From Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior, Chapter 7
In an interview with journalist Gitta Sereny after his arrest in Brazil in 1971 and subsequent trial, Franz Stangl, the commandant of the death camp at Sobibor and later at Treblinka, responded to questions.
“You’ve been telling me about your routines,” I said to him. “But how did you feel? Was there anything you enjoyed, you felt good about?”
Connections:
How did Stangl view his role in the death camps? How much power did he think he had?
Elie Wiesel has described the process in which the Nazis reduced a person to a prisoner; the prisoner to a number; and the number to an ash, which was itself dispersed. To what extent does Stangl’s account explain that process?
In thinking about ways of preventing another Holocaust, what can be learned from the words of perpetrators like Stangl?
Notes:
1Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness (Pan Books, 1977), 200-202.
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