Psychology and More

A new set of photos has been found which documented the lives of the guards in the Nazi death camps. It provides a stark reminder of the lessons learned by social psychology over the last 60 years: the mass murderers were not monsters, but rather normal human beings who were part of a situation that demanded a particular behavior. I do not dismiss their responsibility, but rather point to the fact that we are all potentially capable of genocide given the right situational variables.

Somehow this is news to some people.

U.S. Holocaust Museum Unveils 116 Photos – New York Times:

Hoecker’s personal album depicts a sing-a-long with an accordion player and about 70 SS men, including Josef Mengele, the camp doctor notorious for his bizarre and cruel medical experiments. Mengele was joined by other infamous camp leaders, including Josef Kramer and Rudolf Hoess.

The eight photos of Mengele are the first authenticated pictures of him at Auschwitz, museum officials said.

Also among the images are SS guards and Nazi on numerous hunting trips, Hoecker lighting the camp’s Christmas tree, and female SS auxiliaries eating blueberries and then mockingly crying and posing with empty bowls.

Judith Cohen, director of museum’s Photographic Reference Collection said the album ”adds nuance and illustration to the things that were hard to imagine, namely that the SS officers were able to simultaneously lead normal lives — they were able to socialize on one day — and commit mass murder on another, and not recognize the contradiction inherent in it,” she said.

The guards “did not recognize the contradiction” likely because of the processes we use to manage cognitive dissonance.

Technorati Tags: genocide, psychology, social psychology