Lex Fridman: belief

Transcript context

…Yes. And at the fine detail of, what are the different technologies used? What are the different humans and the hierarchy of humans at a camp? What’s the actual experience of the individual person who shows up at a camp? Just get into the details, and in those details, I think there’s some deep profound human truth that can emerge. The mundane one step at a time is how you can achieve evil, and you can get lost in the mundane. Yes, the banality of evil, it’s incredible. I think what is so completely horrific is that half the 6 million were killed by bullets to the back of the head. And the reason they stopped doing that and they wanted to stop doing that was because the guys, the perpetrators were finding it so traumatic. Himmler goes and visits an execution in Ukraine, or maybe it’s in the Baltic states, I can’t remember where he goes, but he witnessed some in the summer of 1941. He thinks, “Oh, that’s horrible. They don’t have to do that. I don’t want my men having to do that. Got to find a more humane way of doing it.” When he’s talk about a more humane way of doing it, humane for the executioners, not for the victims. Because, trust me, Zyklon B is not a nice way to go. Basically, it’s bursting all the capillaries in your lungs. It’s extremely painful, and you can no longer breathe. And it can take up to 20, 25 minutes. Some people, it can take a couple of minutes. But all of those who are standing naked in that gas chamber, first of all, extremely humiliated by this process in the first place. Then there’s a sudden realization of that they’re not having a shower. They’re actually being gassed, and they’re all going to die. Imagine what you’re thinking as that processes you, because you might be the first, but you’re still going to… Even the first person is going to know that, “I can’t breathe, and I’m dying.” Everyone else is going to see the first few dying, and then going to realize that is what’s going to happen to them. And you’ve got those minutes, sometimes many minutes, where you’ve got to contemplate that, and that’s in extreme pain and panic. And just think about how cruel that is.…

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