Concentration camp

"And fate made everybody equal Outside the limits of the law Son of a kulak or Red commander Son of a priest or commissar... Here classes are all equalized, All men were brothers, camp mates all, Branded as traitors every one..."

"The only reason that there has been no sabotage or espionage on the part of Japanese-Americans is that they are waiting for the right moment to strike. [A statement he later mitigated in his memoirs, see next entry below.]"

"I have since deeply regretted the removal order and my own testimony advocating it, because it was not in keeping with our American concept of freedom and the rights of citizens. Whenever I thought of the innocent little children who were torn from home, school friends, and congenial surroundings, I was conscience-stricken. It was wrong to react so impulsively, without positive evidence of disloyalty, even though we felt we had a good motive in the security of our state. It demonstrates the cruelty of war when fear, get-tough military psychology, propaganda, and racial antagonism combine with one's responsibility for public security to produce such acts. I have always believed that I had no prejudice against the Japanese as such except that spawned by Pearl Harbor and its aftermath."

"We find that at present the human race is divided into one wise man, nine knaves, and ninety fools out of every hundred. That is, by an optimistic observer. The nine knaves assemble themselves under the banner of the most knavish among them, and become 'politicians'; the wise man stands out, because he knows himself to be hopelessly outnumbered, and devotes himself to poetry, mathematics, or philosophy; while the ninety fools plod off under the banners of the nine villains, according to fancy, into the labyrinths of chicanery, malice and warfare. It is pleasant to have command, observes Sancho Panza, even over a flock of sheep, and that is why the politicians raise their banners. It is, moreover, the same thing for the sheep whatever the banner. If it is democracy, then the nine knaves will become members of parliament; if fascism, they will become party leaders; if communism, s. Nothing will be different, except the name. The fools will be still fools, the knaves still leaders, the results still exploitation. As for the wise man, his lot will be much the same under any ideology. Under democracy he will be encouraged to starve to death in a garret, under fascism he will be put in a concentration camp, under communism he will be liquidated."

"A useful concept that... captures the agency of "ordinary" people within the power structure is that of Herrschaft als soziale Praxis—domination as social practice. With its historiographical roots in the history of everyday life, it intends to break open the binary and static opposition of rulers against the ruled encountered in traditional theories of power and domination. The concept turns the ruled into actors who themselves have the power to accept domination, obey orders, acquiesce in rule—or not. As argues, the concept... denotes a "field of forces in which actors relate to and deal with each other even if they sidestep and ignore each other. This field ...change[s] to the extent in which actors become operative or remain passive." In the Nazi dictatorship, the terrorization of the victims was connected to the appeal felt by supporters, abbetors, and accomplices of participating in an "ultimate power to kill." Inside the concentration camps the field of forces was... extremely constricted and unbalanced, with prisoners exposed to near-omnipotent guards who were in a position to violently dominate the inmates' every move. Wolfgang Sofsky has described this setting with the term "absolute power"..."

"There were no lights, stoves, or window panes... We slept on army cots with our clothes on. ...The barbed wire fence which surrounded the camp was visible against the background of the snow-covered Sierra mountain range."