In this deeply reflective essay, Katya Dharmananda, a Changemakers Ambassador and MPhil student in Sociology, examines the complex intersections between democracy, marginalisation, and the horrors of genocide. Drawing on her recent visit to the Dachau Concentration Camp in Germany, Katya explores chilling lessons from history and examines the often-simplistic notion that democracy has the ability to prevent life’s atrocities. She addresses uncomfortable truths about privilege and calls on our collective responsibility to protect human rights and dignity in an increasingly fractured world.
Acknowledging her privileged position in society, and supported by her family, Katya is confident that her involvement with Changemakers will further equip her to build a career dedicated to advocating for those marginalised by national and global migration practices. She is currently volunteering with the Cambridge Women’s Resource Centre to help local migrant and refugee women develop their English language skills and as a mentor to support ambitious women living in Afghanistan.
Reflections on Dachau: Why do we believe that democracy will save us?
By Katya Dharmananda, MPhil in Sociology
I visited the Dachau Concentration Camp today and I do not think I can put into words how incredibly devastating and jarring it was to walk the halls of a concentration camp. When I saw the plaque which read that the Holocaust must, “unite the living for the defence of peace and freedom and in respect for their fellow man.” My heart sunk. Our education has failed us. We have not been equipped with the perspective or psychological tools to prevent a tragedy like this from occurring again.
If one watches the news, or browses social media, they bear witness to atrocities which resemble the Holocaust every day. We not only witness these atrocities, but we actively support the regimes which facilitate them through our personal consumer decisions. The political weaponry and the dissemination of propaganda implemented by the Nazi regime to persecute, oppress, and dehumanise peoples of Jewish faith, Jehovah witnesses, emigrants, Roma and Sinti peoples, Slavic peoples, peoples with disabilities, of “those unfit for work”, gay peoples, amongst other human groups continues to be exploited to specifically target these groups and other minority groups in the contemporary (KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau, 2024). I do not have to look beyond my home country to observe this. Under Australia’s mandatory detention laws which were introduced in 1992, over 100,00 peoples have been detained in immigration detention centres (Australian Human Rights Commission, 2024). This number has thankfully reduced, partially due to a High Court decision on the 8 November 2023 which contested the constitutionality of mandatory detention in Australia. As of the 3 November 2024, there are 998 people held in Australian detention facilities (Refugee Council of Australia, 2023). Behrouz Boochani, a journalist who fled Iran to Australia in 2013 who was held on Manus Island for over six years exposed the horrific conditions that peoples were subjected to within Australia’s offshore detention centres. Peoples held in these centres are confronted with a cruel regime of indefinite detention and enforced uncertainty and are deprived of critical medical care, sanitation, privacy, and edible food (Boochani, 2022). Australia’s mandatory detention laws were introduced as a “reaction” to the arrival of 438 peoples of Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Chinese descent who arrived in Australia between 1989 and 1992 after the Vietnam War (Australian Human Rights Commission, 2024). Australian parliamentarians from both major political parties began to vilify refugees as a political strategy to amass public attention and support. They contested their genuine refugee status, questioning if they may be a part of a “sophisticated commercial people- smuggling operation”, and degraded them through their use of language, referring to them as “boat peoples”, “illegal entrants”, “Asian foreigners”, and “terrorists” (Australian Human Rights Commission, 2024; Saul, 2013). As noted by the Australian Refugee Council: “Fleeing by boat is often very costly and extremely dangerous...it is not a form of escape which would be willingly chosen by people seeking asylum if safer options were available.” Asylum seekers who arrive by boat without authorisation are more likely to be found to be refugees than people seeking asylum who arrive with valid visas. In 2010-11, 89.6 per cent of people seeking asylum arriving by boat were found to be refugees, compared to 43.7 per cent of those who arrived with valid visas (Refugee Council of Australia, 2024).
The global definition of genocide itself was distorted by colonial powers. The 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, also known as the Genocide Convention, was largely the work of Raphael Lemkin, a lawyer and Jewish man who lost 49 members of his family to the Holocaust (Kornat, 2008, p. 79.) Although Lemkin advised that “crimes which constitute cultural genocide” must be included in the United Nations convention, colonial powers, ensured that “cultural genocide” was omitted from the convention to “avoid implicating themselves in crimes of genocide” and to “limit their obligations under international law” (Bachman, 2019, p. 11.) The Holocaust did not occur in a vacuum, it occurred in the context of colonial genocides committed across the globe. W.E.B. De Bois asserts: “There was no Nazi atrocity of concentration camps […] which the Christian civilisation of Europe had not long been practising against coloured folk in all parts of the world in the name of and for defence of a Superior Race born to rule the world” (Du Bois, 1946).
However, the most significant criticism that I have of the exhibitions in the museum and the rhetoric of our guided tour was the relentless emphasis that atrocities such as the Holocaust will not occur within a democratic system. This is not to say, democracy and democratic rights are not important. Democracy can be instrumental in the protection of rights of minority peoples. However, a democracy is plainly useless in protecting the rights of minority peoples, if the majority do not see those marginalised as human, as deserving of kindness, and or as deserving of resources. The claim that protecting democratic rights can prevent another Holocaust ignores the historical realities of the Holocaust itself. Whilst Hitler never received more than 37% of the vote in a free and open national election, he rose to power through constitutional means in the Weimar Republic, a democratic system. He proclaimed to a judge in court in September 1930 that he would destroy democracy through the democratic process (Ryback, 2024). Additionally, Hitler still received a 37% majority in a national election in July 1932, which is not a negligible percentage. The Nazi Party and Hitler himself exploited antisemitic prejudice as a political strategy to garner support from voters, blaming Germany’s Jewish population for the social, economic, and political issues which the republic confronted (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2024). Mein Kamf, Hitler’s autobiography and political treatise which vehemently promoted antisemitism and racism was released before Hitler became chancellor of Germany. It was released in two volumes in 1925 and 1926 (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2024). The exhibition acknowledging that the “hatred of Jews was a centuries old tradition in Germany” (KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau, 2024).
The sculpture was created by the Yugoslvian artist Nanor Gild (1924-1997) in 1969. Gild was a Holocaust survivor and lost his father and most of his family in Auschwitz. He won the international competition for the commemorative sculpture in 1967. The sculpture depicts stakes, ditches and barbed wire” as symbols of the concentration camp’s security installations. Human skeletons, entangled in the barbed wire, commemorate those who, out of desperation, “went into the wire” and thus took their own lives.
The exhibition also purports that Germany’s democratic Weimar Republic was “jeopardised from the very beginning” predominately due to Germany’s economic debt under the Treaty of Versailles (KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau, 2024). The exhibition concedes itself that democratic systems and protections are not always able to endure themselves in times of crisis (O'Byrne, 2023). Why does an exhibition which seemingly understands the limitations of democratic governance persistently present democracy as the principal force which will prevent genocide and other atrocities which resemble the Holocaust?
The rhetoric that democracy can prevent tragedies such as the Holocaust also ignores contemporary realities. In 2024, Freedom House, a non- for-profit organisation based in the United States reported in its annual Freedom in the World report that Israel is a “parliamentary democracy” with a “multiparty system and independent institutions” that guarantees political rights and civil liberties for the majority of its population. Freedom House evaluates people’s access to political rights and civil liberties in its annual report across 210 countries (Freedom House, 2024). Benjamin Netanyahu is Israel’s longest standing prime minister and was re-elected for fifth time in November 2022 (Berg, 2024). Notably, Freedom House has acknowledged that “Israel cannot remain a democracy without protecting press freedom” (Cosgrove, 2024). Although Israel is a democracy, the United Nations’ Special Committee has found that Israel’s warfare methods in Gaza are “consistent with genocide” including the “use of starvation as a weapon of war” (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2024). Human rights activists from across the globe have also argued that there are “reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide…has been met” (United Nations News, 2024).
As of October 2024, figures from the Palestinian Ministry of Health reveal that at least 45,885 people, including 17,492 children have been killed, 109, 196 people have been injured, and 11,160 people are missing (AJLabs, 2023).
One of the similarities between the Holocaust and the genocide in Gaza was the hate perpetuated against vulnerable groups. Israeli political, military and religious leaders have described Palestinians as a “cancer”, “vermin”, and called for them to be “annihilated” (McGreal, 2024). In the aftermath of Hamas’ attack on Israel in October 2023, Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant ordered a “complete siege” on the Gaza, stripping Palestinians of necessities required to sustain life including food, water, and fuel. Gallant stated that: “We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly” (McGreal, 2024). Israeli children have been socialised to perceive peoples of Arab and Palestinian descent as inferior to them. A 2003 study of Israeli textbooks by the Hebrew University in Jerusalem revealed that peoples of Arab descent were dehumanised as “vile, deviant, and criminal people”, portrayed as “refugees, primitive farmers, and terrorists” or animalised as a “camel, in an Ali Baba dress” (McGreal, 2024). In the contemporary, opinion polls found that there is a significant demographic of Israeli citizens who view peoples of Arab descent as “dirty”, primitive” and “as not valuing human life” (McGreal, 2024).
In Nazi Germany, school children and children who participated in Hitler Youth and the League of German Maidens were taught that Nordic and Aryan races were superior to peoples of Jewish descent and peoples of other races. Peoples of Jewish descent and of non- Aaryan and Nordic descent were labelled “bastard races”, who were incapable of creating culture or civilisation (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2024). Children were read antisemitic children’s books, many of which were published by Julius Streicher der Stürmer-Verlag. One example of this is the The Poisonous Mushroom, which taught children that peoples of Jewish descent were a threat to Germany and could not be a part of Germany’s “national community.” This book juxtaposed peoples of Jewish descent to a poisonous mushroom which could be hidden amongst other mushrooms (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2024).
In my opinion, a very simple lesson we can learn from the Holocaust and from our history of genocide is that we must not hate others. We must strive to practice empathy and tolerance to the highest degree. We must strive to see the inherent value of every human life, regardless of whether they can contribute to capitalist society. We must not support political parties which preach intolerance or hate. We must not support institutions which preach intolerance or hate. We must not hate or look down on others because they challenge us. We must not hate or look down on others because we do not understand their values, practices, or beliefs. We must acknowledge that the rights we experience are not because we are special or inherently worthy, but rather that we have won the “lottery of birth.” We are fortunate to be born in a time and place where we experience basic rights that others do not. I do not believe that our protection of democratic rights will prevent atrocities such as the Holocaust from occurring, if we continue to preach hate, discrimination, and stigmatisation. However, I do believe in the power of empathy, love, and collective action. We can protect each other. If it is not ours, then whose responsibility is it to defend the dignity and rights of other human beings?
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