Iakovos Kambanellis wrote ‘Freedom came in May’ as a result of time spent in Mauthausen Concentration camp in Upper Austria, and the title refers to his unexpected release by American forces in May 1945. His personal memoir is of being arrested with no recourse in law, and of freight journeys between different camps. At the same time ordinary people completely ignored those heading for the camps as they led their normal lives. It was proof of Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil . Further proof is given in the lack of human language for detainees. Human beings controlled as units or numbers are remade as non-human, with no family, occupation or personality, and so can be disposed of at will.
Why does such evil occur, and why are there no monsters involved, only ordinary people?Hannah Arendt also spoke of the lack of language among the perpetrators of such evil; if one is unable to apply words of all-pervasive custom to one’s actions, such as no murder’, one cannot form the pervasive custom in one’s brain.