Hannah Arendt - Total Domination

3) What happens to human beings in concentration camps?


In this piece of writing, Hannah Arendt really pressures the idea of human concentration camps. The people who enter the concentration camps are then used for experimental purposes and there not just meant to eliminate people. “The camps are meant to not only to exterminate people and degrade human beings, but also serve the ghastly experiment of eliminating…” (Arendt 88). The types of conditions that are present in these camps somewhat stimulate the conditions in war and are scientifically controlled (Arendt 88). As stated in the reading these camps originated from totalitarianism governments. So these camps become a separator between the “real” world and “artificial” world, which is the concentration camps.
There was one statement in particular that really caught my attention. “The real horror of the concentration and extermination camps lies in the fact that the inmates, even if they happen to keep alive, are more effectively cut off from the world of the living than if they had died” (Arendt 94). I thought that this statement of Hannah Arendt really summed up what was going on in these camps. What she’s saying is that, the only way to describe the dreadfulness of these camps is to experience them yourself. She describes the environment as being so terrible and insolated that its worse then being dead, in another words you would be better off dead. Overall I thought that this piece of writing was well written in terms of it expressing Hannah Arendt’s views towards totalitarianism, and the views show that Hannah Arendt is against totalitarianism.



Works Sited

Arendt, Hannah. “Total Domination” A world of ideas: Essential readings for collage writers Ed. Lee A. Jacobus. New York: Bedford St. Martins 2006 pp 85- 96