Reflection on Auschwitz and Australia

Peter Maher*
October 2004
Published at: acmica.org

Peter Maher, one of ACMICA’s delegates at the Pax Romana-ICMICA Poland Assembly 2004, reflects on the metaphor of Auschwitz in contemporary Australian exclusionary politics

The theme for the quadrennial assembly of Pax Romana was Poverty and Injustice as Challenges to Ethics and Cultures. Responsibility of Christian Professionals. This theme built on the reflections of past assemblies and continued to look at the way dominant socio-economic systems in the milieu exclude the poor, create a bigger poorer class while claiming to stand for democracy and equality.

Auschwitz and Birkenau

Let me begin with the cultural tour to Auschwitz and Birkenau, those now infamous names standing for the horrors of the Third Reich under Hitler’s plan for the creation of the pure race. No documentary can prepare one for the experience of standing on the platform where the trains carrying the excluded from Hitler’s master plan would disgorge their human cargo to be sent immediately to the gas chambers and the crematorium proudly standing at the end of the platform or to be sold into human slavery as workers for the nearby factories. It is just as unbelievable standing there as it is when watching the documentary but the physical presence of the evidence, the death machine, the degrading conditions, the sheer size of the camp and the guide pointing out that we were standing on the ash and bones of the waste from the crematorium forced me into belief – yes, it really happened and on a scale unimaginable.

Why did it happen? Our guide informed us of the strategic geographical location; the plan to create the pure race and the need to do away with all imperfections in the human condition. This means racist genocide and selective extermination. It means recasting the identity of millions of so-called “misfits” into something other than human.

How did it happen? The system was very clever. Authorities firstly isolated those to be removed from society into ghettos where they were refused the chance to mingle with the population – they became “invisible” in Jewish ghettos or prisons as political or social prisoners. These included Jews; resistors of the state; Christians (particularly religious men and women); homosexuals; mentally ill and people with a physical disability – those who were deemed either unable or inappropriate in procreating and producing the master race. This kind of madness produced the concentration camps designed to concentrate in one place all those deemed a danger to the purity of the race. The third stage of this plan was the extermination camps or death factories. All those who had no means of producing a cash return because of age, gender, disability or race were simply exterminated. Falsified records of death were produced to send to any surviving family members.

This three-phase program often meant nothing was reported or what was reported looked to be a “normal” death in custody.

Reflections on Australian exclusion

My experience at Auschwitz and Birkenau led me to reflect on some exclusionary practices in Australia especially important to Australia in our election/post election period. Let me begin with these reflections.

Why are average Australians untroubled by the systematic denial of Indigenous Australians to their story, language, history and culture? Just like Hitler’s plan, they have been cast as the “other”, both less than “us” and expendable. The methods of exclusion and concentration, so frighteningly similar to the Third Reich, are effective today as ever. Even more clear and despairingly painful is the truth about Australia’s mandatory detention of refugee families. We have enacted the first two phases of exclusion and concentration while avoiding the extermination of those demonised because of method of entry, race, colour and creed.

My experience in Auschwitz brought into vivid relief the precise strategy of Australia’s government to hide the truth and thus make something totally heinous palatable to the people by sophisticated arguments that are really no more than the ends justifies the means. While government and community attitudes are shifting due to the work of advocacy groups in the community, there is still evidence of a systematic attempt by this government to exclude those who do not fit the profile of the “real Australian”. This seems to be based more on cultural affinity and financial security than on compassion and care for those escaping oppression who happens to be the “other”.

The refrain from Canberra runs like this: We have stopped the boat people coming, we have stopped Aboriginal demands for sovereignty and land rights, and stopped those bleeding hearts, surely we need argue no further our case.

Escaping exclusion: The study session

The study session raised many issues that inspired my reflections at Auschwitz and Birkenau. Many sessions offered hope for escaping exclusionary practices. While there were many speeches and clarifications on the key thematics much of this was either not new or a little academic. Some key indicators of poverty and its link with injustice, racism, patriarchy, neo-colonialism and neo-liberalism were analysed. There is a final statement of the assembly being prepared for publication and other papers will be published in due course I hope, so I will restrict my reflections here to one paper.

Joe Holland, a philosopher-theologian from St Thomas University, Miami, USA, offered a thought provoking paper that I found symbolises the best of the reflections and analysis of the relevant issues. He noted that global capitalism rightly belongs to a mechanistic modern cosmology favouring centralisation of an often spiritually and ethically empty “market culture”. This system is driven by market forces in a classical sense resulting in a utilitarian ethics that commodifies people and the planet in service of the market. We can see this for example in the argument that Australia can not “afford” to ratify the Kyoto agreement on greenhouse gas emissions. Holland would we say we can’t afford not to. The first perspective looks at short term business profits for its “moral guide”, while the second follows the long term moral objective of a sustainable environment for our children. The new cosmology as found in Teilhard de Chardin and Thomas Berry offers a truly post modern meta narrative that incorporates a humanising power because it asks important questions: Who are we? Where do we come from? How do we relate to each other and the environment? Where are we going and where is the sacred? The question of profits on this year’s financial report are relegated down the list not because they are not important but because they are not as important in an ethic based on the bigger cosmological story.

The new cosmology of interdependence and inter-subjectivity of all things in a hard spiral of evolution that keeps folding back on itself offers an antidote to the mechanistic cosmology of evolution as an exponential line of growth that moves ever upwards, independent of the basic human questions. For Holland a system unbridled by an ethic based on the new cosmology will lead to a culture of death bringing unsustainable ecological, spiritual and societal devastation because it has no roots in the human and cosmological story. Holland suggests that in embracing the new cosmology there is a way out. An earth story that respects biodiversity in a new feminine-masculine partnership can overcome the marginalisation of the poor, the devastation of the eco-system and the alienating spiritual despair among so many young people. This new story offers hope through decentralised community and business projects that favour eco-sustainability in regions. This radical movement includes the respecting of indigenous cultures and ways of moving to reconnect us to the universal sacred so that ethics is not just a static system but an evolving encounter with the sacred nature of work, family and citizenship. This is precisely the heart of Catholic Social Teaching. So far from the new cosmology taking us away from Catholic Social Teaching, it will reunite us with it in an ever more profound and compelling way.

This thinking is revolutionary for theology, spirituality, politics, sociology and economics. There is much work to do to find its full implications. This is the essential work of Christian professionals in all fields and a prime motivation for the reflection and practice of members of ICMICA federations.

This reflection highlights a critique of the study session. It was at once too centred on the philosophical, political and social analysis from an academic perspective and failed to offer a thoroughgoing theological (especially biblical) analysis of the Christian way to confront dominant systems of oppression; while also being less concerned with strategies for action in the world of ICMICA federations. However, this is more a note of what needs still to be done than a criticism of the meeting itself.

Ten Challenges for ACMICA

A number of issues emerged that I feel might be useful for ACMICA. I will list these as questions for reflection by our movement.

1. How will we relate to the International movement?
2. How will we find practical expression for our regional position in the movement – especially as our Convener Minh Nguyen is now a sub regional coordinator of the Asia Pacific ICMICA.
3. How can we contribute to the role ICMICA has as an NGO with the UN?
4. How do we more fully relate to the Catholic Church? This question emerges from a clear sense at the meeting that we are a significant member of the eight International Catholic Organisations (ICO) globally with close links to the Vatican, and the Vatican representative to the UN. Here in Australia we have little connection at all with the local church except as members of our parishes. How do we strengthen this both as a partnership and a challenge to the institutional church to be informed by lay groups experience as Catholics in the world and as professionals in the world?
5. What is ACMICA’s relationship to IMCS at the International Regional and local level? This is an important question because we are sister organisations forming Pax Romana.
6. What is our relationship to YCS/YCW given the closeness with Pax Romana internationally?
7. Can we be involved in some of the permanent working groups of ICMICA, for example, the Jurists, Teachers, Gender, or Economists groups?
8. Can we publish either a small simple booklet ourselves or offer articles to be published in regional or international publications?
9. The Asia Pacific Regional Calendar: How can we stay in touch at the regional level? With Minh as a sub-regional coordinator can we try to get him to a meeting once a year OR offer to host a regional coordinators meeting in Australia. Both would require fundraising. The next meeting will coincide with the Asian Civil Society Forum in Bangkok (Nov 21 – 25); the ICMICA Asia Pacific meeting being from Nov 27 – 29.
10. What will the ACMICA Calendar be for 2005 – when ICMICA will be hosting many events around the world to celebrate 40th Anniversary of Gaudium et Spes.

Links:
Download information, programs and photos:
www.kik.waw.pl/paxromana

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