The Anthropology Of Genocide - WNLibrary

130 essentializing difference
materials from the IDO’s Section on Race and Ethnic Research were sent to Washington
and divided among several archives. Although much of the material had
been deleted and destroyed—by whom cannot be ascertained—enough remained
to give a picture of what had happened in Cracow. 37 Other archives stored various
materials from the IDO, and their publications remain in several world libraries,
including the Library of Congress.
NAZI ANTHROPOLOGISTS IN SUPPORT OF GENOCIDE
We return to the questions my students have raised about these anthropologists:
why did they do it, and why did no one stop them? Perhaps the answers are not as
difficult as they seemed at first. Hannah Arendt was right, there was a banality of
evil (Arendt 1963).
It is now clear that the process by which the ultimate evil of the Holocaust came
about was not begun under the Nazis, but many years earlier when the world looked
for answers to hard questions raised by urbanization and modernity, described by
Hinton in the first chapter of this book. The steps in the process were, first, international
acceptance of initial research questions and the methods and context in
which they were carried out. This context included the exclusion from the research
teams of previously valued members because of political and “racial” identities.
Second, career aggrandizement—rather than unemployment—offered a great motivation.
Third, psychological protection reduced the psychosocial dissonance (Hinton
1996) and assisted anthropologists in handling the stress of conducting inhumane
investigations. Fourth, values of the “normal” world were attached to their
very abnormal activities.
How could the world be made healthier, more productive, and more efficient?
The questions were asked not only in Germany but also in the United States and
other Western countries. Despite its questionable methodologies, the German research
of the 1920s that addressed these questions was supported in large part by
the Rockefeller Foundation, an American institution.
The answers devised in the Third Reich were as follows: First, the state could arrange
to sterilize those who reproduced or could reproduce offspring not valued by the state.
Second, the state could allow and encourage experimentation on human subjects, referred
to as “pieces” or “material,” those who had no power to say “no.” Next, the state
could arrange to get rid of “life unworthy of life” and assign those considered least worthy
to menial tasks under the control of those in charge of the New Order. Finally, the
state could move masses of population groups from place to place, killing some and
enslaving others for the benefit of the few who met the criteria of the “Master Race.”
Why did the anthropological community in Germany offer no objection? First,
individuals who stood against government policy were dealt with quickly in the first
weeks, months, and years of the regime. Their ability to protest was brutally and
quickly wiped out. We have no record of anthropologists who went to concentration
camps for their adherence to a different moral order, but we can assume some did.