Blog #3

“Total Domination” by Hannah Arendt is easily one of my most difficult reads to date. I think that of the three pre-reading questions there was only one question that I could actually address. This question also happened to be the most poignant topic in this entire piece which is the question: What happens to human beings in concentration camps? It took me several reads to figure out what Arendt claims happens to humans once they have been in these camps because as she puts it “he himself [those who have been in concentration camps] is often assailed with doubts with regard to his own truthfulness…(Jacobus 89).”
I think the aforementioned quote represents part of what Arendt sees as what happens to humans in concentration camps, and that is that they become inanimate (91). Arendt describes them as people that “can no longer be psychologically understood…” due to the fact that their “psyche, character, and individuality…” have all been destroyed (91). She even goes as far as comparing them Lazarus, basically saying that they are the dead that have risen (91). In other words, in almost every possible way the human being that went into the concentration camp was killed on every level , except the physical.
To elaborate further on this, she goes on to discuss how those that put them in concentration camps also try to erase any trace of their existence (93). So not only are humans who are put into concentration camps stripped down on every level of their psyche, but they are also discarded as nothing creating even more psychological problems for those who’ve lived through it. She also addresses the “superfluous” nature of those in concentration camps on page 95 when she states, “The concentration-camp inmate has no price, because he can always be replaced; nobody knows to whom he belongs, because he is never seen. (95)”
To sum it all up human beings who are in concentration-camps are degraded to the worst possible level. I believe that Arendt is right by saying it’s “as if they were already dead. (96).” They level of nothingness they were treated as, and the whole mentality that they were worthless and should be wiped off the earth alone is enough to affect anybody psychologically. However, more than just shunning was done to the humans put in these concentration camps. Isolationism took place in these camps along with oblivion and the reducing of men to bundles of reaction as Arendt puts it, all of which are hard to grasp on any level of real understanding (92,94).

Works Cited

Arendt, Hannah. “Total Domination.” A World of Ideas: Essential Readings for College Writers .Ed. Lee A Jacobus. 7th ed. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006. pp.88-96.