It was the problem Auschwitz was designed to solve. There were big mental strains amongst the mobile death squads, particularly on the Eastern Front, basically making themselves completely insane and uncontrollable.

The Death camps were refined to be as humane as possible… for the SS. So the killing involved user-friendly pellets of Zyklon-B being dropped down chutes or through holes in a wall of a gas-tight room. The SS could not see their victims, but could hear them, and no intervention was necessary. It took 20 minutes for the last to die.

Then prisoners on work detail would be forced to clear out the bodies, remove glasses, jewellery, gold fillings, hair, and artificial limbs for later resale on the commercial market, then they would carry the bodies the short distance to the incinerators, and later would dispose of the ashes by burial, dumping in the river or scattered as fertiliser. The SS were supervising, but didn’t need to get too close. It allowed those who chose to do so to put some emotional distance between themselves and the slaughter.

@IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds @geneva_convenience
@palestine
Most Israelis seem to revel in the bloodshed. Most Israelis probably belong in prison.
#CrimesAgainstHumanity
#WarCrimes
#genocide
#Israel

did the Auschwitz guards had this problem?

I hope so

I seem to remember accounts of Himmler doing CC inspections and being told that the tasks being asked of the guards were having severe impacts on them.

In his death-row memoir, Rudolf Höss discussed the “many suicides” among the men of the Einsatzgruppen and those “who could no longer mentally endure wading in the bloodbath … [and] went mad.” He continued, “Most of the members of the Special Action Squads [i.e., Einsatzgruppen] drank a great deal to help get through this horrible work.”¹⁷

Likewise, SS colonel Paul Blobel, the commander of Sonderkommando 4a, who enjoyed his reputation as “‘an efficient killer of Jews’ as well as a ‘drunk and a monster,’” still attempted to place himself in the rôle of the victim by citing the “psychological trauma” of his experience, in which alcohol became a means for dealing with his participation in genocide.¹⁸

(Source.)

Nevertheless,

There was […] a notable lack of guilt among the top [Axis] leaders, but fear of retribution may well have prompted their suicides.

(Source.)

I have seen plausible claims that camp guards in particular were more suicidal, but I have no proof.

Not really, the SS was selected for cruelty and indoctrination, the IDF is a conscripted army. They didn’t put conscripts inside Auschwitz exactly because of this.