Terrence Des Pres (1939–1987)

Expertly written. I appreciated very much the inclusion of the Gulags in the discussion which too often focuses solely on the Nazis. No desire ever to read it again, however.

A point made in the final chapters is that the concentration camps were the perfect embodiment of our concept of Hell -- I think for all the horror of the camps that this point is overstated. Depictions of Hell from medieval times are of incessant torture *for the very sake* of exacting suffering on the damned. My knowledge of the camps is that the horrors there sprang from, among other things: a closed environment with no consequences for the often capricious evils perpetrated by guards, near-total neglect of the inmates' basic biological needs encouraged by a policy from higher up that anyone in a camp was subhuman, and the intentional dehumanization of inmates in order to, as Des Pres points out, "make it easier for the guards to do their jobs."

It is difficult to overstate the suffering described in these pages. But to say that nothing worse is capable of being imagined is to do just that. One example is to be an isolated sex slave locked in a cellar, with no one to lean on or call for help to, subjected to torture by a captor who tortures you for the very sake of bringing about torture (and not the sadistic randomness of the often drunken shootings perpetrated by Nazis in the camps). The latter is much more like Hell than the effects of privation, however extreme.… (altro)