And It Was Such a Beautiful Day

“These trousers are mine, from Dachau,” Jean Villeret told me as we slowly climbed the steep path of the memorial center at the Struthof-Natzwiller concentration camp. “The jacket belonged to a friend who has already passed away.” “The one I wore here had the letters NN on the back—Nacht und Nebel. Night and Fog—this is how political detainees and resistance fighters were marked in concentration camps, those condemned to die without any form of legal process. People taken by night and fog.

“How did you manage to survive?” I asked him.

“I was twenty-two,” Jean replied, “young, stubborn, and strong as a horse.” But many others weren’t so lucky.

Out of 52,000 internees—including young Slovenian author from Trieste Boris Pahor—22,000 died in Struthof, many as victims of “medical” experiments. They were tortured, killed, and cremated in an incinerator hidden a little further down in the Alsatian forests above the Bruche River valley.

“And it was such a beautiful day when they brought me here,” Jean added. “You look at these hills, this beauty, just yesterday you were chasing girls and partying with friends—you don’t believe something horrible can happen to you. But it can. Oh, it really can.”

Nacht und Nebel is a logical extension of the concept of sovereignty as defined by Nazi legal scholar and philosopher Carl Schmitt. Sovereign is he who has the power, in defence of the vital interests of the nation, to place himself above all legal and ethical rules and laws.

Today, many are once again enamoured with strong leaders, a unified nation, and national sovereignty. Personally, this fills me with unease and concern.

I met Jean on Sunday, June 24, at the annual commemorative ceremony organized by the European Center of Deported Resistance Fighters in cooperation with the French state. Alongside the French Secretary of State for Defence, I was invited to speak at the ceremony on behalf of the Council of Europe.

When the Ministry of Defence gets involved, things become serious. There was an honour guard, official protocol, dozens of flag bearers, a diplomatic corps, and the German military wind band played La Marseillaise. This is how the Germans and the French transcend past divisions—through a shared expression of respect for the victims of Nazism.

In my speech, I quoted Boris Pahor and his Necropolis, in which he described his Struthof experience, and emphasized how vital historical memory is for understanding today’s world, and shared the story of my aunt Marija.

It was another beautiful June day in 1941 when the Germans came for my grandparents at their home near Sveta Ana in the Slovenske gorice hills. Marija, barely two weeks old, was too young to be listed in the deportation papers by the otherwise exceptionally efficient occupation bureaucracy. Packed into cattle cars for deportation to Bosnia, my grandmother was bleeding from childbirth, forced to leave her newborn with neighbours. Yes, they separated children from parents back then. That’s what the authorities said—order must be maintained. My grandparents never saw Marija again; she died a few months later in the arms of a woman who was not her mother.

Marija’s story is a symbolic bridge between yesterday and today. The point is not to label those who separate parents and children today as Nazis—such rhetoric is excessive and unhelpful—but rather to remind us that the peak of inhumanity and evil the world experienced less than eighty years ago didn’t begin in the crematoria of Struthof or other death camps. It began the moment people, for various reasons, started accepting—or even supporting—the political manipulation of hatred and fear. It began when humanity started to erode. When people, gradually and almost imperceptibly at first, then more and more rapidly, began to lose their humanity.

After the ceremony, I returned to Strasbourg. Thanks to the recent loosening of digital content restrictions, I can now watch Slovenian TV at home. Sometimes, I’m not particularly grateful to the European Union for this.

In the news, the anchor-woman, with thinly veiled schadenfreude, reported on the disputes at the EU member state meeting on the migration crisis. “Will Slovenia join the countries ready to take decisive action,” she asked, “or those still advocating open borders?”

I heard that migrants are dying—but mainly because of traffickers, possibly in collusion with humanitarian organizations rescuing men, women, and children from drowning in the Mediterranean. No mention was made of figures showing that irregular arrivals have halved since last year and dropped by 80 percent since 2016—perhaps because that wouldn’t serve those who politically exploit public misery, fear, and hatred.

The crisis most acutely felt in Italy and Greece was not caused so much by migrants as by the indifference, selfishness, shortsightedness, and political opportunism of other EU member states—especially those “ready to act decisively.” Salvini didn’t come to power because of migrants but because Europe abandoned Italy and Greece. We are not facing a migration crisis—we are facing a crisis of our institutions, our humanity, and our values.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., Melania swapped Zara for Gucci, and her husband tweeted that, to protect America, migrants must be deported without any legal proceedings. In the name of the nation’s vital interests, the rule of law must be abolished. Sovereignty.

In the news, I heard that Slovenians have evolved from a people into a nation. Though I’m not entirely sure what that’s supposed to mean, the words made me uneasy. I’m worried about placing the nation above the state and its citizens, just as I’m worried about that understanding of national unity and national interests that prevents us from responding to hatred—and in whose name we gradually become less and less human.

This is not a discourse that helps us overcome past divisions; it is a discourse that can return us to the very reasons those divisions arose.

Summer is here again, and beautiful days lie ahead. A time for romance, holidays, and joyful gatherings with friends. But sometimes, even on beautiful days, terrible things can happen.

The fog descends, and night falls.