During the following weeks I was to hear this hate-drenched tone all the time, and every time I cringed. It was a tone which stripped the person it addressed of her or his personhood, and at the same time held her like a lifeless thing; it was a tone no one should ever get used to, designed to intimidate and thereby deaden the sense of self...Authority in Auschwitz meant disrespect for the prisoners to the point of rejecting their existence, their right simply to be. This relentless need to insult those discriminated against, at their expense: It can only mean that it actually wasn't so easy for the 'master race' to deal with the death camps. One had to prove to oneself by exercising such flippant cruelty that these subhumans weren't human. And by proving it to oneself, they would actually become humans again, because they counted on them having a reaction the the insult. The insult would have been meaningless without the mortification that it was meant to produce.
Ruth Kluger
autobiographical records
1994
Weiter leben. Eine Jugend.
Munchen:DTV
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