The Geography of Dehumanization

From Poland to El Salvador to Trump's Zones of Exception

In March, Trump defied a Supreme Court ruling and deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an innocent man, to a detention center in El Salvador. Although the administration acknowledged the deportation as an “error,” they have also refused to retrieve him.

This week, historian and Holocaust scholar Timothy Snyder issued a chilling warning.

He compared the administration’s detainment of its citizens in El Salvador to the way Nazi Germany established countless death camps on non-German soil.

Snyder wrote, “Yesterday the president defied a Supreme Court ruling to return a man who was mistakenly sent to a gulag in another country, celebrated the suffering of this innocent person, and spoke of sending Americans to foreign concentration camps. This is the beginning of an American policy of state terror.”

As Snyder explained, authoritarian regimes sidestep the rule of law to persecute people. They do this by moving people into "zones of exception," places outside their own territory where they can claim that the law does not apply.

Snyder’s commentary is insightful and penetrating, and I’d like to extend it further.

The tools of this administration draw directly from methods that Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia used during World War II. Understanding those tools and the history behind them is vital to our solidarity and our survival.

Dehumanization doesn’t just unfold in speech; it is mapped onto geographies, or bodies of land, and rhen onto individual bodies.

Just as the language of dehumanization matters, so too does its geography.

Authoritarian regimes carefully choose locations for extra-judicial concentration camps where they have already engraved oppression and manufactured animosity. (This is a topic for another column, but many people that the U.S. administration dehumanizes flee here from countries that are targets of U.S. interventionism.)

By choosing to abduct and “disappear” people to countries that people have been trained to view as dangerous or broken, authoritarian regimes reframe those geographies as zones where atrocity is expected, and even sanctioned.

In the case of El Salvador, this doesn’t just amplify the harm inflicted against the people that the U.S. illegally abducts and deports.

It rebrands the country itself, and its innocent citizens, as threats.

The Nazis did this in occupied Poland. As a result, the Polish people and their diaspora, my family among them, have carried the stigma of state violence not only on the land, but in our bodies, where it simmers decades later.

The Polish Genocide in World War II

Most American children learn that the Nazis murdered six million Jews. What they don’t learn is that Nazi Germany also targeted Black people, the Roma and Sinti, LGBTQ+ people, disabled people, political opponents, trade unionists, and many others.

Even fewer know that Hitler targeted the Polish people themselves—and that nearly six million Poles were killed. Of these, about 2.5 million (including my mother and her family) were Polish Jews.

In 1939, ten days before invading Poland, Hitler delivered a talk now known as the Obersalzberg Speech to Wehrmacht commanders assembled on the grounds of his home.

He instructed his commanders to oversee the genocide of the Polish people. He stated,

“Kill without pity or mercy all men, women or children of Polish descent or language. Only in this way can we obtain the living space [Lebensraum] we need. The destruction of Poland is our primary task. The aim is the annihilation of living forces.”

“Our strength,” Hitler added, “consists in our speed and in our brutality. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”

Heinrich Himmler, the key Nazi figure responsible for implementing the “Final Solution” (the murder of Jews), echoed Hitler’s aims. In March of 1940, Himmler stated, "All Polish specialists will be exploited in our military-industrial complex. Later, all Poles will disappear from this world. It is imperative that the great Germans consider the elimination of all Polish people as its chief task."

My mother, pictured below with me, survived the genocides of World War II.

Jadwiga Teresa Lezgold, my mother, with me.

Prior to the onset of the war, my grandfather wanted to send my mother’s older sister, then ten years old, to Warsaw to be educated among his Jewish family there. The whole family would, he intended, follow here there within the next few years. But my grandmother delayed him, insisting that their farm was prospering, and that their true wealth lay in the land itself. Had she not won that argument, my mother would have met the same fate as their family in Warsaw, many of whom died in the Holocaust.

As I’ve written, The Soviet Army abducted my mother when she was only 7 and her sisters 5 and 10. They imprisoned her father and loaded my mother, grandmother, and aunts at gunpoint onto cattle cars, with slatted openings on the sides so the cattle could breathe, on a six-week journey to Siberia. Amid a brutal winter, countless people—young and old—died on the journey; many more did not survive the labor camps.

Meanwhile in Poland, just as Jews were forced to wear the Star of David on their clothing, nearly 3 million Polish laborers were made to wear a yellow badge with a purple “P.” (According to Nazi mythology, these were symbols both of racial betrayal and sexual deviance.)

By 1942, the Nazis were implementing their plan to murder every Jew in German-occupied Europe. In parallel, and with the aid of the Soviet Army (until Germany turned against it), Hitler implemented plans to reduce the Polish people through mass murder, ethnic cleansing, extermination through labor, and for a small minority of Poles deemed “racially valuable,” assimilation into German identity.

These actions claimed the lives of 2.7 to 3 million Polish Jews and 1.8 to 2.8 million ethnic Poles, according to Poland's Institute of National Remembrance.

Europe has recognized these actions and the policies that drove them as the Polish genocide.

Beyond the genocide of Jewish and ethnic Poles, one of Nazi Germany’s most insidious actions—one which has yielded lasting repercussions for Poland and its people—was their choice of Poland as the site for hundreds of concentration camps.

And this is where the parallel between the actions of Nazi Germany and those of today’s U.S. administration comes into play.

Germany Chose Poland As A Geopolitical Site of Nazi Atrocities

To be sure, Nazi Germany had concentration camps on their own territory. Yet most mass killings happened elsewhere, beyond legal reach, in places the regime claimed were lawless. This tactic allowed the Nazis to designate entire foreign territories as sites of impunity.

Almost immediately following their invasion of Poland, Germany and the Soviet Union began setting up camps in occupied Poland.

This effort began with POW camps for 230,672 Polish soldiers captured during the September campaign of 1939.

Within a brief period, the German zone of partitioned Poland became a “prison-island” with more than 430 complexes of state-sanctioned and state-organized terror. Historians estimate that 5 million Polish citizens went through these camps while serving as a cog in the German war economy.

Half of the European Jews murdered in the Holocaust died in what had been Poland.

The choice of Poland as the site for some of the worst atrocities of World War II also conflated Polish national identity with antisemitism.

A portion of that connection is historically accurate and important to acknowledge.

As Masha Gessen writes, Polish memory often centers those who saved Jews. Thousands of Poles risked their lives to help Jews. Indeed, Poles are the largest group honored as “Righteous Among the Nations” at Yad Vashem.

Poland was the first occupation of Hitler's regime; the Nazi concentration camps were constructed and maintained in occupied territory. Moreover, Poland never had a collaborationist government. Members of Poland's resistance and government-in-exile attempted to warn the world about the mass killing of Jews.

But there is a dark side to that history.

A small but significant number of the Jews killed in Poland were killed not by Nazis, but by Polish neighbors. In Jedwabne, fellow villagers slaughtered 1,600 Jews, burning many of them alive in a barn.

This dual history is painful for both Jews and Poles. For those like me who are both, it can be excruciating.

What makes the complexity harder to process is when governments refuse to face it. Recent Polish laws, for example, have criminalized discussion of Polish complicity in the Holocaust, triggering diplomatic disputes and silencing survivors’ families.

In 2019, Israel Katz, Israel’s acting foreign minister, caused a diplomatic eruption when he stated that Poles "collaborated with the Nazis" and "suckled anti-Semitism with their mothers' milk." This prompted Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki to withdraw from a planned summit between leaders of four Central European nations and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu—who, in turn, had announced days earlier that “Poles collaborated with the Nazis,” later claiming that he had been “misquoted.”

In my opinion, the building of concentration camps in occupied Poland contributed to a longstanding prejudice against Polish people.

Although naturalized immediately upon her arrival in the United States, my mother waited 15 years to get her citizenship due to governmental quotas for Eastern Europeans.

Throughout my childhood and beyond, Polish people were characterized as unintelligent, dishonest, and unclean. Since the late 1960s, Polish American organizations have made ongoing efforts to counter the negative stereotyping prevalent in American media of Poles as subhuman.

Western news media has consistently referred to "Polish death camps" and "Polish concentration camps" to denote the network of concentration camps that Nazi Germany built and operated in occupied Poland to facilitate the “Final Solution.” The placement of the modifier “Polish” before “death camps” suggests that the Polish people played a central role in the establishment and maintenance of these camps alongside the Polish genocide—which is patently untrue.

The element of dehumanization makes the U.S. administration’s attempts to dehumanize Salvadorans, Venezuelans, and others crystal clear to me.

Trump’s Agenda: Dehumanizing Latin American Countries

In a compelling piece in The New Yorker, Gessen compares the history of right-wing Polish denial with that of the current Trump Administration.

Gessen continues, “In this way, the Polish memory wars are not dissimilar from the American ones. Donald Trump’s ridiculous 1776 Commission, created to fight the narrative threat of the 1619 Project, tapped into the deep fear that reckoning with American history involves the recognition that American wealth and social structures are built on enslavement and the genocide of indigenous people. Poles have similar incentives to hold on to the story of noble victimhood rather than examine their history. “To lose the idea of Poles as the best people in the world is really heartbreaking,” Leder said.”

Trump’s agenda extends beyond the denial of history to include abduction, illegal deportation, and the manufacturing of consent for these crimes.

In a press conference this week, Trump officials repeatedly referred to Kilmar Albrego Garcia as a “terrorist” and “trafficker.”

He is neither of these things. The claim is disinformation, a lie meant to justify the unjustifiable.

Most of the people this administration targets have no criminal record. Many are asylum seekers, have lived in the U.S. for more than a decade, have paid taxes, and have become vital members of our communities.

By framing the abduction and deportation of innocent people as protection from “terrorists” or “traffickers,” this administration manufactures consent for state violence.

The U.S. government is using policy to create propaganda.

This propaganda externalizes blame. It fuels a carceral geography of oppression and embeds prejudice in public consciousness—all tools that make it easier to suspend the right of habeas corpus.

The term carceral geography was coined by Ruth Wilson Gilmore, who invented the concept and used it in her teaching and research in the late 1990s, particularly in her analysis of the relationship between space, place, and incarceration.

Just as Nazi Germany utilized occupied Poland to carry out and conceal its atrocities, the U.S. is now outsourcing its punitive measures to El Salvador, a nation already burdened by systemic challenges.

The Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in El Salvador has become emblematic of severe human rights violations, including:

• Inhumane Conditions: Cells are overcrowded, with reports indicating up to 156 inmates per cell, each provided with minimal space, no mattresses, and constant artificial lighting.

• Lack of Due Process: Many detainees are held without formal charges or trials, including individuals deported from the U.S. under questionable circumstances ​

• Systemic Abuse: Reports from human rights organizations detail instances of torture, including beatings and electric shocks, as well as denial of medical care, leading to numerous deaths in custody

To prevent history from repeating itself, we must recognize and challenge these oppressive patterns.

By deporting individuals to facilities like CECOT, the U.S. is not only subjecting them to further human rights abuses and humane conditions. It is contributing to the stigmatization of El Salvador and its citizens.

This strategy approach externalizes the consequences of domestic policies, embedding prejudice and justifying further acts of dehumanization. It perpetuates a narrative that vilifies entire populations, making it easier to justify further injustices.

We are watching this same pattern unfold elsewhere, most starkly in Gaza.

The denial of Palestinians as a people directly parallels the German and Soviet insistence in 1939 that there was “no such thing as a Polish person.”

The forced displacement of Palestinians, the designation of Gaza as a zone where the usual rules of law and morality do not apply, the bombing of civilians framed as self-defense, and the designation of Palestinian civilians as “terrorists” also reflect the geography of disappearance.

And the U.S. is not just complicit in this genocide; we are funding it.

When we normalize atrocity anywhere, we become more willing to accept it in our own nation.

When we dehumanize one population, we train ourselves not to see the humanity in others.

The only way to fight these atrocities is to treat the abductions, deportations, false accusations, and carceral geography of disappearance as violations of our own rights.

And to demand the return of the people they disappear, just as we would if they were our own family.

I think of my mother, abducted as a child to a forced labor camp in Siberia, and wonder what might have been different if more Germans and Soviets had treated her family’s disappearance, and so many others, as their own.

Because, morally, and in so many other ways, it was.

The care of Kilmar Abrego Garcia and all others unjustly abducted belongs to us.

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Sources:

Habeas corpus originated in the year 1215 in Britain: Habeas corpus. (n.d.). LII / Legal Information Institute. Retrieved April 16, 2025, from https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/habeas_corpus

Yesterday, historian and Holocaust scholar Timothy Synder outlined the chilling method: Snyder, T. (2025, April 15). State Terror [Substack newsletter].

State Terror

Nazi Germany simultaneously targeted many other populations in the service of “racial purity: Holocaust Memorial Day Trust | Nazi Persecution of other groups: 1933 ‑ 1945. (n.d.). Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. Retrieved April 16, 2025, from https://hmd.org.uk/learn-about-the-holocaust-and-genocides/nazi-persecution/

World War II included a documented genocide of nearly 6 million Polish people: Nazi war crimes in occupied Poland during World War II. (2025). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nazi_war_crimes_in_occupied_Poland_during_World_War_II&oldid=1283254591

In the speech, Hitler instructed his commanders to oversee the genocide of the Polish: Hitler’s Obersalzberg Speech. (2025). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hitler%27s_Obersalzberg_Speech&oldid=1273967173 See also: Lukas, Richard. (2013). Out of the Inferno: Poles Remember the Holocaust. University Press of Kentucky. p. 2. ISBN 978-0-8131-3043-9. See also: Jan Moor-Jankowski (2013). "Poland's Holocaust: Non-Jewish Poles during World War II". Polish American Congress. Archived from the original on 5 August 2019. See also: https://x.com/SPIEGEL_Gesch/status/1562819983759261699 See also: Lochner, Louis Paul (1942). What About Germany?. Dodd, Mead & Company. pp. 11–12.

On 15 March 1940, Heinrich Himmler, Chief of the German paramilitary group: Nazi war crimes in occupied Poland during World War II. (2025). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nazi_war_crimes_in_occupied_Poland_during_World_War_II&oldid=1283254591

Dr. Jan Moor-Jankowski, a Polish-American primatologist: Jan Moor-Jankowski. (2024). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jan_Moor-Jankowski&oldid=1248524447

According to Moor-Jankowski, Hitler also forced close to 3 million Polish: Poland’s Holocaust. (2019, August 5). https://web.archive.org/web/20190805125226/http:/www.pacwashmetrodiv.org/events/holoc04/moor-jankowski.htm

Relationships between Poles and Germans—including sexual ones—were called: Jan Moor-Jankowski. (2024). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jan_Moor-Jankowski&oldid=1248524447

In the first few months of the war alone, region by region, Nazi Germany executed: Nazi war crimes in occupied Poland during World War II. (2025). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nazi_war_crimes_in_occupied_Poland_during_World_War_II&oldid=1283254591

By the war’s end in 1945, Germany had murdered millions of Poles and ethnically: Nazi war crimes in occupied Poland during World War II. (2025). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nazi_war_crimes_in_occupied_Poland_during_World_War_II&oldid=1283254591

Almost immediately following their invasion of Poland, Germany and the Soviet Union: Nazi war crimes in occupied Poland during World War II. (2025). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nazi_war_crimes_in_occupied_Poland_during_World_War_II&oldid=1283254591

There have been a series of diplomatic disputes between Poland and Israel: https://notesfrompoland.com/2019/11/02/to-say-that-poland-is-an-antisemitic-country-is-absolutely-not-true-israeli-ambassador/

In a 2001 piece for the New York Times, Adam Miknick begins with the following historical account: Michnik, A. (2001, March 17). Poles and the Jews: How Deep the Guilt? The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/17/arts/poles-and-the-jews-how-deep-the-guilt.html

As Masha Gessen, one of my favorite writers, stated in The New Yorker: Gessen, M. (2021, March 26). The Historians Under Attack for Exploring Poland’s Role in the Holocaust. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-historians-under-attack-for-exploring-polands-role-in-the-holocaust

In a 2001 piece for the New York Times, Adam Miknick begins with the following historical account: Smith, C. (2022, November 14). Monuments to the Unthinkable. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/12/holocaust-remembrance-lessons-america/671893/

Gessen has pointed out the striking similarities between right-wing Polish governments’ insistence: Gessen, M. (2021, March 26). The Historians Under Attack for Exploring Poland’s Role in the Holocaust. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-historians-under-attack-for-exploring-polands-role-in-the-holocaust

Gessen writes, “In this way, the Polish memory wars are not dissimilar from the American: Gessen, M. (2021, March 26). The Historians Under Attack for Exploring Poland’s Role in the Holocaust. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-historians-under-attack-for-exploring-polands-role-in-the-holocaust

And in 2019, Israel Katz, Israel’s acting foreign minister, caused a diplomatic eruption: Poles “sucked anti-Semitism with their mothers” milk,’ Israeli official says. (14:09:04 +01:00). Euronews. https://www.euronews.com/2019/02/18/poland-pulls-out-israel-meeting-over-anti-semitism-nazi-comments-n972701

Cells are overcrowded, with reports indicating up to 156 inmates per cell: Terrorism Confinement Center. (2025). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Terrorism_Confinement_Center&oldid=1285960832

Reports from human rights organizations detail instances of torture: Stein, C. (2025, April 16). Democratic senator heads to El Salvador to try to visit Kilmar Ábrego García. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/15/chris-van-hollen-el-salvador-kilmar-abrego-garcia See also: The conditions inside the infamous El Salvador prison where deported migrants are held. (2025, April 8). PBS News. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/the-conditions-inside-the-infamous-el-salvador-prison-where-deported-migrants-are-held