What Makes A Terrorist Kill?
Nazis at a resort near Auschwitz
I recently watched an interesting show about a scrapbook that a German soldier kept that recorded his days at Auschwitz, “Nazi Scrapbooks from Hell: The Auschwitz albums.” The Nazi soldier was Karl Hocker who arrived at the death camp when 8,000 Hungarian Jews were being murdered every day. It was an efficient killing machine, wiping out 437,00 in under 60 days if I remember correctly.
The photo album documents the frolics of these Nazis at play. In the middle of the routine murder of thousands a day and the extinction of the Hungarian Jews, the scrapbook records all of the “happy” times that the soldiers had at the death camp, including picking blueberries, cocktails singing, playing with dogs and other frolics. The infamous Doctor Mengele is even in some of the photos, smiling and enjoying.
The documentary also shows some photos that two SS officers took over the course of just two days that show what the victims went through from the time that they disembarked the trains up to the door of the gas chambers and ovens.
Hocker as not convicted of causing death, but served 7 years. But the scrapbooks seem to suggest that he was in the thick of it.
It was odd to watch this show as the events in Mumbai unfolded. What makes a killer? What makes someone go along with it? How do you take part in beating, torturing and killing and then go out for cocktails afterward?
How do the terrorists from 9/11 and the Mumbai terror attacks live? Do they have fun while they plan mass murders? During the attacks? One report of the Mumbai incident said that when one of the young men killed, he smiled. How is that possible?
It all boils down to conscience.
