Art, Truth, and Politics

New York Times:

The 332-to-95 vote to table the impeachment article drafted by Representative Al Green, Democrat of Texas, constituted the first action by the House since Democrats took control in January on a measure to impeach Mr. Trump, a significant move that Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and other party leaders have toiled to avoid. By agreeing to table the article, Ms. Pelosi and the Democrats put off — at least for now — a prolonged and divisive debate over whether Mr. Trump’s conduct warrants his expulsion.

First usage of colored triangles. The first commandant, Otto Koch, went on to be commandant at Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, and Majdanek. SS guards trained at Sachsenburg for Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a trade unionist.

—Martin Niemöller

SS commandant villa

Empty salons. Corridors. Salons. Doors. Doors. Salons. Empty chairs, deep armchairs, thick carpets. Heavy hangings. Stairs, steps. Steps, one after the other.

SS administration building

The crematorium.  The pyramid at the lower left is made of human ashes.

It was the paralysis of that public which failed to turn into a mob, a paralysis achieved by the fascination and fear emanating from the display of power, which permitted the deadly logic of problem-solving to take its course unhampered. In Lawrence Stoke’s words, ‘The failure when the regime first set insecurely in power to protest its inhumane measures made prevention of their logical culmination all but impossible, however unwanted and disapproved this undoubtedly was.’

—Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989), 74.