In Broad Daylight: The Secret Procedures behind the Holocaust by Bullets

by Patrick Desbois

the laws put in place during the genocide seem to determine the feelings of guilt and innocence of the neighborhood. Law, even the law of a genocidal dictatorship, would appear to trump conscience. Human beings are quite adept at telling themselves that if something is legal, they can’t be guilty.

I try to get my audience to keep thinking while learning the facts. And not to separate the “pleasant” world on one side from the knowledge of the criminal acts of the Shoah by bullets on the other side. It took me a long time, many years, to live, breathe, and think with my eyes open. To listen, read, reread, question the neighbors to the crimes and search the archives in order to finally think, at least a little. Not only so that I could stand to know about genocidal acts but mostly so that I would not stop thinking once I knew about them. Not to be removed from oneself. To think while watching, to try to understand these acts, is already to resist. When thought turns off, refuses to hear or see a genocidal act, we become half-conscious, perhaps without being aware of it, a spectator transfixed by the crime.

a genocide is also in part an organized and orchestrated mass crime that promises criminals the achievement of values that will save a country, a “race,” or a political belief. This pretension justifies genocide with supposed “superior values.” Genocide masquerades as a moral act.

Forgetting the massacres of others is an integral part of democratic comfort.