SOLDIERS AS SACRIFICIAL BODIES
JEWS AS SACRIFICIAL BODIES
Richard Koenigsberg

The soldier is a sacrificial body whose death or maiming functions to glorify the dream or 
reality of a nation.  Subsequent to WW-I, there arose memorials throughout France, vast graveyards consisting of white crosses, thousands upon thousands of them.

The soldiers who fought were involved in a chaotic, destructive situation, and their leaders
could not protect them.  But after they were dead, their "memories" were nurtured, 
certify the existence, the reality, the power and glory of France. The death of the
soldiers, the fact that they died and were maimed, functioned to persuade people that
 nations are real, that they exist. Nations exists by virtue of its capacity to claim the bodies
of soldiers, to dispense with life and death.

The Nazi genocide of the Jews was an extension of the idea of warfare, where the bodies of
human beings are sacrificed in the name of glorification of the nation. The Jews were
sacrificial victims, dying in the name of the God, Germany. Just as Germans soldiers were sacrificial victims, dying in the name of the god, Germany.

In Hitler's mind, the Jews were insufficiently worshipful, were not making a sacrifice as the German soldiers were.  By being gassed in the death camps Hitler was showing them that
they could not escape the obligation to sacrifice their lives in the name of glorifying the God worshipped by the Nazis, "Germany.