“THE BANALITY OF EVIL: FROM AUSCHWITZ TO MARIUPOL” – INTERVIEW ON THE “10 QUESTIONS TO A HISTORIAN” CHANNEL
Anatoliy Podolskiy, a Leading Researcher of the Department of Ethnopolitics of our Institute, Candidate of Historical Sciences, gave an interview to the channel “10 Questions to a Historian”. This channel is a well-known educational resource on Ukrainian YouTube, created by the team of the “History without Myths” channel and dedicated to history. The best domestic and foreign specialists are involved in its work.
Podolsky’s interview was devoted to the history of the Auschwitz death camp, which became a symbol of Nazi crimes in World War II.
In his interview, the scientist particularly noted that the history of the Auschwitz death camp is a tragic story of how some people (educated and seemingly mentally healthy) killed other people on a previously unknown scale and system. The “banality of evil” was that the virtue of loyalty turned bureaucrats into committed perpetrators of genocide. A vivid example of such a functionary was the commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Goess. His image appears in many works of art. For example, the film “Zone of Interest”, which won two Oscars (in particular, as the best feature film).
Anatoliy Podolskiy during an interview
Auschwitz, emphasized A. Podolskiy, is also part of the history of Ukraine. During the Second World War, the prisoners and victims of this Nazi death camp were Ukrainian prisoners of war, activists of the Ukrainian resistance movement, Ukrainian Jews deported by the occupiers in the summer of 1944 to the camp from Transcarpathia.
The current Russian occupying power on the temporarily occupied Ukrainian lands also commits terrible crimes against Ukrainian citizens, against civilians, and also creates camps and prisons – in Donetsk, Mariupol, and other cities. The crimes of the racists must be punished in the same way as the crimes of the German National Socialists during the Second World War.