Holocaust

[LARSSON at vax1.mankato.msus.edu]

Richard Romeo comments:
"In your discussion of WWII and corporate sector vs. private sector et al,
how would you explain the holocaust?  With all the talk of Their subtle
manipulations of men, how does such an indescribable event (its planning,
its drain on resources-human and otherwise) fit into these plans,
double-crosses and such?"


There was an interesting interview on public radio (insert your own comment
here) with someone (unfortunately, I do not recall the name) about recent
research on the organizational apparatus of the Holocaust.  The main point,
as I took it, was that the research reveals the utterly banal and bureau-
cratic level of decision-making that went into the process.  

Eg., Commandant at work camp (with links to Farben, et al.) needs X number
of slave laborers.  Calls commandant at local ghetto and is told, you can
only get X number of workers only if you also take Y number of old, infirm,
etc. Jews.  Commandant takes the whole lot and gasses what he can't use.
All this seems to fit all too neatly into the Pynchonian perspective of
the inhuman use of human beings.

Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)