Comparing Wiesel's Night to Vacher De Lapounge and the Rise of Nazi Science

Elie Wiesel's Night is a chilling first hand account of the Nazi holocaust of the Jews in 1944. In a historical context, it gives an extraordinary view of the inside of a Nazi death camps, including Auschwitz. Why did the Nazis go to such terrible lengths to exterminate a people? German nationalists had hated the Jews for years, but Anti-Semitism had not become public policy until Hitler came to power in 1933. When it became clear Germany was losing the war, Hitler decided to proceed in carrying out the Final Solution to the Jewish problem in 1941. Where did this hatred come from?
In "Vacher de Lapounge and the Rise of Nazi Science,'' author Jennifer Hecltt sought to explain the origins of the Nazi science behind their racial ideology, which ultimately led to the extermination of the Jews. Vacher de Lapounge was a Frenchmen who is considered the founder of "anthroposociology," the basis of later Nazi racial ideology. His racial theories were very influential on Nazi racial officers, particularly Hans Gunther, (who himself was one of Hitler s primary influences on racial questions), and his interest in head measurements in determining racial status.

This article is linked with Wiesel's memoir on a very important aspect, Nazi treatment of the Jews and the reasons that the Final Solution happened.

In Night the Jews of Sighet are happy to be free from persecution and to live with fellow Jews, even though Hungarian police forced them to the ghetto. The Jews, from Wiesel's perspective as a fifteen-year-old boy, had no knowledge of the Final Solution of 1944, or the Auschwitz death camp and the Nazi plans for them before their arrival. Upon being arrested and deported, the Jews, which Wiesel was in the accompany of, had thoughts of a revolt, but which quickly died down when reminded to have faith in God. Wiesel, however, felt as if God had forsaken him, and did not feel like he should praise the Lord for his peril.

Similarly, Lapounge's attitude was that God was dead, and that the basis for morality had been lost with him. Interestingly, Lapounge did not call for genocide.

However, he did encourage the government to involve itself with racial segregation to prevent crossbreeding between races, otherwise millions of people would be slaughtered. This warning may have led to the growth of a genocidal movement against the Jews. "Anti-Morality" was key to Lapounge's theories, but not necessarily that of the Nazis, who claimed to cling to Christian ideals.

Although Hecht's article does not shed any light on the actual events of the Holocaust itself, it does lend itself to help explain the justifications utilized by Nazi science in carrying out the events articulated in Wiesel's book. Using Lapounge's racial science, particularly measuring the length of skull, the Nazis were able to establish a scientific method of separating the superior from the inferior. However, Lapounge actually distinguished the two cranial sizes as great and good, rather than good and evil.

The dolichocephals (long heads) were the higher race, or Aryans, who invented and forwarded civilization. The brachicephals were also necessary to maintain that civilization, because of their "loyalty, dependability, deep work ethic, love of home, and ate servility. He actually argued that the Jews to be of the superior race, but of an evil-mirror image of the Aryans, who were increasing their control over them.

These scientific claims made by Lapounge were very influential on Nazi racial theorists, particularly Hans Gunther and Alfred Rosenberg. In fact, Gunther developed a when Gunther sought a post at the correspondence and friendship with Lapounge.

University of Jena, Lapounge gave a letter of recommendation, and what ultimately given the chair of "anthroposociology," the first of its kind. Even Hitler found the time to attend Gunther's inaugural address, lending to its importance in 1933. "Racial Science" became a required course in German schools later that year as a result. Indeed, Lapounge had at least an indirect influence on Hitler's racial doctrine, which relied heavily on Gunther.

Nietzsche, and the "God is dead" theory no doubt influenced Lapounge himself.

Lapounge believed that humans must get become the old moral standards, as Nietzsche had taught before him. The primary difference was where as Nietzsche spoke of a better man as an individual and personal ascension, Lapounge was less thoughtful and only thoughts were in terms of race. Nazi ideology would also choose to break with Nietzsche on the how to improve humanity question. For the Nazis, and Lapounge, race was the key to improve humanity. Lapounge uses his science to help support this.

Although some of his science was changed to meet particular Nazi needs, the basis that the Jews were corrupting Aryans remained the same. Houston Stewart Chamberlain, an Englishman who married Richard Wagner's daughter, was an exception to the Nazi idea requiring scientific support for their racial policies. He believed that Aryans did not need science to justify their actions, and the Nazis used this as well as Lapounge's theories in their propaganda against the Jews.

When the Nazis did carry out the Final Solution, they did so on these racial principles laid out in Hecht's article. The Jews were to be removed from German society, because they were inferior and were corrupting the Aryan race. These were the attitudes of the Nazi guards at the death camps in Wiesel's Night. They had been brainwashed by an ideology based on a science originally devised by a Frenchmen, and they felt justified by it.

However, the Jews did not fight back. Their religious beliefs told them to have faith in God, and that He would deliver them from evil. Many of the Jews at the camps believed God was testing them to see if they had the resolve to fight off Satan. For others at times, including Wiesel, it seemed as though God had deserted them. In fact, Akiba Drumer, the very same to suggest earlier that God was testing them, lost his faith and his reason to live, and offered himself to the Nazis to be killed during a selection.

The surviving Jews held out hope that they would be rescued, and kept their faith in God so that they would.

Elie's father died at Buchenwald on 29 January 1945, and he felt as if nothing mattered anymore. When the Jews were finally rescued, and they had eaten, there was no sign of revenge among the survivors. The Jews religion may not allow for revenge, but perhaps the real reason there was no sign of it was that it didn't matter. Life had lost its meaningfulness to the survivors. Everything had changed, because God had allowed this to happen to them. Their faith perhaps was strengthened by the Holocaust, but did it really matter? All of their loved ones had been slaughtered, and they were of the few survivors. What could revenge against the Nazis bring? It was a pointless endeavor, and they knew it.

The forming of the Nazi ideology, which caused the atrocities of the Holocaust, was rooted in "atheism, pessimism, and an education in physical anthropology that racist science was born. Not only through Lapounge was the racial ideology developed, but through an overall attitude embraced by all too many individuals in a position of power in Germany, and elsewhere. Even Nietzsche can be partly to blame, because some of his ideas were ultimately borrowed and used under the Nazi regime. Science is not solely to blame, as the Nazis were able to use propaganda, which discredited science at times to support their racial policies. Primarily, however, the Nazis did rely on Lapounge's measuring of the skull to distinguish the races, although Lapounge's version did not consider the Jews to be of a lower, or less developed race, as the Nazis would ultimately contend in the Final Solution.

Nevertheless, In Wiesel's Night, the effects of Lapounge's racial science are heavily felt in Elie's personal experiences with the Nazi death camps. Hecht's "Vacher de Lapounge and the Rise of Nazi Science,'' is helpful in understanding where the Nazi racial ideology originated from, although Lapounge can not be cited as the sole source.

Although anti-Semitism was indeed prevalent in Europe before the writings of Lapounge, he certainly helped to intensify the movement that would ultimately cost millions of innocent lives, leaving few survivors. Elie Wiesel was one of those few, and his life was never the same, nor was the lives of the other survivors. All Jews have been since touched by the Holocaust and its aftermath. Wiesel did an extraordinary job in exemplifying the condition of the Jewish spirit during the Holocaust, and those aftereffects. Hecht's article only confirms those roots which caused the atrocity against the Jews had been well underway for quite some time, and perhaps inevitable.