If you already know it and have seen it, you know what we're talking about. If you haven't yet, watch it now—immediately—(you'll find it complete on YouTube; just search for it). Why? Simply because you must. Because it's a bomb. Because it will explode inside your stomach, dismantling your certainties and illuminating with fresh light things you thought you understood but don't; it will ask you questions you cannot answer and shake you to your core the way only certain works of art know how—or should.
The scene opens to the sound of a bell, followed by the noise of pickaxes and a shovel that seems to be clearing debris piled up for far too long. The camera moves through the corridors of the former psychiatric hospital Paolo Pini, brushing past walls hung with rumpled coats, old clothes, and uniforms.
The set is minimal: in a sterile, white room cold enough to freeze your blood, Marco Paolini moves—the sole narrator of the performance. In the background, Naomi Brenner plays an anonymous German secretary who speaks only brief lines in her language. Two white hospital tables anchor the scene; white uniforms of the institutionalized hang neatly on the back wall and serve as a screen, illuminating and bringing to life the photographs, the faces, and the tragedy of the people whose story this is. And so it begins.
"Everything I say speaks of us"And continues: "Ausmerzen comes from 'aus merz,' from March. A word with a gentle sound, of the earth. It refers to the practice of shepherds during seasonal migration who would kill the weakest sheep and lambs that might slow the journey."
"Everything I say speaks of us"
But let's start with what we think we know. We all know the Nazis were evil—after all, they lost the war, and the victors write history to suit themselves. We also know that Hitler's madness reached its worst aberration with the extermination of the Jews, though we still need a Day of Remembrance to cement that awareness. The power of Ausmerzen lies in telling and revealing little-known aspects of Nazi horror. Let me highlight a few. First, a fact rarely known: long before the Jews, the Roma, the homosexuals, tens of thousands of Germans were exterminated—children and adults with disabilities, deemed lives "unworthy of living." The icy eugenic design of the Nazis was tested and scientifically carried out first on the "defective" children of the Großdeutschland, the Greater Germany that aimed to become Aryan.
Second, another fact rarely known: it was not only the sinister SS in concentration camps who killed, but doctors, nurses, and healthcare workers who were meant to care for people, in hospitals—ordinary people in ordinary towns doing their duty under everyone's eyes. Horror? Yes, but let's not rush to judgment, because history does repeat itself, though never quite the same way, and there are echoes of the present that should make your blood run cold. But we'll get there. Third, often underestimated, is that at the heart of this massacre—the project was called Aktion T4—lay a mixture of theories and economic, racial, and social justifications grounded in precise scientific foundations rooted in the main ideological currents already present by the late nineteenth century: evolutionism, liberal Spencerism, scientific socialism, Malthusianism, social Darwinism, all of which would converge in the eugenics theorized by Galton and followed by a wide circle of renowned scientists and scholars. Fourth, little known is that the Nazis were neither first nor alone: eugenic policies of forced sterilization of people with mental illness were already carried out in the United States starting in 1907, then spreading from the 1920s onward in Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Japan, and Sweden.
Paolini, as always, excels at beginning with small details and building to illuminate the scale of events tragic in their enormity (he had done the same brilliantly with "The Story of Vajont"). He skillfully recounts the stories of the victims, enriching them with the many details carefully recorded in German diaries—names, photographs, biometric data, habits—and weaves them together with equally vivid accounts of those who tormented them, "normal" people who methodically and deliberately carried out the slaughter. It is two hours of narration in which you must force yourself to remember that this is not a dystopian science-fiction film or an HBO series but history: it happened, just a few decades ago.
Ausmerzen. Lives Unworthy of Living. With DVD Helpfreely.
If you're a member, a portion of your purchase will be donated to Fede e Luce. (Learn more)
The book, available with the DVD, is not a simple transcript of the performance but includes selections from it. Here's where you can find it: