Thursday, November 10, 2011

About: Enzo Traverso: The origins of Nazi violence. A European genealogy



Enzo Traverso's book, in English under the title The origins of Nazi Violence. New Press, New York 2003. . A European genealogy is making a big impression to me. It changes my whole perspective on peace education and history and is also very important for my study about sexual violence and religion.
I visited by accident an anti-fascist bookshop in Wrocław, after I had given a workshop at the exhibition about Anne Frank House as we organizing by the House of Peace with the Anne Frank Foundation and Bente Kahan Foundation and with the Jewish community.
Extensively documented Enzo Traverso shows how European powers during the massive colonization of other continents 'native' peoples did kill and how the jargon with which they "justified" in the 19th century became common in Europe. Also this jargon is used wenn measures were applied against the "lower" classes in Europe itself, especially if they came in "rebellion" came. In the 19th and 20th century eugenics in the U.S. and Europe were working on the "improvement" of humanity by including sterilization of "unworthy".Traverso shows that the Holocaust and the terror of the Germans, particularly in central and eastern Europa could be seen in a certain way as a continuation of what had previously happened in the colonies and in Europe itself.The mechanization of death (impressively described) and of labor, leading to the mass slaughter in the First World War, changed soldiers into robots; also this led to what we now call "incomprehensible" acts realized by a civilized nation as the Germans .For me it is a shocking book because it shows me how "normal" Nazi terror was. And I remember the echoes of my colonial education, which are also relative terms "lower" classes were used, etc.
Traverso's book could very well fit into a more general study of the history of violence, in which the arguments of Aristotle in his "Politeia" fit with his argument about women, slavery, etc. Furthermore, in such a study also subjects as the 16th-century slave trade, violence and sexual violence towards women and children and violence of the USSR will fit. As a theologian I'm not able to do that, but I am learning, thanks to Traverso, that sexual violence fits within a larger whole, I am also more and more inclined to say, thanks also to other authors, that the "first" colonization begins with violence to children and women.Traverso also writes, sideways, on the role of religion in that. He does not work it out, but is inspiring me.
Besides, I'm angry at my high school history teacher ... the history lessons I received in elementary school and from the culture in which I was growing up. Not only this book put me on a different track about peace education and teaching about the Holocaust, but the history and cultural education as a whole should be reviewed (I try "polite" to speak). Euroclio!