The Death Penalty as Murder | Oct. 7, 2006 Photo Above: Execution wall between Cell Blocks 10 and 11 at Auschwitz. Here, several thousand Poles and Russian prisoners of war lost their lives. Eventually, the executions were moved to other locations, including Auschwitz II - Birkneau. Additional photos are in October cover gallery. Related articles at Eric's blog. The full series is here: http://www.planetwaves.net/contents/auschwitz_photo_series.html WE ARE accustomed to the story of the Nazis being about mass murder, hearing about thousands at a time gassed and cremated. At the beginning, it happened one at a time, and inside the gas chambers, it also happened one at a time. Was it really the tendency of the Nazis to kill millions that made them what they were, or was it their nonexistent value on the life of an individual? In the scene above, you are witness to a Nazi execution facility. People such as your mother, your sister, your grandfather, your boyfriend, or yourself, were forced to strip naked, walk barefoot out into the cold, face that wall, and be shot in the back of the head. They had no trial, no lawyer, and had committed no crime except for being who they were. The philosophical rationale was that certain groups were undesirable. But it always comes down to an individual person being held as worthless. This is how we must think of the Holocaust: remembering that each life was indeed a life; that each person who was murdered experienced the fear, horror, shame, and loss of being thrown violently from the Earth, for nothing -- on the basis of a lie. Imagine facing that wall yourself, and that wall being the last thing you see before you close your eyes and brace for whatever comes next, however it might feel. Imagine that this conduct was a government policy perpetuated under color of law (that is, supposedly legal), which many people approved of, and many, many others stood silent as it went on. Part of how it went on was because people had no rights. The German government, in part by terrifying people, and in part by blatant trickery, had suspended them all, just like the American government is doing now. People were convinced they were safer without their rights. The German government committed many of its crimes on foreign soil, just like the American government is doing now. But the most menacing thing that both have in common is that the enemy can be anyone, including you. Then, step two: You have no right to prove otherwise. As I explained yesterday, this scene is the yard between Cell Blocks 10 and 11 at the first Auschwitz camp. Cell Block 10, the gynecological torture ward, is visible in the background. The black covering on the window is there to prevent inmates of Block 10, themselves in incredible pain and fear, from seeing what was going on outside their window. Of course, they could hear most of it -- the screams of those hanging with their arms behind their backs; the orders of vicious military men; condemned people wailing and crying; the shots fired; the wagons coming and going for the corpses. It was all done for 'good reason' -- these people were speaking against us, these were polluting our pure race, this one was caught giving food to someone, this one is gay. Once you can visualize their murder, do the political rationales matter? Once you can feel the pain they experienced, do the reasons make a difference? Does it really matter that it's happening to 'other people'? At what point do you identify with what is happening enough to see yourself in the situation, and speak up? Really, I think that it's so easy to relate to that we must go into denial, and fast. We must pretend that it's not happening, that it cannot happen, that it won't happen. That's exactly how it happens. Scenes like the one above are why I object to the death penalty in any form, under any circumstances. Even if you agree with the thin logic that those found guilty of crimes should be executed, you still have the problem of the innocent. Many innocent people are what is called exculpated or acquitted after they are convicted, and even after they have already been killed [see first link below if you are curious]. Many go to their deaths stating flatly that they are guilty of no crime, sometimes after having had their appeals thrown out on technicalities. The stories of people who spend 15 years on death row, only to be freed, or who are exonerated while in their graves, are so heartbreaking it's no wonder they are ignored. Nobody wants to think it's possible that supposedly 'democratic' governments are strapping innocent people to gurneys and stopping their heart with drugs, or putting them into gas chambers where they are made to inhale cyanide gas (along with test animals to make sure the gas is working properly). Except for the size and scale, I see no difference between this and what was done in Auschwitz, because the mentality is exactly the same. A society that resorts to murdering its undesirables becomes complicit in a "final solution," and the voices that are silenced in such a proposition stand as martyrs to our failure to understand the essential organizing law of humanity -- thou shalt not kill. The Innocence Project http://www.innocenceproject.org/ A Special Comment about Lying by Keith Olbermann http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15147009/ Juvenile Offenders on Death Row http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/engAMR510101998 Wiki on United States death penalty http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_penalty Habeus Corpus RIP http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0928-20.htm Death Penalty in Illinois http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_H._Ryan#Opposition_to_capital_punishment Mumia Abu Jamal - and coverage of Illinois exculpations http://planetwaves.net/mumia2.html