Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust

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Summary: A book that could really make a difference in the world
Review: Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust is an extensively documented book in which Charles Patterson looks at the similarities between our species' treatment of nonhuman animals and the Nazi holocaust.

Patterson shows how humans, by thinking of themselves as superior to the other species, distance themselves from other animals resulting in the exploitation of nonhuman animals, who are domesticated, enslaved and used for various purposes.

Humans have looked upon (and still look upon) nonhuman animals as inferior beings that don't possess souls, speech, reasoning and therefore feelings or sensation. This view has made it easy for some to cruelly treat, kill and eat them. Patterson describes how slaves were treated similarly to domestic animals.

By designating some people as animals during the Nazi holocaust, humans were able to persecute, exploit and violently deal with their own species. Patterson states that referring to humans as animals "...is always an ominous sign because it sets them up for humiliation, exploitation, and murder," and he cites numerous examples of races referred to as animals during times when they were exploited, treated brutally, killed and even exterminated.

Patterson then turns his attention to large scale violence against both nonhuman and human animals in both the United States and Germany. Some of this violence was due to the American eugenics movement, which, according to Patterson, was in part inspired by the breeding of domesticated, nonhuman animals, and the creation of assembly-line slaughter in America which later "...crossed the Atlantic Ocean and found fertile soil in Nazi Germany."

In 1939 the eugenics movement in Germany included killing mentally challenged people and those with emotional and physical disabilities. Many of the people instrumental in these mass murders came from a background in animal agriculture. According to Patterson, the eugenics movement, sterilization and murders combined with the mass industrialized slaughter of nonhuman animals led to the Nazi "Final Solution."

Patterson points out that the Nazis treated their victims like animals before murdering them.. Dehumanizing the victims made it easier to murder them.

By looking at how humans have treated nonhuman animals and other humans seen as inferior, Patterson effectively illustrates how the Holocaust occurred and how similar atrocities occur every day in slaughterhouses and factory farms.

The final part of the book looks at Jewish and German people whose advocacy on behalf of nonhuman animals was influenced by the Nazi Holocaust. In order to create a kinder, more compassionate world, our species must make peace with the nonhuman animals with whom we share the earth and give them the respect that they deserve.

Every so often a book is written that has the potential to make an incredible difference. Eternal Treblinka is one such book.
--Reviewed by N. Glenn Perrett

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Summary: Voice for the Voiceless
Review: ETERNAL TREBLINKA; OUR TREATMENT OF ANIMALS AND THE HOLOCAUST
By Charles Patterson

The title Eternal Treblinka refers to the ongoing holocaust of animals. The blindfold covering your eyes will drop while reading each chapter. Even vegans who advocate for a cruelty free lifestyle will find their eyes opening wide to the assembly line atrocities that are inflicted daily upon animals. This book is for each person who says, "Don't tell me. I don't want to know." The time to know is now. The time to act is now. The time to become the voice of the innocent and vulnerable is now.

The first five chapters of Eternal Treblinka give a historical background of humans and their treatment of animals. Humans have displayed a propensity to mistreat and degrade both animals and themselves. Usually the first step in vilifying another group or sub-group within the human species is to attribute animal-like qualities to them. This precedes the domination, enslavement, and slaughter of that group.

Stewart David, who is profiled in chapter six, states, "If the public is allowed to remain detached from the suffering of the factory farms, animal laboratories, fur farms, steel-jaw leg hold traps, rodeos, circuses, and other atrocities, these atrocities will continue. We must make them feel the pain of the creatures whose screams are hidden behind the locked doors, out of sight, out of mind. Their language may not be understandable to others, but we know what they are saying."

In one chapter Mr. Patterson discusses a worker who explains that on pig farms sows are forced to live on concrete and develop such painful conditions that they can't walk. "On the farm where I work", she states, "they drag the live ones who can't stand up anymore out of the crate. They put a metal snare around her ear or foot and drag her the full length of the building. These animals are just screaming in pain. They're dragging them across the concrete, it's ripping their skin, the metal snares are tearing up their ears." Mr. Patterson goes on to explain how worn-out sows are dumped on a pile, where they stay for up to two weeks until the cull truck picks them up and takes them to renderers who grind them up to make them into something profitable.

The mistreatment of people and the mistreatment of animals are connected.
The last three chapters parallel the treatment of animals and the holocaust. The slaughterhouse appears to hold the very same atrocities as the Nazi death camps. Eternal Treblinka forces the reader to face the horror of present day factory farming; it also awakens a soul to the plight of the voiceless.

While the screams of these creatures are kept comfortably hidden behind locked doors, they cannot be comfortably hidden from our collective consciousness.

Review by Patricia Rodriguez

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Summary: Eternal Treblinka Evokes Disturbing and Important Feelings
Review: I approached reading Eternal Treblinka with some trepidation. There was something confusing to me about the idea of connecting the cruelty and horror of the Holocaust, to the treatment of animals in our society. The word offensive crossed my mind briefly. How could one remotely compare the unspeakable torture the Holocaust victims endured with the suffering of barnyard animals and wild creatures?

Once I began reading the book however, I was introduced to the spiritual connection Jews have always had with animals. Isaac Bashevis Singer is a strong presence in this volume and through his quoted writings and ideas, the parallels become abundantly clear.

Reading Eternal Treblinka was a very disturbing experience. I found the book enormously informative and thought provoking and it stirred up realizations about myself I prefer not to face. I am a reasonably sensitive and compassionate person and I would certainly never wish to harm any living being intentionally. Yet, I now realize that my stated values and my day-to-day behaviour often contradict each other.

I am an animal lover from way back. Among the cards I carry in my wallet is a membership to the Fur Bearers, a well-known animal advocacy association located in Canada. My partner and I adopted the very first dog through Montreal Greyhound Rescue the day this organization opened its doors. We treat the pets in our home with kindness, love and respect. I cringe at news stories about animal abuse of any kind. I sit down to dinner and enjoy a juicy, thick, luscious rare sirloin steak; catch the contradiction?

An old expression goes, "what you don't see can't hurt you." I don't see the suffering the cow goes through in order to make my meal possible. I don't hear the frightened mooing while she is being pulled down the conveyer belt. I don't witness the cold-hearted cruelty while the cow is being handled on the way to the butcher's knife. To me, this piece of steak came from the meat shelf in my local supermarket, all neatly wrapped in transparent plastic in the right size, ready for my consumption and enjoyment. This cow has no face. I can eat this cow because there is no personal connection between us; at least no conscious connection.

We treat animals as if we were superior beings entitled to control and exploit them. Even those of us who profess to love and respect animals unconsciously debase them. We will say such things as "He eats like a pig", "She's as fat as a cow", "That guy is a dirty dog" and other such examples when making insulting comments about other humans. To demean human beings we compare them to animals.

This brings us to one of the main points of Eternal Treblinka. To convince it's citizens that it was necessary to rid the world of Jews, Hitler and his Nazis referred to Jews as lowly animals not worthy of human consideration or treatment. If Hitler could manipulate his followers into thinking of Jews, and the other poor souls on his extermination list, as being in the same class as common barnyard animals; then slaughtering them is no longer a matter of conscience. Only those beings we think of as in our total control and domination could be marked for death without a second thought.

There are portions in this book that are hard to read and imagine. Once or twice, I was tempted to close it altogether rather than think about the images described. I am not ashamed to admit that tears flowed down my face more than once while reading certain passages. The bottom line is the pain I felt in reading this book is nothing compared to the pain we as human beings are capable of inflicting on ourselves and other animals when we forget the connection all living beings share.

Eternal Treblinka is an eye opening, thought provoking book that I highly recommend as way of gaining additional insight into the psychology of the Holocaust.

Rating:
Summary: Raises difficult questions and uncomfortable realities
Review: I read a lot of criticism about Charles Patterson's book, "Eternal Treblinka" before I actually read the book, so I was expecting something thought-provoking and controversial, to be sure. I was not disappointed. I know there have been many who have been offended by the comparison of mankind's treatment of animals to the Nazi's treatment of the Jews, and I can understand why. But on the other hand, the parallels that Mr. Patterson draw in this book are compelling, and seen from an objective, not emotional, point of view do make sense.

I've also heard of the protests where meat-eaters object to being likened to Nazis, and I'd like to point out right now that no such correlation is made in this book. It seems that many of the critics of "Eternal Treblinka" have not bothered to read the book.

There are many other sociological parallels that can be drawn in regard to our treatment of animals and their systematic slaughter from mere existence, but given Mr. Patterson's background, this is the one that makes sense to write about. What emerges from the pages of horrifying stories (both of animal abuse and human abuse) is a compelling argument for an open and critical discussion of our role, as humans, in the world and how far our dominion over other creatures really stretches.

I was surprised to learn that so many animal rights activists are either survivors of the Holocaust, or family members of survivors (or, in many cases, German citizens who were on the "safe" side during the war). These personal stories are moving, and the fact that these people can extend their sanctity for life beyond humans is truly inspiring.

This is a wonderful book. Hard to read in the way it's hard to face any tragedy and stare it down. Well worth it though. You will not be disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: Raises difficult questions and uncomfortable realities
Review: I read a lot of reviews about Charles Patterson's book, "Eternal Treblinka" before I actually read the book, so I was expecting something thought-provoking and controversial, to be sure. I was not disappointed. I know there have been many who have been offended by the comparison of mankind's treatment of animals to the Nazi's treatment of the Jews, and I can understand why. But on the other hand, the parallels that Mr. Patterson draw in this book are compelling, and seen from an objective, not emotional, point of view do make sense.
I've also heard of the protests where meat-eaters object to being likened to Nazis, and I'd like to point out right now that no such correlation is made in this book. It seems that many of the critics of "Eternal Treblinka" have not bothered to read the book.
There are many other sociological parallels that can be drawn in regard to our treatment of animals and their systematic slaughter from mere existence, but given Mr. Patterson's background, this is the one that makes sense to write about. What emerges from the pages of horrifying stories (both of animal abuse and human abuse) is a compelling argument for an open and critical discussion of our role, as humans, in the world and how far our dominion over other creatures really stretches.
I was surprised to learn that so many animal rights activists are either survivors of the Holocaust, or family members of survivors (or, in many cases, German citizens who were on the "safe" side during the war). These personal stories are moving, and the fact that these people can extend their sanctity for life beyond humans is truly inspiring.
This is a wonderful book. Hard to read in the way it's hard to face any tragedy and stare it down. Well worth it though. You will not be disappointed.

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Summary: Learn more about history than you did in school!
Review: I'm trying to convince my World Studies and U.S. History teachers to use this book as a part of the curriculum. Eternal Treblinka compares the disgustingly similar Holocausts of the Jewish during World War II and of the animals throughout history. The book also gives very important background information on the history of animal abuse and who was responsible for the genocide of the Jewish. It's surprisingly easy to read and it's amazing where he gets all this information. The book is divided into three parts: A Fundamental Debacle (I), Master Species, Master Race (II), and Holocaust Echoes (III). Each part is introduced by a quote(s) relating to the topics of the chapters.

"A Fundamental Debacle" talks about when animal abuse began and discusses the controversial subject of whether or not animals were put on earth for humans' needs. "Master Species, Master Race" describes what caused the Holocaust and every person responsible for carrying out the Final Solution (the scientists, slaughterhouse employees, Henry Ford, and Hitler himself) and the story of how slaughterhouses were established. Chapter three, "The Industrialization of Slaughter" includes quotes and paragraphs about the classic novel The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. And finally, "Holocaust Echoes" is comprised of the stories of animal rights activists who have been affected by the Holocaust, including Peter Singer and the Nobel Prize winner and Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer.

Also, this book isn't only about the Holocaust of the Jewish; it also talks about the mass murders of the Chinese during World War II, the infamous genocide of the Native Americans, the conquest of Africa and the Philippines, the dehumanization of the Vietnamese and what happened to the Japanese during the bombing of Pearl Harbor. This is a wonderful book and anybody who's interested in history should own a copy. I learned more history from reading this book than in my history classes. I knew more about the Holocaust than my teachers did, which was handy when I argue with them. --Reviewed by Angie Lau

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Summary: Required reading
Review: If society is to ever evolve and embrace an ethic of compassion toward humans and animals, it will only happen when we confront the ideas presented in this book. Reading Eternal Treblinka is not always a pleasant experience, but it is, nonetheless, a vital one. This book should be required reading in every secondary school in the country.

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Summary: 'Let him who is without sin cast the first stone'
Review: Reading Charles Patterson's THE ETERNAL TREBLINKA: OUR TREATMENT OF ANILMALS AND THE HOLOCAUST is a shattering experience. If Patterson's postulates are true, and he has carefully researched and documented with copious footnotes the facts he so bravely reveals here, then we as a global society need to take responsibility for the horrors against fellow man we so willingly assign to 'others', never ourselves. The parallel of man's treatment of animals from Genesis to the present and the recurring genocides of humans is stated early on in this wise book: "Not only did the domestication of animals provide the model and inspiration for human slavery and tyrannical government, but it laid the groundwork for western hierarchical thinking and European and American radical theories that called for the conquest and exploitation of 'lower races,' while at the same time vilifying them as animals so as to encourage and justify their subjugation." And later, "Throughout the history of our ascent to dominance as the master species, our victimization of animals has served as the model and foundation for our victimization of each other. The study of human history reveals the pattern: first, humans exploit and slaughter animals; then, they treat other people like animals and so the same to them."
Patterson traces our carnivorous society to the Ice Age when plants were no longer available for food and animals became the source of staving off hunger. From this beginning he traces the gradual herding, forced breeding, selective trashing of the weak and infirm, sterilization techniques, American Indian genocide and slavery practices throughout the world as well as in America, slaughterhouse productions lines (suggesting that Henry Ford who made assembly line production popular and who was one of Hitler's few heroes forged the way for models for the extermination camps of the Nazis) - all steps from the abuse of animals to the extermination of peoples in such a way that we as readers are forced to reflect on what we have always considered as atrocities that shamed other countries and societies are actually rooted in our own history.
Good books make us think. Patterson writes so well that despite his historical didactic approach to this uncomfortable subject, it is difficult to put this book down. Many may not wish to finish reading his tome, but everyone should be made aware of its postulates. In the midst of his documentation of his theory he places an utterly poetic tribute of a chapter to Isaac Bashivus Singer, the Nobel Prize laureate for literature in 1978. Singer was a vegetarian and a poet of kindness and Patterson seeks to imbue hope in his readers by emulating Singer's visions.
THE ETERNAL TREBLINKA is an important book and if we are to learn from history to prevent repetition of past sins then this surely stands as one source of instruction. Would that schools could include this as recommended reading for all students - form Junior High to high school to college.

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Summary: Eternal Treblinka has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize
Review: Robert Cohen writes, "One year ago I read an author's manuscript. Today, that book is in print, and you should
add this one to your summer reading list: ETERNAL TREBLINKA by Charles Patterson. I have just been informed by Mr. Patterson that his Eternal Treblinka has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. After reading Eternal Treblinka, I wrote this:

The flight from Newark, New Jersey, to Portland Oregon lasted six hours. On the plane, I read the rough draft version of "Eternal Treblinka," an extraordinary book written by Charles Patterson that equates the real life and death experiences of ten billion farm animals raised each year for human consumption to the same Nazi atrocities suffered by six million Jews who became Hitler's "Final Solution."

This is one of the best written, best researched animal rights books that I've ever had the pleasure to preview. Fresh from the memory of having read about Jews stuffed into cattle cars as they were being transported to the slaughterhouses of Aushwitz and Dachau, I myself became witness to the twenty-first century's foremost example of man's inhumanity to other living creatures. Our tortured kin. The animal holocaust.

Last Thursday morning, I drove from Portland to Mount St. Helens in Washington State. I had been attending the Raw Foods Festival in Portland, and found a few hours in between my talks to visit the scene of America's greatest natural volcanic disaster. On this hot summer day, I drove across a bridge spanning the cascading Columbia River, separating Portland from Vancouver. There next to my car was a 40-foot long silver van with holes large enough to see through.

Inside of the truck were dairy cows. They were packed tightly together-with no room to lie down. The cows had served man's purpose. Each individual lived her short lifetime of stress, first birthing a child who would be immediately taken from
her, then injected with hormones that would painfully stretch her udder, depleting calcium from her own bones so that she would generate enough milk to fill 100 half-pint containers for school children to drink each day. Her ancestors naturally produced enough milk to have filled just four of those same containers.

The cow whose eyes I look into for just one moment would be made to suffer through hours or days of driving hundreds or thousands of miles to what was to become a dairyman's final solution.

Yesterday she died a violent death shared by 10,000 of her sisters.

Today she will share that same fate with 10,000 other Guernsey and Holstein cows on Route 80 or Route 66 or I-95, in Kansas, New Jersey, or Florida, on highways and neighborhoods where your children and mine sleep comfortably unaware of the predestined doom for living beings who have done nothing to merit such treatment.

Tomorrow the same, and the day after that. Eternal death. Eternal slaughter. Eternal Treblinka.

A holocaust occurs while meat eaters turn the other way, denying that such horrors could possibly exist. Were the German and Polish people who knew the fate of those trucked to Buchenwald and Treblinka any less moral or guilty than those who comprehend the truth about what really happens to farm animals?

I followed the truck for a bit until it veered off to the left, and I continued my drive in another direction. I took the high road, and she took the low road, and her look will forever haunt me. Her body will produce 2,000 quarter-pounders for one of many fast food franchises.

Her anus and cheeks, arms and legs, back and udder will be served so that others can have it their way. Today's slaughter will feed 20,000,000 people, and the year's tally of Elsie and her sisters will add up to seven billion kids meals served.

I feel the slaughterhouse. I hear the screams and know their fear. I smell the sweat and blood and suffer their pain. I internalize the agony and distress of transported animals. I envision the once green fields in which these animals grazed and the cold metallic ramp and smell of warm sticky blood that flows on the slaughterhouse floor and stains the psyche of us all.

I imagine the stun gun bolt to the head. The upside-down hoisting and the sliced neck artery. The animal who chokes on her blood, and the man who slices off her legs as she kicks in fear from the ensuing pain of butchery. The last fifteen seconds of a death that no creature deserves. The arrogance of a man who eats the flesh and dares not consider the origin of each bite.

Nobel Prize-winning author Isaac Bashevis Singer once wrote about a man's love for his departed pet mouse:

"What do they know-all these scholars, all these philosophers, all the leaders of the world - about such as you? They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation. All other creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated. In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka."

I ceased eating meat four years ago. I now look at my pet dog, whom my daughters rescued from a shelter one day before she was due to be injected with man's final solution. I have come to love her.

Her name is Tykee, the goddess of fortune. Is she unlike the baby lamb or calf who is separated from her mother and shipped to the exterminator? I reflect on the Amazon parrot who recognizes me and sings "hello" when I visit my parents. Does the bird with green feathers differ significantly from the chicken with white plumage?

Do they not feel pain and deserve the right to live? I cannot eat them. I can no longer be then cause for their pain, although I once was a part of their genocide. I once denied responsibility for the acts of terror that occurred outside of my vision...outside of my consciousness. Their bodies were cut into smaller pieces and were broiled, baked, and fried.

Oh, that same crime of arrogance to which I now plead guilty! My penitence? Community service. I explain the act to meat eaters, and some turn their backs on me. Close their eyes. Shut their
ears. Who wishes to deal with the truth and reality of death?

Arriving at Mount St. Helens, I carefully read one plaque after another, taking note of performances both heroic and ironic. I consider the day that once silenced the birds and boiled to death fish in the streams. A blink in the eye of geological
time that stripped the landscape of the color green, divested pine trees of their needles and scattered whole trees like matchsticks across barren mountain tops.

I examined the original seismographs and warnings from hundreds of scientists to the residents to evacuate their homes and come to terms with an absolute truth. I became dumfounded by the arrogance of one man, Harry R. Truman, who lived alone in a cabin aside the lake below a mountain that would soon explode with the magnitude and power equivalent to 27,000
Hiroshima-type blasts.

A man who declined to leave that mountain. A man who denied a truth shared by others. An arrogant man who looked death in the face and refused to respect man's destiny. I try to imagine his final moment of sensibility. At the same time, in my own mind's eye I call upon the face of a cow in a truck on a bridge."

Rating:
Summary: Interesting and thought provoking
Review: The book is interesting. Not much in it was new as far as factory farms etc. I was I admit a bit put off with the suggestion that all killing of animals for food is wrong, since my family has hunted for centuries in the United States and as a hunter I know what a clean kill is.

Personally I would like to see the mass market feed lots and slaughter houses done away with. Even the kosher ones. Since I detest waste and believe that if someone is going to eat meat they better raise and cull it themselves and use every part of the animal from hide, to bone.

Completely ignored were issues like native Americans in Artic areas where eating animals has often been the only means of survival. Or even my own Passamaquoody family from eastern Maine in times past.

My challenge to anyone who believes that eating animals is always wrong is stop using any and all products, including life saving medicines derived from animals of any kind. Be consistent and risk dying for your beliefs.

And how ironic that on pages 160-161 we have Professor Peter Singer who is an animals rights person, as well as a 'human' who believes disabled or sick babies up to 30 days old should be killed or allowed to die. Seems odd that he would be in a book about Nazis who did that to Jews and other humans.

Why 5 stars? Because overall the book has some valuable information and I tend to take what I want from good books and ignore the rest.