After Auschwitz, the conviction that man knows right from wrong was dispelled as a baseless illusion. Man must look outside himself for values, for morals, now that he has realized his inescapable limitations. Moral relativism, though continuing to be our dominant perception and foundational base, was revealed to be bankrupt, useless in giving much guidance except to continue the trajectory. Had some miracle happened to avert Auschwitz, man probably would have attributed it to his own virtue, or to nature, and continued to insist on his own natural probity and moral self-sufficiency; that reason and intellect have advanced so far and become so infallible. Auschwitz revealed the potential baseness of man…
THIS DAY IN HISTORY – 1983 – Klaus Barbie, the Nazi nicknamed the ‘butcher of Lyon,’ is arrested in Bolivia…Barbie was an SS member and the head of the local Gestapo in Lyon, France. He earned the name Butcher of Lyon by personally torturing prisoners, including men, women, and children, and by breaking extremities, sexual abuse using dogs, and electroshock, among other methods. It is estimated that he was directly responsible for the deaths of up to 14,000 people. In 1947, he became an agent for the US Army Counter Intelligence Corps and later fled to Bolivia (under the name Klaus Altmann). He is believed to have taken part in the “Cocaine Coup” of Luis García Meza Tejada, when the regime forced its way to power in Bolivia in 1980. The 2007 documentary “My Enemy’s Enemy,” directed by Oscar-winning British director Kevin Macdonald, raises the possibility that Barbie helped the CIA orchestrate the 1967 capture and execution of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara in Bolivia. He was identified as living in Bolivia in 1971 by the Klarsfelds (Nazi hunters from France), and on this date, the newly elected government of Hernán Siles Zuazo in Bolivia arrested Barbie and extradited him to France to stand trial….
—English: CONCENTRATION CAMP PRISONER IDENTIFIES SS GUARD
Date 5 June 1945—WIKI
Auschwitz and Auschwitz alone demonstrated the infinite depths to which man can sink, depths incredible in a civilized world, and probably totally beyond the wildest imaginings or yearnings of a Voltaire, Condorcet or Sir Francis Bacon. Man’s reliance on himself as the measure of all things could have remained intact except for Auschwitz. Men had persuaded themselves that humanity had outgrown barabarism until Auschwitz. Until Auschwitz men were confident in some sort of innate moral goodness that would prevail upon behavior; they were confident they could chart the course of life without supernatural intervention, without revealed codes of law, and still create a viable and moral society.
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