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Eternal Treblinka 230 pages, plus 38 pages of references and notes, 10 page bibliography. Forward by Lucy Rosen Kaplan. Further info: www.EternalTreblinka.com |
I received this book an age ago but found it difficult to write a review. Despite reading it within a few days of receiving it I couldn't get to grips with what it was supposed to be about. Having just sat down to read it through for a third time I'm trying to finish the review I started after the second reading...
From the title it is obvious that it is not going to be an enjoyable read, and for some reason the dark brown colour of the cover gives it a bit more of an air of gloom. The subtitle reads "Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust", and according to the author the book is about the parallels of the slaughter of animals bred for food, and the slaughter of Jews at the hands of the Nazis. I'm not sure I agree entirely with the author but I'll come back to that later.
The first part of the book starts sensibly with a historical overview of the relationship between humans and other animals. While the behaviour of our ancestors from millions of years ago can not be known for certain, the views from recent historical times are well recorded. Slavery and the wiping out of native people are a familiar part of very recent times, even if the views of those involved seem barbaric to us today. Little seems to have changed with regard to the treatment of animals, other than the requirement that whatever we do must be carried out "humanely". The second half of the first section is a long listing of quotations "vilifying others as animals". While these are interesting, without greater context I think that some of the people are being judged from a moral high ground that does not take into account the circumstances of their times.
The middle section of the book "Master Species, Master Race" is a thoroughly depressing account of human nature; if you don't want to be thrown into a pit of despair for several days, I suggest you don't read it.
"The Industrialization of Slaughter" starts with a look at how the meat industry was mechanised in America. If you have previously read "Beyond Beef" by Jeremy Rifkin then you will not be in for too many surprises. For me it was far more interesting to read about the anti-Semitic Henry Ford and the links between Eugenics in America and Germany. While American states were sterilising criminals and idiots in the early part of the twentieth century the Nazis in Germany started killing their own mentally and physically handicapped children and adults once the war started in 1939. From here the Nazis moved on to the extermination of the Jews at the purpose built death camps. The Holocaust is a well-chronicled event that most people other than the very young should already be familiar with. It is rare for a week to go by without another story being told either on television, in a film, on the radio, in some Sunday supplement, or in books both historical and fictional. Under another name Eugenics has made somewhat of a return in contemporary medicine and it is now routine for developing babies to be screened for genetic abnormalities. One can imagine that in the near future designer babies will become a reality, and ironically one assumes this would have met with the full approval of Hitler.
I think the author overstates the connection between the industrialised slaughter of animals, and then later, people. As I see it there is no real connection other than the availability of the infrastructure and mechanics required. The industrialisation of food production (and the production of many other things as well as cars) is in all probability likely to precede the mass killing of people since genocide is much rarer than the constant requirement for food and manufactured goods. Similarly, the psychological aspects of coping with killing a member of your own species are no doubt more difficult to overcome than the killing of other species. However, this does happen on a regular basis in nature, and the surviving animals (the killers) carry on with their lives afterwards.
The final section of the book is easier to read and looks at the personal stories of individuals with connections to the atrocities of the Holocaust. These commentaries are interesting to read, but rather like the lack of support for animal rights in mainstream culture today, you get the feeling that these people moved towards compassion by their experiences of human butchery are in the minority.
Overall I found the theme of the book somewhat confusing. On the one hand there seem to be traditional religious philosophies given. Here, as I see it, people "should" be good but for some reason, if we look at the historical record, many of them act in extremely selfish and cruel ways. The other viewpoint is from the evolutionary persepective. I don't think animal and human abuses have paralleled each other, so much as them being one and the same thing; i.e. the result of us being just another animal, an animal not as clever as most people seem to believe themselves to be. So, had I been born and raised in Germany in the early part of the twentieth century with the Nazi ideals, I might have been a mass murderer. Or, if I had been born as a Jew I may have ended up at Treblinka. Instead, I was born to vegetarian parents in the sixties and am writing a review of this book.