Conversations with Dr.

Ervin Staub
10 March 2011, 2:00 – 3:30 p.m. Phnom Penh

After enlightened conversations led by Dr. Ervin Staub with researchers and
practitioners with psychology/trauma background working with Cambodian victims n
the origins and prevention of violence between groups (see Table 4.1 outline below), I
revisited Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the
Banality of Evil.

In addition to Table 4.1, below are photos (with captions from the Conversations of
March 10), excerpts from Hannah Arendt’s aforementioned classic (highlighting the
heroism of Denmark in the face of Hitler’s Nazism, or in Dr. Ervin Staub’s words,
Denmark as heroic “active bystanders”,) and with my commentaries on these issues.

CIVICUS Cambodia founding president Theary C. Seng introducing Dr. Ervin Staub, with participants
(Dr. Inger Agge of Denmark, TPO psychiatrist Dr. Muny Sothara, CIVICUS Cambodia Sok Leang, GIZ-
TPO Youn Sarath, researcher Laura McGrew, GIZ-TPO psychotherapist Judith Strasser, ECCC Witness
Support Section Sophie Swart, etc.). Phnom Penh, 10 March 2011.
 .....

Table 4.1 The Origins and Prevention of Violence between Groups

From Staub, E, (2011). Overcoming evil: Genocide, Violent Conflict, Terrorism. New York:
Oxford University Press.

A. Starting points
Difficult life conditions – economic deterioration, political disorganization, great social changes

Conflict between groups

War, revolution

Consequences of these starting points:

- The frustration of basic psychological needs

- Individuals turning to a group for identity and support
- Scapegoating
- (Destructive) ideologies

B. History, culture, and current practices

Elements Contributing to Violence ( ← ): Elements of Prevention ( → )

- Devaluation of the Other: Humanizing the Other

- Destructive, Exclusive Ideology; Constructive, InclusiveIdeology
- Unhealed Wounds; Healing of Past Wounds
- Uncritical Respect for Authority; Moderate Respect for Authority
- Monolithic Society; Pluralism (Structures, Processes)
- Unjust Societal Arrangements; Just Social Arrangements
- Passive Bystanders; Active Bystanders

C. Continuous processes
The evolution of harm doing (changes in perpetrators, bystanders, institutions, social norms, culture)

The role of leaders

The role of followers

Self-interest as a motivation

.....
 Dr. Ervin Staub engaging the participants, including BBC Guy De Launey, Chun Chenda Sophea of Acid
Burn Victims Network, Joyce and Gil Suhs, CIVICUS Cambodia Sam Rithy Duong Hak, TPO Om Chariya,
Boramy, ADHOC Latt Ky etc.

Examples of Active Bystanders

(excerpts from Hannah Arendt’s Banality of Evil, 1963)

Holland had been the only country in all of Europe where students went on strike
when Jewish professors were dismissed and where a wave of strikes broke out in
response to the first deportation of Jews to German concentration camps… (p. 169).

… but what was much more serious, and certainly totally unexpected, was that
Sweden immediately offered asylum, and sometimes even Swedish nationality, to all
who were persecuted (p. 170-1).

That was totally different from what the Danes did. When the Germans
approached them rather cautiously about introducing the yellow
[dehumanizing] badge [to mark out who was a Jew], they were simply
told that the King would be the first to wear it, and the Danish
government officials were careful to point out that anti-Jewish measures
of any sort would cause their own immediate resignation. It was decisive in
this whole matter that the Germans did not even succeed in introducing the vitally
important distinction between native Danes of Jewish origin… This refusal must have
surprised the Germans to no end… the fact that the Danish government had decided to
protect them. Thus, none of the preparatory moves, so important for the
bureaucracy of murder, could be carried out, and operations were postponed
until the fall of 1943 (p. 171-2).

What he did not reckon with was that—quite apart from Danish resistance—the
German officials who had been living in the country for years were no longer the
same. Not only did General von Hannecken, the military commander, refuse to put
troops at the disposal of the Reich plenipotentiary, Dr. Werner Best…and now von
Hannecken refused even to issue a decree requiring all Jews to report to work (p. 172-
3). It is the only case we know of in which the Nazis met with open native
resistance, and the result seems to have been that those exposed to it changed their
minds (p. 175).

Italy was Germany’s only real ally in Europe… this, however, belonged among the
secrets of the higher-ups… the deep, decisive differences between the totalitarian and
the Fascist forms of government, [e.g.] the treatment of the Jewish question (p. 176).
When Mussolini, under German pressure, introduced anti-Jewish legislation in the late
thirties he stipulated the usual exemptions…but added one more category, namely
former members of the Fascist Party…the great majority of Italian Jews were
exempted.

In recalling these excerpts in light of Dr. Ervin Staub’s “continuum of

destruction”, how “evil” acts culminate from many “preparatory moves so
important in the bureaucracy of murder”, and the role of bystanders, I am drawn back to
the Cambodian situation, not the era of the Khmer Rouge years, but present-day
Cambodia, how we are moving along in the continuum of destruction and the need for
more and more active bystanders to put an end to this evolution toward a repressive
state.

Dr. Staub tells us that passive bystanders enable and encourage a regime along the
continuum of destruction; active ones not only impede the progress toward destruction,
but can act to change the minds of the perpetrators, as noted by Hannah Arendt of the
Danish experience during the Holocaust.
Here, in Cambodia, we—the local and international donor community—should have
nipped at the bud the introduction of the draft NGO Law when it first surfaced, and
should not have allowed the draft NGO Law to have progressed this far along. Like the
Danes upon being approached with anti-Semitics legislation (e.g. wearing of
dehumanizing yellow badge), the influential donors should have categorically
communicated immediately, decisively to the Cambodian government that the draft
NGO Law their firm rejection of it.

- Theary C. Seng, Phnom Penh, 12 March 2011

Conversations with Dr. Ervin Staub at CIVICUS Cambodia, 10 March 2011. (Photos by CIVICUS
Cambodia executive assistant Ms. Eam Sivnin.)