignation is reflection, that is, an artificial feeling: it only serves to remove the original flavor, much more requemante, of that moment. I soon learned that art is not to condemn people, but to recreate the moment. And in this sense, the images of pain are worth as much as those of full bliss." To be able to glimpse, even slightly, the truth of the scene can only be remembered. Indignation is now an artificial feeling. Kertész's words are a good example to try to understand the deepest feelings of the survivors; they had an essential problem, telling what had happened and not so much achieving the indignation of others. The fundamental witnesses of the Holocaust have been the survivors who faced the narrative challenge of telling the truth.
Recently it has been commemorated the liberation of the camp of Mauthausen, where several thousand Spanish republicans were interned and a good part of them, murdered. And it has been known that Enric Marco, president of the Amical de Mauthausen, was never in the camp of Flossenbürg, against what he had been asserting.
Commemorating means spending a minute, a day or a year remembering. Commemorations are often held as organized ceremonies to, among other things, display and activate remembrance. Marco recently gave a commemorative speech, along the lines of the narrative that some victims have written about their experience, at a special session of the Spanish Parliament. The TV images allowed to see how the tears appeared among the attendees. It is an example of the "Holocaust effect" of which Kertész warned us. Indignation or grief are artificial feelings here because it is not in them, as Kertész says, "the truth of the scene". The truth, I interpret Kertész, is in the memory and his story, not in the indignation and, much less, in the grief. Getting to the story is much harder than indignation. The scene, the millions of scenes contained in the Holocaust form the most distressing account of our culture and it is not here but to be part of it or, put another way, to stay. The commemorations have the virtue of producing an intense and certainly emotional effect, but fleeting, in which memory soon gives way to oblivion.
Enric Marco had, it seems, the great virtue of handling very well the account of an experience, apparently his own, of suffering. It should not be forgotten, however, that by 1978, when it came on the scene, some fundamental texts of the testimonial writing on the Holocaust had already been published. In the case of the Spanish republicans interned in Mauthausen, the novel K .L. Reich by Joaquim Amat-Piniella, in Catalan (Seix Barral, 1963) tells the story of Emili, a republican who, like Amat-Piniella himself, survives five years of internment in Mauthausen. Marco had countless texts on which to base his own story and it was not difficult for someone with obvious qualities for fabulation and communication.
In the recent assessments of this case, some recognized the value of Marco's testimony beyond its credibility, considering fundamentally its effectiveness. And this has been the line of argument followed by the Framework itself to justify itself. However, there is a powerful reason to disqualify his account: that it was made to produce the "Holocaust effect" and not to tell the truth.
The old man on the mountain
Virtually none of the known participants in the terrorist attacks in New York, Madrid and London came from miserable and oppressed backgrounds. On the contrary, many of them, like the Egyptian Mohammed Atta or the Lebanese Ziad Jarrah, both suicide bombers of 11-S, belonged to middle-class families and they themselves studied in European universities. In other cases we find second-generation young immigrants who had the nationality of the host country. Others had arrived long ago and were married to Spanish or European. In short, the profile of the suicide bomber is not that of a broken-down and desperate young man who, indignant at the misery he and his family suffer, decides to hit the "enemy" hard in his own home. This profile, that of misery and oppression, corresponds rather to those who are victims, as recently about twenty children, of suicide terrorism in Iraq.
In any case, it is possible to draw another profile for the majority of these young people who decided to immolate themselves or murder. " It is impossible that it was him" or "he was a charming young man", repeated his neighbors and acquaintances when referring to Mohamed Khan school assistant in a neighborhood of Leeds and participant in the biggest attack perpetrated in London. They are a good example to represent a plethora of young people, who had not until then been characterized by excessive piety and who "suddenly" discover something that comes wrapped with the word "truth". This occurs in the more or less closed circles of immigrant youth and around specific places such as mosques and oratories. Unbeknownst to their relatives and neighbours, these young people start something like a double life that often includes trips to Afghanistan or Pakistan. After a while they are ready to act.
We should not forget, however, that always and in the background, there are other individuals who did not participate in the attack. They are usually older and have a long history of Salafism or other forms of Islamic fundamentalism. It is known that they passed through Bosnia and Chechnya or were in Algeria with the GIA. They have been seen with the Taliban in training camps and are very adept at getting around without leaving a trace. For me they are "the old men of the mountain".
In 1092 Hassan Ibn Sabbah, also called the "Old Man of the Mountain", took refuge in the inaccessible fortress of Alamut in northern Iran and created the sect of the "hashashins", from which the word "murderer" comes. These were young men whom Ibn Sabbah, a member of the Ismaili branch of Shiism, led into his stronghold to be introduced into an unreal world, akin to the paradise described by the rofeta, and thus promise them that after their immolation they would enjoy all that they had already tasted. Thus the "Old Man of the Mountain" obtained the blind fidelity of his followers. His aim was to put an end to the immense power of the Seljuk Turks by sending his murderers who spread terror everywhere. This old story has been recreated in some novels such as Alamut by Vladimir Bartol or Samarkand by Amin Maalouf. Now its reading has become indispensable.
In the end there is no other lesson but an old and terrible one. We are in the presence of a totalitarian ideology that takes advantage of the undeniable loopholes left by Islam to penetrate into it this type of beliefs, which, however, have been present in other places and moments of our closest history. We are undoubtedly facing a sectarian movement and it is not the masses subjected to oppression and misery who express their despair through these acts, because they too are victims of this sectarian and totalitarian terrorism.
Out of historical necessity
On May 12, 1980, Ramón Baglietto, a neighbor of Azkoitia and UCD militant in the Basque Country, died. Two ETA men, both of them coming from Baglietto's village, murdered him. Today, Kandido Azpiazu, one of the assassins, runs a commercial establishment in Azkoitia located in the basement of the house where Pilar Elías, Baglietto's widow, lives. This fact is now well known to the public and has jumped to the pages of the newspapers in recent days. It contributes to give strength and meaning to this whole story, the fact that Baglietto saved the life of Kandido Azpiazu, his killer, when he was a child and could at the last moment prevent him from dying in the same accident in which his elder brother and his own mother did die. The account of all these events was collected in a book, A Cry for Peace (1999), by Pedro Mari Baglietto, the victim's brother.
What has probably been forgotten is that Kandido Azpiazu was interviewed, outside the prison, where he served an effective sentence of 12 years, by Erwin Koch journalist Der Spiegel and the newspaper El País reproduced this interview in its edition of August 14, 2001. I have had the opportunity to read some interviews with former ETA members that justified their acts, especially murders, and almost all of them have seemed to me to be unsuccessful. Whether it's the interviewee's arrogance, the interviewer's weakness or in some cases his sympathy and understanding for the interviewee, the neutrality always fails, sometimes feigned, sometimes real, with which the interviewer intends to approach the interview. I have read interviews done by journalists, anthropologists and sociologists and even one conducted by one of my students in a PhD course. What Koch is doing seems extraordinary to me because it challenges Azpiazu and leads him to a personal confrontation with his own actions. It is able to open a window to the truth, the terrible truth of the killer and of evil. This is just a small fragment:
How did you become a murderer?
I am not a murderer.
You have killed.
_" Out of historical necessity - man is waving his big hands - out of responsibility to the Basque people, who are magnificent, who have a magnificent culture, who speak one of the oldest languages in Europe, who were never defeated by the Romans, nor by the Visigoths, nor by the Arabs. A very different people from the Spanish".
This answer is sincere and even if it does not seem so, it is more open to the truth than those that could allude to a supposed repression, lack of freedom, revenge, oppression or suffering. None of this exists in the Basque Country. For this reason and in the face of the confrontation with his own acts to which the skill, courage or professionalism of the journalist has led him, Azpiazu speaks the truth, which killed Baglietto for a "historical necessity".
Then a question arises also charged with wonder: How can a neighbor kill another neighbor, who has done nothing to him, quite the contrary, for a historical need? Let us see, however, what this historical necessity is, as described by the ETA' s terrorist himself: the Basque people are magnificent, they have a great culture and a language so ancient that it does not resemble another and their territory was never occupied (until the Spanish arrived). Spinning all this we have is a myth. But this is not a myth invented by Azpiazu, any other militant or leader of ETA, but has been created and maintained, among others, by some politicians, historians, anthropologists, artists, poets or philosophers. It is true that there are other people who share this myth and who do not kill, although they often understand, but it is also true that there are enough people who do believe that this myth constitutes a motive or reason to kill and do so. At least Azpiazu did. There must be something in the myth in order to unleash evil in the form of murder. Therefore some people say ideas don't kill.