Band of Brothers, The KZ Caste System, and Why We Fight
The young Allied soldiers that liberated the Nazi Concentration camps throughout occupied Europe were the first forced to make sense of their discovery. What have we learned since then?
INTRODUCTION
Band of Brothers recently appeared on Netflix, allowing a new generation to discover the bravery and experiences of soldiers in Easy Company. The series tells the story of Easy “E” Company from their initial training in 1942 to the end of World War II. We follow them as they parachute behind enemy lines in the early hours of D-Day in support of the landings at Utah Beach, participated in the liberation of Carentan, and again parachuted into action during Operation Market Garden.
On its release in 2001, the 10-part HBO series was the first of its kind, and it drew more interest in understanding the catastrophe. Before each episode, the actual soldier from E company appears on screen to tell the details of their experience. In episode seven, titled "Bastogne," we see the conditions in which the Allies spent the latter half of December 1944. Bastogne's piercing cold and incessant hunger marked a challenging period for E Company. Bastogne was a prologue to the battle for Foy, where morale sank to new lows due to cold weather, poor leadership, and high casualties. Some Allied soldiers had been away from home for over three years, struggling to cope as they once did directly after the invasion. In November 1944, E Company was pontificating that the war could end by Christmas; by mid-December, Bastogne had changed that. They lost a lot in Bastogne, but mostly, they lost hope that the war could end soon. They needed something to remind them of the vigor and focus they applied in the early days of 1942 and after D-Day. They needed to be reminded of who and what they were fighting for. Or, at the very least, what they were fighting against.
Episode 9, titled "Why We Fight," is a sobering rollercoaster that dives the tension as deep as the two previous episodes had made it soar. Captain Nixon, a level-headed adjunct to a division commander, starts to question the purpose of their mission. Nixon and Major Richard Winters, his closest confidant, have this exchange;
Winters: So, uh…how’d it go, this morning, the jump?
Nixon: it was great, fantastic.
We took a direct hit over the drop zone.
I got out, two others got out.
Winters: The rest of the boys?
Nixon: well, they blew up over Germany somewhere.
Boom.
Winters: Yeah.
Yeah, I’m sorry.
Nixon: About what?
Winters: Well, tough situation for the—
Nixon: —Oh, yeah, the boys, yeah. It’s terrible. Oh, well, wasn’t me.
You know, the real tragedy is they also lost their CO, so guess who gets to write all the letters home?
Goddamn nightmare.
Winters: Still drinking nothing but Vat 69, huh?
Nixon: Only the finest for Mrs. Nixon’s baby boy.
Winters: That a problem up at the regiment?
Nixon: What this [shows whiskey]? No, I just don’t like it up there.
Winters: Good, so you’ll be happy to hear that Sink is transferring you back down to battalion S-3.
Nixon: What do you think I should write to these parents, Dick?
Winters: Hear what I said, Nix? You’ve been demoted.
Nixon: Yeah, demoted, got you.
Cause I don’t know how to tell them their kids never even made it out of the goddamn plane.
Winters: You tell ‘em what you always tell ‘em, their sons died as heroes.
Nixon: You really still believe that?
Winters: Yeah.
Yeah, I do. Don’t you?
Nixon: [scoffs]
Easy Company was in a cantankerous limbo between the feeling that the war would never end and that they were too close to victory to lose anyone senselessly. Every death became a compounded tragedy this close to the end of the war. Thirty-five minutes into the episode, we find half of Easy Company approaching a shadowy perimeter gate. They had arrived in a small, isolated town just prior, and Major Winters had ordered security patrols. South patrol stumbled upon something through the tall trees and fog amidst an eerie silence. It pans to the rest of the Company pulling in; they see barely recognizable skeleton figures with their hands pressed against the gate: 30 or so standing, half erect, all in striped pajamas. No one could tell if they were men or women, old or young. They all looked the same, like they were decaying or rotting and had been for quite a while. Joseph Liebgott, a Jewish American in the Company, appears as everyone tries to process the scene. They’ve seen a lot in the last nine months. But they had never seen anything like this before. Nobody had ever seen anything like this before.
I first watched the series with my Dad when I was in high school. Then again, over 20 years later, this episode was especially difficult the second time. We’re not told which camp E company liberated. We know they were in Haugenau before going southeast with a final rondeview point at the Berchtesgaden. By the war's end, the Americans had liberated Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Flosenberg, Dora-Mittelbau, and Dachau. My best guess would be Buchenwald, maybe a subcamp like Ohrdruf, but it seems that the filmmakers intentionally made it non-descript to allude to the staggering number of other camps that dotted Europe. The episode depicts how Allied forces experienced the discovery of the concentration camps in Nazi-occupied lands amidst all their horrors. What questions do they ask the inmates? How do soldiers process seeing mounds and lorries filled to the brim with corpses? How can they possibly acclimate to the stench of death and disease that radiates from every inmate?
Leibgott, Winters, and Nixon question an inmate;
(Liebgott translates for the inmates.)
Inmate: The guards left this morning, sir.
Inmate: They burned some of the huts first.
Inmate: With the prisoners still in them, sir. Alive.
Nixon: Jesus Christ
Inmate: Some of the prisoners tried to stop them. Some of them were killed. They didn't have enough ammo for all the prisoners, so they killed as many as they could before they left the camp.
Inmate: They locked the gates behind them and headed south.
Nixon: Someone in town must of told them we were coming.
Winters: Will you ask him, ask him what kind of camp this is?
Winters: Um, what, uh. Why are they here?
Leibgott: He says it's a work camp for; I'm not sure what the word means, sir.
Leibgott: Uh, unwanted?, disliked maybe?
Winters: Criminals?
Leibgott: I don't think criminals, sir.
Inmate: No.
Inmate: Doctors, musicians, tailors, clerks, farmers, intellectuals, I mean, normal people.
Leibgott: They're Jews.
Historian David Stafford recorded the reactions of Eisenhower, Bradley, and Patton upon entering Dachau after its liberation. "The smell of death, urine, and feces over the camp. Emaciated bodies still lay unburied, lice crawling over their yellow skin. Some of their bellies were covered in coarse black sores of dried blood where the starving prisoners had desperately torn out the entrails for food. [Omar] Bradley was too shocked to speak. Patton briefly disappeared to vomit behind a wall. Eisenhower went deathly pale. "We are told the American soldier doesn't know what he's fighting for," he said grimly. "Now at least he will know what he is fighting against." (Stafford, 2007, p. 78)
THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS (KZ)
The Nazi concentration camp system that dotted occupied Europe during WWII is a singular historical invention incomparable to almost any event. The first camp was Dachau, opening in 1933 for political prisoners. It would become the model for all future Concentration camps (inmates use KZ - the Nazis used KL). Theodor Eicke, an SS Lieutenant General, and Dachau's second Commandant would go on to be an influential contributor to the destruction of millions of people. To be sure, it was Himmler who constructed the plan to exterminate "subhumans" from all of Europe. But it would be Eicke who accelerated those goals and aims, and his efforts were widely successful. Eicke was known for his brutality and detested weakness. Among his contributions, he instituted security protocols that would feed his demand for unconditional obedience for both staff and prisoners. He also created the famous stripe pajamas inmates wore and the guards' "death heads" uniforms, among many other murderous contributions. Rudolf Höss, an underling of Eicke's, got his start at Dachau and would go on to become the first Commandant of Auschwitz.
Nazi concentration camps were structured and organized into what you might consider micro-societies. They had rules and laws, norms, and expectations. They had all the elements any moderately sized society would have. Still, in this particular one, the morality of its citizens is perverted, the laws inverted, the norms spun upside down, and expectations ceased to exist.
Hermann Langbein was an Austrian political prisoner who, in 1942, was transferred from Dachau to Auschwitz. He had been in Dachau since 1940 and acquired a depth of experience in camp life there. His experience in Dachau would serve him well in future KZs. He was transported alongside other German political prisoners he knew and remained in Auschwitz until 1944 when he was transferred to Neuengamme as the Russian front crept closer and closer to Auschwitz in the early days of 1945. Upon his arrival in Auschwitz, he set out to create a comprehensive collection of as much evidence of Nazi war crimes as he could.
In People In Auschwitz, he writes a breathtakingly objective account of the people (inmates, guards, SS, Commandants, and the civilian population in the surrounding area) who made up this micro-society. This is no survivor's memoir. It's a rich anthropomorphic analysis that reaches into a wide variety of aspects that defined Auschwitz — with binding depth, historical corroboration, and objectivity. The sheer scale of Auschwitz is most challenging to comprehend. It had over 40 subcamps, including Birkenau, Buna Works, and Monowitz. The Auschwitz complex was made up of three camps: Auschwitz-I, the main camp, Auschwitz-II Birkenau, and Auschwitz-III Monowitz, and within these three, many others existed. The goal of all KZ — whether a labor, POW, or death camp — was the devaluation, demoralization, and destruction of its occupants. The goal from the beginning was to subjugate and exterminate "inferior" races.
Nazi Germany was a caste system, and that ingrained human ranking extended to every aspect of German-occupied land and into every KZ. In Isabel Wilkerson's Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, she analyzes three distinct caste systems; America, Nazi Germany, and India. She defines caste as "an artificial construction, a fixed and embedded ranking of human value that sets the presumed supremacy of one group against the presumed inferiority of other groups." She elaborates, saying, “Dehumanize the group, and you have completed the work of dehumanizing any single person within it. Dehumanize the group, and you have quarantined them from the masses you choose to elevate and have programmed everyone, even some of the targets of dehumanization, to no longer believe what their eyes can see, to no longer trust their own thoughts. Dehumanization distances not only the out-group from the in-group, but those in the in-group from their own humanity. It makes slaves to groupthink of everyone in the hierarchy. A caste system relies on dehumanization to lock the marginalized outside of the norms of humanity so that any action against them is seen as reasonable.”
This human-value ranking system was the soil on which all concentration camps were built. It defined almost every aspect of KZ and could determine whether a person would live or die based on their place on the prisoner hierarchy. It also extended to guards, SS staff, physicians, and doctors. A hallmark of caste is that everyone has a role, and the caste system relies heavily on everyone playing their assigned roles without disruption.
“Caste is the infrastructure of our divisions. It is the architecture of human hierarchy, the subconscious code of instructions for maintaining."
POSITIONS & POWER
The ranking system within Auschwitz ebbed and flowed with its population. There were relatively few German political prisoners in Auschwitz, even in the main camp. So, they made up only a tiny portion of the dominant caste. Each rank was branded with a colored triangle; Jews wore two triangles that created the Star of David. Green for criminals, red for political prisoners, black for "asocial" (vagrants, non-conformists, or prostitutes), pink for homosexuals, purple for Jehovah witnesses, and the two triangles forming the Jewish star was yellow unless the Jewish prisoner was included in one of the other prisoner categories. A Jewish political prisoner, for example, would be identified with a yellow triangle beneath a red triangle.
The Greens and Reds shared the most influence and power in KZ and were the first to arrive, garnering inmate numbers 1-30. The Nazis relied heavily on Greens in the beginning, who were often German career criminals, to do the dirty work. They were the first block elders, capos, block leaders, and camp elders. All of which are high positions within the KZ caste system. The Nazis never turned down an opportunity to let others do their murderous work, and the Greens were all too pleased to lend a hand.
Rudolf Höss' deputy, Hans Aumeier, freely admitted in captivity — namely, that "in Auschwitz block elders were selected for their positions because of their sadistic temperament." (Langbein, pp. 144)
In the two and half years most of these Greens spent in KZ, they occupied influential positions in the micro-society. They were attached, peripherally, to the dominant caste in KZ in a way they had never been before and more so than they ever would after the war. Some of the most brutal Greens defined the early days of Auschwitz. Their cruelty was only harnessed when a new commandant was put in place in 1943, and the most violent Greens were ousted by the cunning Reds and transferred to other KZs.
Langbein, a Red, quotes another Red inmate functionary who says, "In the early period of Auschwitz, a Red could, as a rule, obtain an armband and thereby gain power only if he was able to adapt to the Greens. Rather than the SS man, it is the inmate with a red triangle robbing and killing his comrades who serves as the most shattering symbol of the concentration camps," writes inmate Benedikt Kautsky. "He is living proof that the mentality of violence corrupts and ruins those who display it even when they have themselves become victims of violence." (Langbein, pp. 147)
To be sure, throughout the book, Langbein dictates many examples of both Greens and Reds who did not beat, abuse, or murder those below them. Many even risked their lives trying to offer help in various ways. However, these groups of inmate functionaries maintained the highest level of the caste system a prisoner could hope to attain.
The lowest in the KZ caste system was anyone wearing the Star of David. They received less food rations and more physically demanding work details. They were targets of all those who ranked above them, not to mention the systematic plan to exterminate them by disease, labor, or the gas chambers. "Gypsies" or Roma Sinti were closely aligned with Jews, as were Russian POWs. Poles, Czechs, Italians, and French made up the middle of the caste system. Wilkerson says this about mid-level caste members,
“Newcomers learn to vie for the good favor of the dominant caste and to distance themselves from the bottom-dwellers, as if everyone were in the grip of an invisible playwright. They learn to conform to the dictates of the ruling caste if they are to prosper in their new land, a shortcut being to contrast themselves with the degraded lowest caste, to use them as the historic foil against which to rise in a harsh, every-man-for-himself economy.”
Inmates who had slightly more food, freedom of movement, and better living conditions could determine if they lived or died in Auschwitz.
Isabel Wilkerson writes, “The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power—which groups have it and which do not. It is about resources—which caste is seen as worthy of them and which are not, who gets to acquire and control them, and who does not. It is about respect, authority, and assumptions of competence—who is accorded these and who is not.”
Langbein speaks to various ordinates and consistently uses the phrase "as a rule" to denote things that prisoners, guards, and staff understood to be a sort of an unwritten constitution in KZ. These ordinates, by design, could change arbitrarily and, sometimes, without warning, forcing the subordinate caste to blindly adhere to orders they could not know, and ones likely to get them killed for not following.
CAMP LIFE, LAW, AND LINGO
Müselmänn (Müslermänner)
The existence of large gray masses of slowly decaying, starving inmates called Müselmänn was a hallmark of KZs. Inmate physicians describe the process of an inmate turning into a Müselmanner in two stages — first, typical side effects of starvation — immense weight loss and muscular weakness. In this stage, remarkably, the inmate has not sustained any severe damage. Typical of malnourishment and starvation, the inmate has a heightened preoccupation with food but does not exhibit any abnormal emotional changes. Inmate physicians struggled to identify when a Müselmänner would transition into the second stage, reporting that for some, it was gradual over some time, but for others, rapid. Langbein documents what an inmate physician describes happening in the second stage:
"His gaze became clouded, and his face assumed an apathetic, absent, mournful expression. His eyes were veiled and his eyeballs hollow. His skin began to turn a pale gray, had a paper-thin, hard appearance, and started to peel. It was very susceptible to all kinds of infections. The patient's hair became shaggy, lusterless, and brittle. His head became elongated, and his checkbones and eye sockets stood out. The patient breathed slowly and spoke softly with a great effort." (Langbein, pp. 92)
Another inmate who observed female Muselmänners while working in the infirmary says: "Starving, weakened, and constantly freezing patients liked to gather around the stove in the infirmary barracks, or rather, by the brick chimney canal that ran lengthwise through the barracks. Often the patients sat on this canal as on a bench, and this caused serious burns, up to the third degree, on the back of the thighs and buttocks. Sometimes the patient did not even feel the burns.
One case I witnessed was that of a female patient at an advanced stage of starvation whose soles were chewed off at night by rats in such a way that on the surface only the carefully preserved tendons were left. The woman did not react at all. After a bandage was applied, she lived for two more days."
CANADA
The elements that made up most KZ were documented and implemented with zealous consistency. Additional elements that were distinct to a particular camp were also present. Death camps like Treblinka had a carefully choreographed process that would enable efficient mass murder. All camps that processed subordinate caste members (Jews) had a "Canada." Canada was an area close to the ramp that received, sorted, and stored all of the belongings of those deported and or being sent directly to the gas chambers. Possessions stolen from the deported Jews and other targeted groups included foreign currency, watches, rings, food, and other valuables. Inmates assigned to work in Canada possessed a unique power and influence. At the end of the war, Allied forces found salt mines filled to the brim with barrels of gold, lorries full of jewelry and valuables, and the stolen art of Europe. All of which were stolen from Jews before their destruction and sent back to Germany. Canada was a source for audacious levels of corruption among SS guards, physicians, and Commandants. Among both inmates and jailers, few were strong enough to reject the temptation of Canada.
"In Auschwitz, the corruption, the system of "organizing" that dominated all camps, assumed unimaginable dimensions, for in the extermination camp there was Canada. Among the possessions of the deported Jews that were taken from them at the ramp, there were (frequently concealed) valuables of all kinds. Before the luggage was sorted and registered, anyone was free to appropriate whatever he liked; this applied to both inmates and the SS." (Langbein, pp. 136)
In Auschwitz, "organizing" items from Canada could mean living or dying. Langbein describes the Darwinian concept of "organizing," the name given to the appropriation of institutional property that had not yet been distributed, was part of the tradition of the Nazi concentration camps. It offered the guards a welcome opportunity to enrich themselves." (Langbein, pp. 133)
Canada and "organizing" was a collaborative affair between inmates and guards and an element of KZ that illustrates the inversion of values in the micro-society. Langbein describes, "Canada skewed all values to the point of grotesqueness...."In the women's camp, it was possible to trade a diamond ring for water, which was scarce there, or buy quinine tablets with a bottle of champagne or elegant stockings...." One inmate remembers a prisoner who swapped a diamond that he had discovered sewn into an article of clothing from Canada for an apple, which he gave to a sick friend." (Langbein, pp. 141)
CREATING ACCOMPLICES
An emblem of caste and the KZ micro-society is for the bottom and middle groups to reinforce their own subjugation. The dominant caste is only so big and holds only so many enforcers, so it behooves them to cultivate and incriminate accomplices that will advance their embedded system. Wilkerson says, “The caste system thrives on dissension and inequality, envy and false rivalries, that build up in a world of perceived scarcity. As people elbow for position, the greatest tensions arise between those adjacent to one another, up and down the ladder.” The Nazis utilized this tool of caste in many different areas of the Reich, and the Einstazgruppen enabled this incrimination to a murderous extent in the East after the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Subordinate caste members are instructed from day one to attempt to attain a position in the dominant caste at all costs without any chance of ever gaining admission. The degree to which inmates participated in the dehumanization of their comrades varies from person to person.
Betrayers, informers, and spies existed in all lands occupied by the Nazis in WWII, but in KZ, they lived in a binary existence of self-importance and danger. They were only valuable to the dominant caste if they could produce information; otherwise, they were in heightened danger from both the SS guards and their fellow prisoners. The reasons why an inmate would become an informer to the Gestapo in Auschwitz could be as simple as attaining more food or better living conditions. Primo Levi, a world-famous Auschwitz survivor, in his book, The Drowned and the Saved, describes this binary existence, saying, "the human need to divide the social field into ‘us’ and ‘them’, two clearly distinct and identifiable groups, but points out that such binary thinking is inadequate in the face of the complexity of life in the camps. The network of human relationships inside the camps was not simple; he writes: it could not be reduced to the two blocs of victims and persecutors. A key facet of Nazi practice, after all, was to attempt to turn victims into accomplices."
Langbein highlights many examples of this, but one, in particular, feels most illustrative, "Not just little and little-known informers were dropped by the SS as soon as they had outlived their usefulness. Lewandowski, (a Polish informer) too, was shot by the Political Department during his fourth stay in the bunker. SS Klaus Dylewski had heard that Lewandowski's role as an agent provocateur in the camp had become known, and this rendered him worthless to Dylewski." A pole, Stefan Olpinski had become "unfavorably known" by inmates as a tool of the Political Department and experienced first hand the wrath of his brethren. "Olpinkski became a victim of his compatriots' revenge. They sent him a beautiful pullover that contained typhus-carrying lice; he resisted for a long time being sent to the infirmary. When this became unavoidable, the Political Department demanded that its protégé receive special care. The SS garrison physicians, however, knew the role this informer had played and protected Polish physicians and nurses whose treatment caused Olpinkski to die of typhus." Olpinski's comrade, Ernst Malorny, another informer, "also paid for his treason with his life."
CIVILIANS IN AUSCHWITZ
Before the war ended, American and British military occupation authorities were ordered to find and implement German citizens, untainted by Nazism, that could be counted on to fill positions left by fleeing party members. They relied on local community leaders that could be found to implement the Allies' decrees, distribute food and medicine, and organize the clean-up of bombed-out buildings. Leo Linton was an American intelligence officer tasked with finding these people. Two phrases were ubiquitous when conversing with these local populations; "Ich war immer dagegan" ("I was always against the Nazis") and "I had [or helped] a Jewish friend."
Civilian members of the dominant caste within the structured system were relied upon to silently reinforce the system that purported them to the top. Wilkerson says this about silent complicity within the caste, “Evil asks little of the dominant caste other than to sit back and do nothing. All that it needs from bystanders is their silent complicity in the evil committed on their behalf, though a caste system will protect, and perhaps even reward, those who deign to join in the terror.”
German civilians who lived around Auschwitz had an invested interest in maintaining their position in the dominant caste, especially as the war ended and potential retribution was ripe. Their silence was complicity. One of the cruelest, brutalest, and most violent SS leaders was Oswald Kaduk. In a response during the Frankfurt-Auschwitz trial in 1963, Kaduk describes this complicity. "When the ovens were burning, the leaping flame was five meters high and could be seen from the railroad station. That station was full of civilians. No one said anything. There also were furlough trains that often stopped at Auschwitz for a while. Sometimes the whole station was fogged in; then the Wehrmacht officers looked out the window and asked why there was such a sweet smell. But no one had the courage to ask, What's going on here? There is no sugar refinery in this place. Why are these chimneys here?" Pery Broad, an equally cruel SS officer, didn't hold back when he told the same court, "The pitch-black smoke clouds could be seen and heard for kilometers. The stench was simply unbearable. The flames that came from the chimneys of the crematoriums could be seen from afar. In those days (1944), I had the impression that people were no longer trying to keep these things secret or to camouflage them."
In the context of the caste system, the German population who silently reinforced the destruction of other human beings, in an attempt not to lose their own standing in the dominant caste ended up sacrificing their own humanity. Wilkerson again, “Their lives were to some degree a lie and in dehumanizing these people whom they regarded as beasts of the field, they dehumanized themselves.”
In Episode 9 of Band of Brothers, we see a large group of civilians entering the camp. After requisitioning food from local shops, the soldiers of E company rounded up the local civilians. Major Winters had ordered them to help bury the hundreds of corpses that lay strewn throughout the half-destroyed main complex. Nazi housewives, farmers, school teachers, clergy members, all just ordinary people, are seen slowly walking through the gate of KZ. Their reckoning and Germany's reckoning of the atrocities committed on behalf of the German people had only just begun.
CONCLUSION
My Grandfather, Neil, was too young to fight in WWII, fighting instead in Korea in the 1950s, and spent years stationed in Vietnam through the 60s and early 70s. He retired as a Lieutenant-Colonel and died of lung cancer when I was still in elementary school. He was a stereotypical military man who abided by discipline and order even into his later years. Having lost him so young, I was never able to ask the questions I would now like to know the answers to. However, I am not sure he would have told me them had I been brave enough to ask. Years after his death, our large Irish Catholic family passed around his journals from Vietnam. These provide at least a peak into his tours, his thoughts on the conflict, his men, and his desire to get them all home safely. He had five sons back home, some of whom were his soldiers ages. The Colonel's reentry to civilian life after the war was typical of many Vietnam veterans. The brutality and depravity of the war inflicted new levels of despair onto its participants and he did not return unscathed by the horrors he witnessed. Twenty-four years after his death and now knowing much more about both WWII and Vietnam, I am convinced he would not have answered my inquiries. Some things experienced in war are just too grave to speak of or relay, and the bearers of the experience are the ones who must wrestle with their meanings.
The Allied soldiers that liberated the Nazi concentration camps were a generation of men who had to live with the discoveries they endured in Europe and the Pacific. Words must have seemed so useless in their attempts to process those scenes.
Auschwitz and the entire Nazi concentration camp system were constructed, supported, and administrated on the Nazi caste system. It permeated every aspect of all eventualities. It played a direct role in who lived and died, who had power, and who did not. Who were "worthy of life" and who were Untermenschen—subhumans. This binary and arbitrary ranking system was based on nothing more than a human-constructed lie.
It is a historical failure when we learn of despotism and proclaim that the individual perpetrators are "evil" and "monsters." When we lazily sort the evil deeds into similarly binary buckets, we continue to engage in the system that provided the pre-conditions and backdrop for the eventual catastrophe. Those who won the lottery with a seat in the dominant caste are duty-bound to reject the embedded systems thrust upon them.
"No one is free until everyone is free." - Fannie Lou Hamer.
Isabel Wilkerson, one last time, “What’s most disturbing about the Nazi phenomenon is not that the Nazis were madmen or monsters. It’s that they were ordinary human beings.” It is also tempting to vilify a single despot at the sight of injustice when, in fact, it is the actions, or more commonly inactions, of ordinary people that keep the mechanism of caste running, the people who shrug their shoulders at the latest police killing, the people who laugh off the coded put-downs of marginalized people shared at the dinner table and say nothing for fear of alienating an otherwise beloved uncle.”
KG 2023