What drives people to exterminate others? The historian
Daniel Pick reveals the story of an extraordinary project which aimed to unearth persecution's roots, from witch-hunts to the
Holocaust and beyond. In
1961,
Adolf Eichmann, one of the chief organisers of the Holocaust, was tried in
Jerusalem. Among those deeply troubled by his apparent ordinariness was
David Astor, the editor of the
Observer .
Astor was also an enthusiastic champion of psychoanalysis, and made a speech declaring that the 'political psychopathology' of
Nazism - and other examples of persecution and extermination - should be investigated. And he had the money to make this happen.
The historian
Norman Cohn contacted Astor and offered to help. Cohn was the author of
The Pursuit of the Millennium, a pioneering study of the ways medieval utopian visions led to 'purifying' massacres.
With Astor's support, Cohn set up the
Columbus Centre, a team of historians, sociologists and other scholars who set about investigating the psychological roots of the
Nazi mass killings of
Jews and
Gypsies, and much earlier examples such as the witch-hunts across
Europe in the
Middle Ages.
One member of the team, psychiatrist Dr
Henry Dicks, even visited
West German prisons to interview convicted SS killers and concentration camp guards face to face.
In this programme, Daniel Pick investigates the story of the Columbus
Centre, drawing on exclusive access to private recordings of the Centre's meetings.And he explores the impact of the project today, from terrorism studies to the
Tribunal that tried the perpetrators of the
Rwanda genocide.
With:
Jeremy Lewis,
Lucy Astor,
Adrian Dicks,
Marina Voikhanskaya, Steven Reicher,
John Horgan,
Frank Chalk,
Albie Sachs.
Producer: Phil Tinline
Listen online @
http://www
.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03y0n8g
First broadcast: Monday 17
March 2014
- published: 08 Aug 2014
- views: 4341