Were Your Organic Potatoes Made in a Concentration Camp?
- Posted by: Morgan Clendaniel
- on September 14, 2009 at 1:08 pm
This is less a shocking piece of breaking news than an interesting piece of historical marginalia: German organic guru Alwin Seifert did some experiments in the gardens of Dachau, gardens worked by Jewish prisoners who were later killed. Seifert went on to become a best-selling author and well-regarded scholar of organic farming, based in part on the work he observed at Dachau, according to author Daniella Seidl.
I don’t imagine this revelation is making anyone want to throw away their now very slightly Nazi-tainted organic produce (just like no one thinks we shouldn’t have sent those Nazi-tainted astronauts to the moon). But it does raise the philosophical conundrums—about peer pressure, the nature of true evil, and the forgiving passage of time—that always arise when an otherwise commendable person (see Pope Benedict XVI or Gunter Grass) is found to have ties to the Nazis.
Photo of Himmler in the Dachau herb garden
Via The Corner
DISCUSSION: 1 Comment
The thing is, tons and tons of German people had (and have) “ties to the Nazis.” The Hitler Youth was like the Boy Scouts and if you weren’t being attacked in the Holocaust, chances are you had some relative who was at least complicit in it. German kids still grow up today and face the bewildering, soul-shattering realization that their relatives are our modern archetype for evil. Imagine checking out your family tree at age 13 and finding that Jeffery Dahmer is a cousin.
We shouldn’t be shocked when some prominent German has connections to the Nazis. That only furthers the fantasy that the Nazis were a separate, evil species, successfully eradicated in WWII. They weren’t. They were humans. As such, we all have a connection to them. You can conclude from the Holocaust that “Nazis are evil”. But I think the more valuable lesson is that humans have a really hard time fighting social pressures to do what’s right.