History of the 20th Century

The twentieth century was the bloodiest in human history: besides the

tremendous expansion of human technical capabilities that marked the

century, death camps and mass murders were also typical of it. It is not

that humankind’s morality had deteriorated, but simply that

developments of civilization that held unforeseeable consequences

aided in the creation of forms of tyranny well suited to evil inclinations,

and in causing suffering to others. These types of tyranny were set up

by means of the mass society; hand in hand with them went

humankind’s scientific and technological development, the twisted

emblem of which was a hitherto unknown settlement in Poland called

Oswiecim-Auschwitz. There, during the Second World War, German

fascists used the techniques of heavy industry (corresponding, in other

words, to the human technical capacities of the age) to murder groups

of people regarded as targets by modern scientific racism and anti-

Semitism: primarily Jews, but others as well. There have been

genocides, albeit not such “scientific" ones, since then – indeed before

that time as well (as the Armenian Genocide at the beginning of the

century’s second decade), but Auschwitz has become the symbol of the

evil face of modern humanity. We should also not forget that Soviet

Stalinism also produced its own horrific, totalitarian gallows and camps.