Things have changed : kindness is no longer something that belongs to people,
only to lords or to societies, like justice, and justice is now the kindness
of many of us, which means concentration camps are instance of the kindness
of our species, of the ways it pays its dues, of the distorted forms of
intimacy we buttress with our solemnity and piety.  As when Jews were sent
to concentration camps in the thirties in Germany, propelled there in part
by arguments produced by the head of the major German humane society of the
period, the Tierschutzverein.  Hermann Goering by name.

Let me say that more slowly.  One of the striking things about the memories
of my friends who lived through the 1930s in Germany is that in some cases
it was not until Kristalnacht, in 1938, that they had any sense that Hitler
meant anyone ``real'' harm.  What people were aware of when they thought
of Hitler and the Nazis were words, words such as ``purity,'' ``nobility.''
There were ideals everywhere, according to the memories of my friends, and
the ideals included kindness to animals.  Hence there was not much stir
when Goering went on the radio to urge the incarceration of ``cruel''
scientists of blood ``alien to our nation'' and to reassure his audience
that true Germans were kind to animals.  In a radio broadcast on August 28,
1933, he announced, ``In order that animal torturing shall not continue, I
have now stepped in ... and will commit to concentration camps those who
still think that they can continue to treat animals as inanimate property.''
This speech was specifically concerned with vivisection and the religious
use of animals, and unless you were offended by its anti-Semitism or had
some awareness of what the lack of restraints on the power of the
Tierschutzverein signified - for Jewish scientists, say - it probably
sounded reasonable enough.  It emphasized the use of anesthetics, noting
that ``necessary'' animal experiments, especially on rats, which are
``not as susceptible to pain as our domestic pets and [are] most certainly
not worthy of our sympathy,'' would be acceptable.

The important fact about Goering and you and me is that we are human.
Hannah Arendt's essay of 1945, ``Collective Guilt and Universal
Responsibility,'' notes that understanding the horror of the Reich is ``not
aided by speculations about German history and the so-called German national
character. [The murder machine] relies entirely upon the normality of
jobholders and family-men.''  This normality consisted of _decencies_ -
care for the security of one's family, compassion for animals.  Thus, for
all that I am here in the middle of a book in which there are figures
who from my point of view are villains, I keep returning to the discovery
that if I want to understand human villainy, one place to look - not the
only place, but one place - is into myself, and not to look there for my
hatreds, but rather for my loves and my loyalties.  The fate of popular
ideas of the bulldog breeds,which are sometimes vicousness incarnate and
sometimes decency incarnate, may be a clue to the fate of any human
moral trait.  Not the _idea_ of the trait, but the trait itself, as though
there were something to the idea that for us virtue cannot be innocent.

_Bandit : Dossier of a Dangerous Dog_ pp.105-106