An exhibition in Dublin Castle to mark Holocaust Memorial Day, a few weeks before the beginning of Putin’s barbarism in Ukraine, documented one family’s sudden dislocation from normal life to unthinkable nightmare. The early photographs in the exhibition, of family gatherings, of trips to town, of meetings with friends, give way abruptly to pictures showing the public humiliation of old men and of children lining up for transport to their extermination. The exhibition’s curator, Oliver Sears, whose grandmother and mother lived through the horror, recounts a story told to him by survivor that happened during the first few days of the Nazi occupation of Poland.

Richard Urbanski was seventeen when the Nazi’s took over Warsaw. On his way home from school, he witnessed a flat bed truck parked next to a four-story apartment building, with German soldiers throwing Hasidic Jews, still alive and breathing, from the top floor windows onto the truck below.

The Nazi invasion was not simply occupation by an invading army. It was an abrupt elimination of the sacred ordinariness that had governed people’s lives until then – the sacred ordinariness of family life, of trips to town, of meetings with friends, the sacred ordinariness of love and respect for life.

So too with Putin’s barbarism in Ukraine. Once again, the entire mental landscape of the sacred ordinary has been shattered, just as brutally as the landscape of bombed out maternity hospitals, schools and apartment blocks that we see in the images coming out of Ukraine daily. As with Hitler, the psychopathology of one deeply disordered mind has torn asunder the fabric of values that gives life meaning.

With Putin’s barbaric unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, evil has been visited upon Europe on a scale, and at a level of threat, not seen since World War Two. Irish Prime Minster Michael Martin has called Putin an evil man, while Ukrainian President Zelensky has called on his fellow citizens to drive Putin’s evil out of their country.

Evil is a word that many people recoil from, with its metaphysical implications of demons and the Devil. But the reality of Putin’s evil is much more mundane. The source of his evil lies in the fact that Putin is an extremely damaged human being. That damage, which is variously called malignant narcissism, narcissistic personality disorder, or psychopathy, is manifest in one central aspect of his personality. Putin is incapable of normal human feeling. The damage that Putin suffered during his early childhood, when the essential capacities for relationships with, and empathy for, other human beings are usually formed, was such that he has been left bereft of any ability to see and relate to other people as people.

Putin’s mind, damaged beyond repair by severe abuse or neglect, has been frozen since childhood into a state devoid of empathy or love. Without these vital conduits for communication with the world of other people, and incapable of pursuing sustenance from the love and friendships that give life meaning, he has sought instead to force recognition and respect from others through terror, wealth and power.