Charles Patterson (1) (1935–)

A surprisingly enjoyable book. It's grim fare, but seeing as how I was unaware of the book being loosely based on the writings of Isaac Bashevis Singer, one of my favorite authors, "enjoyable" it is. The title comes from a line of a Singer story called The Letter Writer: "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 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."

Eternal Treblinka has three main sections: 1) The case is made that humanity's adoption of intensive animal agriculture from its previous hunter-gatherer existence introduced, by allowing human tribes to settle in dedicated areas, a higher level of domination, coercion, and overall brutality within their societies as well as for encouraging larger scale warfare against their neighboring tribes. 2) The industrialization of slaughter is connected throughout its forms. An example being that animal slaughterhouses were, indirectly, the model for the Nazi concentration camps. More broadly, the point being made is that the philosophical separation of humanity from animals created a justification for the exploitation of perceived lesser beings, human or animal. 3) The mention of Holocaust-connected animal advocates and a summary of Singer stories.

A big thumbs up.… (mer)