Appearance
Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust
Charles Patterson's Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust is a difficult book to read. The notion that our persecution of animals expedited our persecution of each other is a disturbing argument. Furthermore, Patterson's conclusion that Hitler's worldview, the concept that the strong should dominate the weak, continues to exist today is troubling. Yet, he finds faith in the growing number of animal rights advocates who reject the slaughterhouse. Patterson is to be commended for his research and courage. I am not a vegetarian but Eternal Treblinka has prompted personal introspection. As Franz Kafka states, "A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us."For a more complete book review please refer to my academic blog: http://www.digitalflavors.blogspot.com/
Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust
This book is heartbreaking for anybody with any sympathy for the plight of animals. Shows how the nazis villified their victims using this same mentality of arrogant superior thinking and thinking of the victors as subhumans or animals. Dare I say, this book makes me proud to be a vegetarian and a Hindu.
Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust
This is a great book. One thing though, there are more than 2 examples from ancient literature that focus on the suffering of animals. But I nitpick. Overall a very powerful argument that may help one day to turn the vile human race from its' bloody habits. (fat chance).
Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust
The author was brave enough to write this book. We ought to be brave enough to read it! I am a yoga teacher with a vast collection of books on health, yoga, spirituality and the humane treatment of animals. The practice of yoga is rooted in the principle of "ahimsa," nonviolence and reverence for all life. For yoga practitioners, for anyone seriously interested in living an ethical life, "Eternal Treblinka" is essential reading. Even if you have already read other classics in the field like "Slaughterhouse" by Gail Eisnitz and "Dominion" by Matthew Scully and the great works by Peter Singer and others, this book will illuminate and expand your consciousness.--Suza Francina, vegan yoga teacher, author, "The New Yoga for People Over 50," "The New Yoga for Healthy Aging" and other books, former mayor, Ojai, California.
Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust
author ofCooking Jewish: 532 Great Recipes from the Rabinowitz Familyfrom the Jewish Journal of Greater Los AngelesApril 5, 2002In the forward to "Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust," animal rights activist and daughter of Holocaust survivors, Lucy Rosen Kaplan, states: "I came to understand that the oppression of nonhumans on this Earth eclipses even the ordeal survived by my parents."Whether the comparison between the extermination of the Jews and our daily slaughter of millions of "food" animals evokes agreement or outrage, you will want to read this meticulously researched and compelling treatment of a painful and controversial subject. Charles Patterson, author of "Anti-Semitism: The Road to the Holocaust and Beyond," elaborates in "Eternal Treblinka" how American slaughterhouses became a model for the gas chambers of Nazi Germany and submits that the killing of animals for food, sport and research is no less an atrocity, a view that is sure to offend some.The book takes its title from the Isaac Bashevis Singer story, "The Letter Writer," in which a Holocaust survivor speaks a poignant eulogy for a mouse he had befriended. "In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka."At its best, the book painstakingly reveals how the mindset that some humans are animals justified slavery, the subjugation of women, the annihilation of the Native American population, the eugenics movement and finally the Holocaust itself.By "domesticating" animals and assuming "dominion" over them, Patterson says, we desensitized ourselves to their suffering because they are "just animals." It was then an easy progression to regard some human beings as more valuable than others. "Thus, with animals already defined as `lower life' fated for exploitation and slaughter, the designation of `lesser' humans as animals paved the way for their subjugation and destruction."The book is filled with sordid revelations about well-known icons. L. Frank Baum, who delighted the world with "The Wizard of Oz," was a staunch advocate for the extermination of Native Americans, as was William Dean Howells and Harvard professor Oliver Wendell Holmes (father of the Supreme Court justice).Henry Ford was a virulent anti-Semite whose "The International Jew" sold 500,000 copies in the United States and was reprinted six times in Germany. Hitler kept a life-size portrait of Ford in his office, praised him in "Mein Kampf" and was quoted in the Detroit News as saying: "I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration." Patterson points out that Ford modeled his assembly line after the American slaughterhouses, a concept not lost on his admirer, Hitler.In a chapter chillingly titled "Improving the Herd, From Animal Breeding to Genocide," Patterson traces the American eugenics movement, which applied the principles of animal husbandry -- "breeding the most desirable, and castrating and killing the rest" -- to the sterilization of criminals, the "feeble" and mentally ill, a handy paradigm for the "racial cleansing" of the emerging Third Reich. "The progression from sterilization to extermination has been a logical one for the Nazis."Patterson notes that long before Hitler came to power, Jews had been vilified as animals. "Calling people animals is always an ominous sign because it sets them up for humiliation, exploitation and murder." Like animals, Jews were "herded" into crowded cattle cars, transported long distances without food or water, tattooed and "selected" for extermination and led through tubes to the "killing floor."If Jews are rats, one need feel no guilt in degrading and exterminating them. If Jews are pigs, then the crematoria were mere "processing plants." Patterson quotes the artist Judy Chicago, who wonders "about the ethical distinction between processing pigs and doing the same thing to people defined as pigs."Many would argue that to compare Nazi genocide to the slaughterhouse is to trivialize the Holocaust. I, for one, was appalled. To buttress his case, Patterson provides numerous "testimonials" from Holocaust survivors and their families as well as from Germans who became animal activists because of their experience, not in spite of it. While the stories are compelling, here Patterson is preaching to the choir.The events of Sept. 11 and the continuing suicide bombings in Israel demonstrate that there are individuals today who do not value the sanctity of even their own lives, much less that of other humans. Patterson may experience difficulty, therefore, in convincing a nation of mindless hamburger eaters, now focused on survival, to turn its energies to the plight of the cow.And yet, perhaps an extreme view must be taken to get attention.In the book, animal activist Christa Blanke, a former Lutheran pastor, notes that "130 years ago, the church remained silent about the slave trade because they were only black people. Fifty years ago, the church remained silent because they were only Jews. Today, the church remains silent because they are only animals."
Monologion and Proslogion With the Replies of Gaunilo and Anselm
Saint Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) was a medieval philosopher, theologian, prior of Bec, and Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 to 1109. This volume includes the Monologion, the Proslogion, Gaunilo's reply to the ontological argument, and Anselm's reply to Gaunilo's reply. Anselm is known by the motto "faith seeking understanding." However, it should be noted that Anselm is not "hoping to replace faith with understanding" (xiii) but rather the better that you come to know God "the more you will see that he is worthy of all your love" (xiv). The Monologion proceeds on these themes, exploring God's Divine attributes and provides a few arguments for the existence of God. The reader will be immediately struck by Anselm's obsession with semantics - Anselm argues that "systematic reflection on the language of Christian doctrine is... always in the service of a better understanding of God" (xv). Anselm also discusses the question of Biblical metaphor, Trinitarian theology, and the rational soul.The Proslogion contains the famous ontological argument. Anselm's ontological argument is as follows. Premise I: God is by definition that than which no greater can exist meaning that God is the most perfect object, the most perfect being that can be thought about. Secondly, it is understood that it is greater to exist in reality and the mind than to exist only in the mind. If you tell the fool who does not believe in God to think about the concept of that than which no greater can exist, that concept exists in his mind. Even the fool cannot doubt that the concept exists in his mind since he had heard it and understood it and "whatever is understood is in the mind" (pg 150). Premise II: Anselm states that that which exists in both the mind and in reality is greater than that which exists only in thought. God by definition is that than which no greater can exist and if it does not exist in reality it contradicts itself. Conclusion: God exists. The rest of the Proslogion applies this "proof" to other attributes of God.Gaunilo's primary objection to Anselm's ontological argument takes the form of an island. Premise I: Imagine the perfect island, the island that no greater than be thought. Premise II: The Island of that than which no greater can be thought plus existence is greater than the island in the mind. Conclusion: Thus, the perfect island of that which no greater can be thought exists in reality. But we know that that island surely cannot exist in reality. Then Gaunilo shows that one can prove every highest form of any kind using his argument. Thus, man can think of the perfectly evil being in the mind and prove its existence.Anselm replies that Gaunilo application of the island is a type of form, and the perfectly evil is a type of being. While in his ontological argument he was arguing for the greatest extent of being possible, not just a form of perfection, but ultimate perfection itself. In response to the argument that the mind cannot hold truth from "the verbal formula" (pg 150) Anselm states then the mind is not actually thinking of that than which no greater cannot be thought. And if the concept of than which no greater cannot be thought can be thought to exist then it must exist "of necessity" (pg 156).Sadly, the Introduction to this work is almost to brief to be of much use besides explaining Anselm's Proslogion and Monologion. Gaunilo's reply is practically ignored and the ramifications of Anselm's ontological argument are not even touched on. Anselm's proof has long reaching Philosophical implications and influence and this volume apply lays out for the diligent reader the necessary primary sources. A must buy for the those interested in Medieval History and Medieval Philosophy (and hopefully other philosophy buffs)!