John Doe, the Holocaust and Memory
Evil...Nature or Nurture?
Confronted with absolute evil, Henry Lesser asked himself, "Why?" What could make a person so completely hateful, so completely psychopathic?
Henry Lesser was a 26-year-old, idealistic Jewish boy from Falls River, Massachusetts. He took a job in Washington, D.C.’s prison system as a jailer on March 1, 1928. Criminology was a deep interest of his. What was the nature of good and evil? Was it nature or was it nurture?
Growing up, Lesser had been exposed to seemingly contradictory Jewish answers. Judaic religious thought recognizes that humanity is born with the “evil inclination.” And humanity is born with free will, to overcome it, to choose good.
Lesser studied the prisoners under his supervision. He documented prisoner abuses and pushed for better treatment of the imprisoned. Prisoner conditions were extremely harsh.
August, five months into his job, Lesser was on block duty. He intervened on behalf of a prisoner, Carl Panzram, who was brutally being assaulted by other jailers. Panzram was by far the most notorious, hardened prisoner in the D.C. system. Panzram was a lifelong thief, a sadistic, serial murderer who had murdered at least 22 young men. He claimed to have raped an astonishing 1,000+ men across America and in Africa.
Lesser was assigned to carefully supervise and watch Panzram. In the course of his duties, he befriended him. Lesser supplied him with writing materials, cigarettes, and small personal items. Lesser encouraged him to write his life’s story. He did not want a glossing over.
Panzram was extremely intelligent. Lesser had an opportunity to ask, to try, and understand “Why.” In the months that followed, Panzram wrote, beginning with his childhood of poverty, abuse, being raped, and sent to the state reformatory by his parents by age eight. Panzram's life in the reform system went from worse to worse until all he had left in him was hate.
Panzram would be executed in Leavenworth Prison on September 5, 1930, for the murder of a prison laundry foreman. Panzram was unrepentant, consumed with murderous hate to the very end.
Lesser collated Panzram’s writings. For the rest of Lesser’s life, he attempted to publish them. Lesser, an observational criminologist, wanted to show that Panzram was made into a monster because of what was done to him.
No publisher, no academic, no criminologist was interested in Lesser’s work. Near the end of Lesser’s life, a documentary was made about Panzram. A book was written with excerpts from Panzram’s writing, did make it to print. Both were poorly received.
Before Lesser died, he donated his papers to San Diego State University, where they are deposited in the school's Special Collections and Archives.
I had never heard of Carl Panzram or Henry Lesser until an unusual request came to the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation (JASHP).
A sixteen-year-old Jewish boy, known only as John Doe, was a documented victim of Carl Panzram. Panzram recalled the boy in detail and where the authorities could locate his remains. The boy had been a runaway, possibly a son of a New York City policeman.
The remains were exactly where Panzram said they were when he had raped and murdered him on August 9, 1923. The Coroner for West Haven, Connecticut, ordered the boy, now recorded as John Doe, to be immediately buried in an unmarked grave in Oak Grove Cemetery.
The anonymous request to JASHP was, could we help give the boy memory? We recognized a Jewish duty.
Doing the right thing became a journey.
Panzram, and Lesser, had emphasized the unendurable cruelty that Panzram had been transformed under. Panzram’s truth and Lesser’s willing acceptance of it were contradictory. Panzram wrote he was born bad. He was born evil, incorrigible.
Panzram, as a child, enjoyed torturing small animals, engaging in theft, and worse. His family could not beat the evil out of him. Yet his brothers and sisters, who grew up in the same household, under similar conditions to Panzram's, did not go down the same path of darkness as he did. Something was inside of him.
Contemporary society, at least for the past few hundred years, has wrapped the question in socio-scientific linens.
Modern “Scientific” Criminology is generally divided into three schools. In the late 18th century, Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham argued that people have free will and choose to commit crimes based on rational decisions. They believed punishments should be swift, certain, and severe enough to deter, but not overly cruel.
In the late 19th century, Dr. Cesare Lombroso, directly influenced by Darwinism, especially social Darwinism, rejected free will in criminal behavior. He rejected free will, much as he rejected his Rabbinic Jewish ancestry and Jewish theology. He embraced Darwin's theories of evolution as his new “God.”
Lombrosco proposed that crime is caused by internal and external factors outside an individual's control, such as biological, psychological, or social factors. Lombroso famously suggested some criminals were "born criminals". Criminals could even be identified atavistically, by the shape of their heads or faces.
Charles Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton, coined the term Eugenics in 1883. Eugenics sought to apply selective breeding to humans to promote "desirable" traits, breeding out bad ones.
Scientific Eugenics devolved into Scientific Racism that targeted minorities and disabled individuals. It asserted modern social issues like poverty, criminality, and intelligence were solely inherited.
American society at the turn of the 20th century was reeling under the weight of massive immigration from Eastern Europe; people who were frighteningly different, especially the Jews.
Eugenics theory and application were eagerly adopted into American social and scientific life, led by prominent institutions such as Harvard and Yale. Between 1900 and 1960, over 60,000 unfit people were sterilized.
Popular books advocating for American Eugenics were written, such as by the famed Naturalist and lawyer, Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race.
American Eugenic theory spread to Germany. Adolph Hitler reputedly kept a copy of The Passing of the Great Race near his bedside.
The accepted pseudoscience of Social Darwinism and Eugenics led to the greatest crime in human history, the Holocaust.
The revelations of Nazism and the Death Camps ended the Eugenic Movement.
In the late 1920s, a new science, Behavioral Genetics, was emerging.
God, again, remained absent from the scientific discussions.
What could be done for John Doe?
With the help of a remarkable West Haven, CT., genealogist, John Doe’s unmarked burial site was identified. JASHP’s obligation was clear. The boy deserved a stone of memory. No longer, unintentionally, would feet stand on his grave. With the support of the Oak Grove Cemetery, JASHP funded and placed a dignified memorial stone.
https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=298766
The inscription beneath the Star of David reads:
John Doe
A 16-year-old Jewish Boy
August 9, 1923
A victim of the sadistic serial murderer, Carl Panzram
Evil - Nurture or Nature?
Donated by the Jewish American Society
for Historic Preservation at 2026
With support from the Oak Grove Cemetery
On the reverse side, in Hebrew, is inscribed,
Unknown son of Abraham. May he be bound up in Eternal life…someday.
Jerry Klinger is the President of the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation
Source: John Doe, the Holocaust and Memory
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