Franz Kafka once said that God had a bad day when he created our world. Max Brod, Kafka’s best friend, who recorded this conversation, asked him if there is hope outside the world we know. Kafka nodded smiling. “Oh, hope in abundance, infinite hope – just not for us.” The name ümit means hope in Turkish. It is the second name of Ugur Üngör, professor of Holocaust and genocide studies, who conducts daily research into the most hopeless situations in which we can enter as a person.
“Do you change this work as a person?” Griet Op de Beeck asked her unusual summer guest. “I have a more realistic view of mankind,” reacted Üngör. “Man is not angry, is not good either, but there are conditions in which man can be very angry and also be very good.” Especially the first came by this evening in chilling images. The promise to show humor and cheerfulness was not out of the paint, but I don’t know yet whether that is necessarily disturbing in a conversation about genocide.
Üngör, who obtained his PhD in 2009 on the Armenian genocide in Turkey, is, with Hannah Arendt, convinced that perpetrators are not born, but are made. On the basis of grim fragments, mostly from beautiful feature films and documentaries, it became clear that for Üngör the most important question is how seemingly normal people turn into perpetrators. He could not emphasize the value of imagination of films often enough: “Where my knowledge ends, where science ends, you need art, you need films, to imagine how something like that has worked.”
The short film Beyond the Sun Van Yazan Rabee, with which Rabee graduated from the St. Joost Academy in Breda in 2022, makes an attempt to answer that question. During the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, a research specialization by Üngör, an estimated quarter of a million to three hundred thousand people were tortured in prisons, on a population of 24 million. In the excerpt we see a prison keeper, who, full of repentance, says a prisoner that has just been tortured: “I’m sorry that this should happen.” The prisoner whispers under his voice: “I just sorry for yourself”, after which we see that they are punished for his hesitation, and is tortured himself. This is how perpetrators are made.
Gaza
The conversation was about just about all the genocides ever, and about all sides to a genocide: revenge, guilt, shame, survival, trauma, forgiveness, connection – a fascinating view of this darkest phenomenon. But only after an hour and a half did the bright pink elephant in the room, and also in a very unfortunate way: “Hey, since October 7, 2023, there is widely discussed whether Hamas and Israel are committing genocide. What is your answer to that question as a genocide scientist?” Yes, according to Üngör, Hamas committed a genocidal mass murder on October 7, and Israel has since been working on a genocide. Furthermore, the television lecture was about the value of the GenocideConvention from 1948 (“partially valuable”), about the extermination of the past and the future of Gaza and about the “excessive selective indignation” on both sides of the political spectrum in the Netherlands.
At the end of the Gaza program block, Üngör wanted to take a sip of water, but seemed to think. The entire evening he had spoken decisively, his voice calm and controlled, but now his hands were vibrating. What would go through his head? Does he perhaps expect a personal question from the presenter who normally likes to put her guest on the imaginary sofa? Does she ask for a judgment? Whether us, according to Üngör indeed only the hopelessness remains? No, it wasn’t very personal tonight. But I still don’t know whether that is disturbing in a conversation about genocide.