The Diary of Anne Frank

p. 0, p. 10

p. 0: In the Introduction, Storm Jameson muses about human beings who thought it quite natural to send brilliant, gifted human beings like Anne Frank to concentration camps where they would die miserably. He expresses stupefaction over it. Human beings did this. P. 10: “Men learned early how to press a doctrine over eyes and ears, so that they could torture without being distracted by the victim’s agony. None was ever better shaped for this purpose than the doctrine, exalted in our day, of historical necessity, with its vision of human beings as the instrument through which history is accomplished. Men exist to serve the purpose of history–and this purpose is known to a dialectically trained elite. These privileged persons understand what the logic of history requires; therefore it is their right and their duty to cut living human material into shape. . . An administration grappling at speed with difficult social and economic problems cannot afford to be gentler.” [Cf. the 19th century American doctrine of Manifest Destiny, with its matter-of-fact cruelties for Indians and Mexicans.]