Title: Eternal Treblinka
Author: Charles Patterson
Type: Non-Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 296
Rating: 4.5/5
First off, I should say a big thank you to my Vegan Runners Secret Santa for getting this for me, although I did provide them with a pretty sizeable hint by making this the only thing that was on my wish list.
I’ve been meaning to get my hands on this for a while after first coming across it during the research for my horror novel, Meat. I ended up reading it over Christmas, and while it isn’t exactly the most festive of reads, it was actually a pretty good time to pick it up.
So, Eternal Treblinka. The core idea here is that the way we treat animals in factory farms is similar to the way that the Nazis treated human beings in concentration camps. In fact, Patterson shows that genocide is almost always preceded by people describing the victims of that genocide as “animals”, “vermin” and the like.
It’s not an easy book to read, especially when Patterson is talking about the horrific things that human beings do to both animals and other human beings, but it’s an important one. Reading it over Christmas made it hit even harder because while everyone else is sitting down to eat animal carcasses, it’s nice to have a reminder that there are people out there like me who find the concept disgusting.
The title of the book says it all, really. Until we stop subjugating animals to short lives of pain and suffering that end up with them being served up on a dinner plate, Treblinka will continue to happen. And so will the wars that mark us out as the planet’s most “intelligent” species.
Go vegan.
