Lessons of the Shoah

 

The difficulty in speaking about the Shoah.

 

Guiding these reflections is the idea that they are an attempt to comprehend the difficulty involved in conducting a non-rhetorical consideration of the Shoah.

 

The human aspect. In all different circles and at all different levels we find reasons to avoid speaking about it, especially when there is a risk of bringing up some of the human aspects involved. It is much easier for conversation to revolve around aspects that are political, economic, geopolitical, ideological, statistical, whatever is farthest removed from the human experience of having lived through the Shoah. There is little interest in the human side of what occurred, as if that were not the way to tell History since that would be relying on the subjective view, of little interest when extracting general conclusions for the use of the rest of society. This line of reasoning, among others that I will refer to below, has brought about the invisibilization of victim-survivors for almost fifty years, they were here, but it was as if they weren’t.

            The Shoah was the murdered six million, the dead victims. About one million Jews managed to live but their survival did not seem important enough for them to be able to speak about it. Some tried, albeit with a certain intellectual transcendence, but they were not graced by open ears willing to hear their stories. Not long after the war:

 

  The survivor had no audience and frequently felt the isolation of someone who cannot be understood. Many memoirs were written, but not for large audiences. Elie Wiesel wrote his story for Jewish readers in Yiddish under the title, “And the World Was Silent.” The book was published in Argentina and only later, reduced in size, was it read everywhere under the title, “Night”. Primo Levi reports that his memoir was first published in an edition of twenty five hundred copies and that six hundred, on the remainder list, were drowned in a Florentine flood.[1]

 

It still wasn’t the right time. Some two dozen years would have to pass before the voices of victim-survivors would find interested listeners.

Today, it is these same survivor victims who, with their oral and written testimonies, leave to us living material and additional proof, perhaps the most valuable and transcendent proof of all, of the disgrace to humanity that the horror of the Shoah represents. The victim-survivors speak to us of ingrown memories, of odors – especially bad ones – of dreams and nightmares, of unforgettable losses, of humiliations, of questions that can never be answered, they live and have lived with memories of unendurable degradation that are equally unendurable to recall, and they have shown, at the same time, a mysterious capacity for recuperation and reconciliation – anguished, discontinuous, and threatening, but reconciliation all the same – of who they are now, with who they must have been in that other past that never seems to have completely ended.

 

            Fortunately, the attitude of some sectors of society has been changing and today, these elderly people who were once so young are being called by some of the television programs, reports are appearing in the graphic media, memoirs are being published, they are being invited to schools and they are desperate to speak wherever there are listeners willing to listen, showing up with their backpack full of bitterness, pain and dignity.

 

            The danger of hearing what they have to say. Today, there are listeners willing to listen. The expression of interest is auspicious but it still hasn’t reached a point at which we can ask the audience for a response as to what it all reveals about human nature. The audience listens, calmly and comfortably, just so long as the discourse doesn’t derail from “bad Nazis / we the victims.” Today, people can and want to hear about atrocity and cruelty, sometimes just a dangerous indulgence in the exhibition of evil. But if the victim-survivors have the courage to tell anecdotes referring to uncomfortable and ambiguous situations, involving themselves or others, an electrifying uneasiness spreads through the audience. If the protagonist suggests having done something he now regrets, that he could not have avoided doing, he loses the automatic and calming classification of “innocent,” “impotent,” “blind lamb,” thanks to which those who survived were forgiven. If the “victim” dares to expose his heart as he tells his story and to cast light into the dark corners of his fragile humanity, the public becomes ill-at-ease and prefers not to hear any more. The victim-survivors know this, they have suffered it repeatedly, and so they speak about the things they know people can listen to and perhaps digest without changing anything essential in their concept of human conduct or themselves.

            The children of victim-survivors have also been a conditioned public requiring a certain kind of protection, as we saw in Part One, “Reasons for the Silence.” This has brought about a flat, bi-dimensional approach to the experience of the parents, without the tri-dimensionality inherent to the conflict of conscience that was confronted by victim-survivors in ethical dilemmas during the Shoah.

 

The uniqueness of the experience. The knowledge we grew up with had a way of functioning as if separate from our lives, we didn’t speak about it. We believed – both the appeared and their children – that our experience had been unique. Since we, children of survivors, didn’t share information, experiences or questions with anyone, we absurdly believed that our experience was ours alone and, at the same time, that the experience of our upbringing could be generalized to all of the Shoah. Until we began to meet in groups, we all had fairly structured ideas of how things had been in that other time and place. Until then, the information had been neatly contained in sealed-off compartments. In fact, the children of parents who had been in the camps, knew next to nothing about others who had been partisans, or had gone into hiding, or had lived through the Shoah under false identities. For each of us, what our parents had lived through during the Shoah was the definitive Shoah.

            The idea that our experience was unique prevented us from speaking to and learning from others like ourselves. Little by little, we began to absorb the notion that it was a common experience and then to gain a wider vision, enabling us to see deeper into the complexity of the topic.

            The moment of confrontation with others like ourselves revealed the many faces of the Shoah. And in those faces, surprisingly, and in spite of so many differences, we always find something of ourselves. We never cease to see ourselves in the stories of others, especially when we recognize that many aspects of our childhood were repeated in the childhood of these others.

 

            The need to communicate. Once we had a more complete view of the situation, having shed certain old views like old baggage (the ideas presented in the chapter, “Children of Victim Survivors”), we wanted to show it, to share it. However, first with family members, then with friends, we encountered reluctant listeners, both tacitly and explicitly, with respect to what we had to say. The reactions were suspiciously similar to those encountered by our parents upon their return to life. Our next question was, then, why are there so few people willing to listen? Is no one interested? Can it be that the topic produces such uneasiness in people? We were convinced that our research could produce benefits for everyone, that what we were learning about the Shoah, the possibilities and consequences, could and should be used to prevent, understand and combat this type of phenomenon.

 

            Is what we can learn, at the same time, what prevents us from reflection? In this spirit, I undertook my reflections, my bibliographical research and my conversations. In what follows, I will present my discoveries and thoughts with respect to the Shoah, a topic that is difficult to approach for so many reasons. I also suspect that the reasons the Shoah is a difficult topic to deal with are also the lessons we can extract and learn from it. We neither can nor want to hear about the Shoah because it is a mirror that reveals aspects of our own humanity that we may prefer not to acknowledge. Ignorance of these aspects, however, is what led us to have a false image of ourselves, our citadels and our certainties, and has left us poorly protected for certain circumstances. If we don’t know ourselves and our possibilities, we will be even more poorly prepared to protect ourselves in exceptional circumstances

            Let us begin with the Shoah.

 

The Shoah in the social imaginary: facing the unbearable.

 

            When we speak of the Shoah, or the “Holocaust,” as it has mistakenly come to be known, people envision the stock images of camps (particularly one: Auschwitz and the Birkenau train detention area, with the famous perspective of the railway line and the symmetrical construction in the background), crematorium ovens and chimneys, emaciated bodies, gas chambers and showers, the Warsaw ghetto and uprising, the abstract statistic of “six million,” and some old people’s faces who speak with heavy accents and problems of syntax and tell of horrible things in an emphatic and emotional way.

            It is not just the average person who refers to these superficial images and notions. Many Jews – many more than previously thought – and many children of survivors share these same images. I recall these moving lines from the dialogue between Eiji Okada and Emannuelle Riva in “Hiroshima mon amour” by Alain Resnais (1959), when he says to her: “Tu ne sais rien d’Hiroshima” (You know nothing of Hiroshima). I borrow the line and say: “We know nothing of the Shoah.”

            Steven Spielberg deserves credit for telling another version, less superficial than the popular one, stirring up the mud a bit and portraying some of the ambiguity. Until his film, the Shoah had been a story told by Hollywood in which the Nazis – without any context, explanation, reflection, consideration of anti-Semitism or the corrosive actions of the Catholic church over centuries, or references to ethical dilemmas – did horrible sadistic things to a few miserable, innocent, almost foolish Jews dressed in black, emerging from medieval ghettos and marching to their deaths, as the sadly celebrated phrase goes, “like sheep to the slaughter,” putting up no resistance, just the passivity of martyrs. Lawrence

 

 

 

Langer[2] (cited earlier in relation to the five forms of memory) refers to the television series, “Holocaust” as one example among several of how North American culture presents things in

a way that calms the consciences of people and lets them sleep peacefully through the night after turning off the TV set. He believes that the telling of what really happened, and the reasons for it, has been a failure. He says:

 

The failure of “Holocaust” is a failure of imagination. The vision which plunges us into the lower abysses of atrocity is not there. We do not know what it was like, in the Warsaw ghetto and elsewhere, to have been reduced to eating dogs, cats, horses, insects and even, in rare unpublicized instances, human flesh. We do not know what the human being suffered during days and nights in sealed boxcars, starving, confused, desperate, sharing one´s crowded space with frozen corpses. We do not know of the endless roll calls in Auschwitz, often in subfreezing temperature, when men and women simply collapsed and died for exhaustion. We have abundant examples of husbands and wives clinging together in adverse conditions, but we never glimpse –as I mentioned earlier- mothers abandoning children or fathers and sons throttling each other for a piece of bread. We see well young groomed and sanitized men and women filling into the gas chamber, but what does this convey of the terror and despair that overwhelmed millions of victims as they recognized the final moment of their degradation and their powerlessness to respond? Perhaps art will never be able to duplicate the absolute horror of such atrocities: but if it cannot re-create at least a limited authentic image of that horror –and “Holocaust” does not-  then audiences will remain as deceived about the “worst” as young Anne Frank´s lingering words of the essencial goodness of human nature deceive us about the “best”. (p.175)

 

            It might be said that this type of approach has the merit of beginning to address the Shoah. This may be so, but along with it and due to the power of the North American film and television industries, these images have contaminated perspectives on the Shoah with a tranquilizing suffusion of mildly provocative, rosy-colored messages only meant to encourage the public to continue consuming their products. Of course, no one enjoys the bitter taste of skepticism directed at humanity, especially when it sprouts from the entrails of the Shoah, when the truth brings us close enough to smell its stench.

            Langer[3] wonders if Gerald Green, the author of the book, and the producers could have done better. He says (page 176):

 

Consider this brief portrait of two human beings, about to die in the gas chambers of Auschwitz, recorded by Salmen Lewental in a diary exhumed from the ashes after the war:

A mother was sitting with her daughter, they both spoke in Polish. She sat helplessly, spoke so softly that she could hardly be heard. She was claspling the head of her daughter with her hands and hugging her tightly. She spoke: “In an hour we shall die. What a tragedy. My dearest, my last hope will die with you”. She sat.... immersed in thought, with wide open, dimmed eyes...After some minutes she came to and continued to speak. “On account of you my pain is so great that I am dying when I think of it”. She led down her stiff arms and her

 

daughter´s head sank down upon her mother´s knees. A shiver passed through the body of the young girl, she called desperately “Mamma!” and she spoke no more, those were her last words. Perhaps "last words” like these are not dramatic;

certainly, they are not commercial; undoubtedly, they are not American. But they are authentic, and they are what the Holocaust was all about. The upbeat ending of “Holocaust”, minimizing the negative impact of all that has gone before, typifies the absence of insight and the externalization of horror that makes the entire production meretricious in its confrontation with disaster: wormwood and gall are mollified by aromatic spices from the Orient. To leave an audience of millions with an image like the one mother and daughter bereft of hope, of life, of speech, would have been too dark –too dark altogether.

 

 

            Diffusion of the topic of the Shoah has run the usual course through popular culture in our society. Elie Wiesel has called it “Shoah business.” Its digitized and manipulated diffusion is managed according to the needs and dictates of the mass media, whether in film, theater, or publicity events. Like so many other phenomena, the Shoah that was has lost immediacy and, thus, complexity and the possibility to be approached and understood. This is one of the reasons people in general can achieve at best a superficial, mystified and, sometimes, mistaken view of the essential issues that need to be understood about the Shoah, issues that render it a powerful schoolroom for all humanity. 

 

Examples of what is not generally known.

 

It was not known – and is still little-known – that whereas there were six death camps, there were hundreds of camps in occupied territory, especially in Poland. That there were different kinds of camps with different degrees of brutality. Extermination camps, work camps, concentration camps, mixed camps. Many people confuse ghettos with camps, thinking they are one and the same thing. What is more, ghetto is a word that is erroneously married to another word, that is, the “Warsaw Ghetto,” as if this had been the only ghetto in Poland; nonetheless, the ghettos were much more numerous than the camps, in every large and medium city there was one, and each one had its own peculiarities, each one responding in its own way to the orders that emanated from the Nazi command. The Jewish councils (the organisms that managed life in the ghettos at all levels – sanitation, work, housing, economics, policing – and whose members were generally chosen by the Nazis, who obliged them to obey their orders or their families would be murdered), or the Judenräte, as they were called in German, were not all the same nor did they all have to confront the same circumstances with the same kinds of supervisors. The convenient generalization usually applied to them is that they served as accomplices to the Nazis and that they deserve all the scorn and disdain they get. This overlooks the ethical dilemma that tortured many of the honest council members who tried to respond to the dictates of what they perceived as their social responsibility.

            People have no idea that among the victim-survivors, those who come from the death camps are the rarest; the vast majority was never in the camps, they lived through the horror of the Shoah in various ways, which only recently, thanks to personal testimonies, are beginning to be known. It is also little known that around one million Jews survived.

            The banalization of the Shoah affects other, less central, issues, that have remained in darkness or have been distorted. For example, the rich and intense social, cultural and

 

political life led by Jews in Central Europe before the war that disappeared, perhaps forever, with the Shoah. A child of the appeared one day found a photograph showing his father walking along a street in a city together with another young man, both dressed in suits with ties, patent-leather shoes, well-cut overcoats with fur collars, gloves and hats; he had a metal

cigarette holder in his hand and an apparently gold watch was visible on his wrist, very much in the style of the big city and of the times. He was enormously surprised because he thought that his father, like all the Jews he was used to seeing in the movies, had lived in a hut, dressed in black and had no idea about social progress; his father had already died. He could never ask him about his previous life, his favorite books and plays, his loves, dreams, politics or passion for soccer; his father, like so many, had never told him anything, he had never shown him that photograph; thus, the only thing the son had left were the images of the Jews in the schtetlaj (villages).

 

The children of the appeared and society

 

            We children of victim-survivors form part of society. Like anyone else we receive daily information which is the source of our general culture. Unless someone devotes himself to the study of a specific topic, in this hyper-informed and over-stimulated world, one cannot avoid knowing things through media such as television, newspapers, film, and novels; such that we all know a little about everything but, in reality, we know almost nothing about anything. For the children of victim-survivors, however, some of what was transmitted in the home didn’t quite coincide with the cinematographic simplification that was supposed to be the Shoah. As we have seen in the preceding pages, the children learned to keep quiet, not to ask questions, to act as if they weren’t aware of anything extraordinary, and thus they lived – and still live today – with the idea that things aren’t clear, that their parents don’t coincide with the way Jews are shown during the Shoah, and they don’t know how to respond to this.

            Appeared persons who were not in the camps don’t fit the typical image of the Nazi victim; in their homes, neither Auschwitz nor Warsaw were common topics, gas chambers and uprisings were all but unknown. But the popularity of such topics led these victim-survivors to discover yet another reason for their silence: “What do we have to speak about if we weren’t even in the camps...? We didn’t suffer the camps,” and their suffering was thus disqualified, even in the eyes of their own children.

 

Collective memory and personal memory

 

            There is a collective and necessary memory, the Memory of the Monument, the declarative and discursive memory. This is the memory exercised up to now with respect to the Shoah. Only recently, as personal histories are being told, does the other memory emerge, the personal memory. The exercise of personal memory brings the topic of the Shoah and the words and experiences of survivor-victims together, to be taken into account and gradually integrated into our culture.

            Israel commemorates Holocaust Remembrance Day (Iom HaShoah) one week before the Day of Remembrance (Iom Hazicaron), of mourning, and ends with the revelry of Israel’s Independence Day (Iom Hatzmaut), celebrating the birth of the nation. The two events have adhered one to the other in such a way that the pain and anguish of the one is promptly alleviated and drowned out by the explosions of fireworks, singing and dancing of the other. In Argentina, on Holocaust Remembrance Day (Iom HaShoah), year after year, we hear the same speeches, the same pretentious addresses, void of content, of “never more,” the same

 

memory, on the one hand, of the six million dead, and on the other hand, veneration for the adolescents who raised arms against the Nazis in different revolts. And beside them, beside the murdered victims and heroes? Nothing. The void. The victim-survivors and their experiences and their damaged humanity remain invisible.

            Why can’t we speak about what really happened?

            Why this oscillation between seeing ourselves in one moment as a people of impotent, passive and submissive victims, and, in another moment, as a people of daring, valiant and defiant soldiers?

            Where do the common people fit in?

            Where does the true history of the Shoah fit in? The history that can still be told by the surviving victims, that history that speaks to us of situations that are impossible to imagine because they attack what we believe to be natural.

            Is it a troubling collective shame that determines our attitude in these celebrations, the manner in which we approach the topic?

 

Mystification

 

            We are often presented with a dangerous simplification that establishes only two possible categories: the dead victims and the heroes. It is in this context that the use and glorification of the Warsaw uprising is understandable; it is used for compensation, the mystique of the “lambs on their way to slaughter” is offset by the mystique of the “hero who charges dearly for his life.”

            Mystification[4] is the process through which situations are confused, reality is distorted, the lines between fact and fiction all but disappear. Mystification requires extreme simplification and deceptive divisions (the good / the bad, black / white). To think of the Shoah in terms of victims and heroes, fighters and quitters, reveals a profound ignorance of the Shoah. A careful and earnest approach does not permit such trivialization.

 

Armed resistance and daily resistance

 

            It is only fitting that the young people who decided to fight should be honored. If we understand the context in which they acted, we see that it was almost incredible that they found the courage, the strength and, at times, the recklessness and determination to go through with it. However, we have to recognize that they were few; among the multitudes, the hungry without training, hope or strength enough even to stand up, the centers of resistance were minimal. In speaking of resistance, a distinction must be made if what we mean by the term is specifically armed resistance. However, if we broaden the term, if we change our view somewhat, if we consider the context and its possibilities, we discover an infinite number of undefined, spontaneous acts of resistance, acts that should be seen from a perspective that enlightens us with regard to the dynamic forces and procedures at work during the Shoah. The fact that, for example, performing theater or giving a concert, instructing classes or secretly publishing, were all among the thousand-and-one daily acts of heroism such as caring for a plant or trying to maintain personal hygiene; these are all

 

behaviors that, seen from today’s perspective, may seem insignificant and hardly worthy of being classified as resistance at all. When women were prohibited from using make-up in the ghetto, any woman who dared to add a touch of color to her mouth ran the risk of death; some

women decided to take such risks, perhaps out of frustration and rage, which, viewed today, appears as an absurd and insignificant form of rebellion and resistance.[5]

            In the appendix to Des Pres, we see behavior that today may seem trivial – to keep oneself as clean as possible – which acquires, due to the context in which it occurred, characteristics not only of being an act of resistance, but also of constituting an ethical declaration of principles and dignity.

            However, when one thinks of “resistance,” one generally thinks almost exclusively of “armed resistance,” of confrontations. Armed resistance existed, it was incredible and heroic, but it was insufficient. The enemy was so superior in number, physical strength, resources, and organization that the young Jews had few opportunities for fighting. They grasped at each and every opportunity but that was insufficient to offset the acquiescence of those around them, which came to be seen as deliberate, self-centered and shameful. The limited armed response by the debilitated and downtrodden Jews clearly speaks to us of the abject conditions in which they lived. If they did nothing more, it is because they were unable to do more. The lack of response does not reflect poorly on the Jews or on their humanity; on the contrary, it demonstrates new limits regarding what it means to be human, the restrictions, the fragility, the painful vulnerability, all of which the Nazis, with their implacable machinery, shamelessly brought to light and used to their advantage.

 

            Are we good or are we evil? One of the topics the Shoah confronts us with is this eternal question: is man born good but turned evil by society? Or, is man born evil and turned good by society? The question itself implies two contradictory possibilities: individual and society, on one hand, and good and evil, on the other hand. It is a dissociative, exclusive and binary code with only two extreme and pure alternatives. Notwithstanding, the Shoah threatens to dissolve this code inasmuch as one of the lessons we can draw from this human experience is that we are both things at once, good and evil, we are born both good and evil, society can protect us or murder us, society can contain us or stimulate behaviors in us that we would not believe ourselves capable of performing.

 

Two psycho-social experiments: Milgram and Zimbardo

 

            Two laboratory experiments merit description here, owing largely to the harsh conclusions they draw. Like testimonies given by victim-survivors of the Shoah, both of these experiments disrupt the ideas and convictions we hold to be true about ourselves, our strengths and weaknesses, the vulnerabilities of our beliefs. They throw into question the very nature of our individual and social being.

 

Stanley Milgram and Obedience to Authority. This is one of the most widely known laboratory experiments of its kind. It was conducted by Stanley Milgram and his team in the Department of Psychology at Yale University during the years 1960-63.[6]

 

 

 

The Nazi extermination of European Jews is the most extreme instance of abhorrent immoral acts carried out by thousands of people in the same obedience. Yet in lesser degree this type of thing is constantly recurring: ordinary

citizens are ordered to destroy other people, and they do so because they consider it their duty to obey orders. Thus, obedience to authority, long praised as a virtue, takes on a new aspect when it serves a malevolent cause; far from appearing as a virtue, it is transformed into a heinous sin . Or is it?

.....

In order to take a close look at the act of obeying, I set up a simple experiment at Yale University. ..... A person comes to a psychological laboratory and is told to carry out a series of acts that come increasingly into conflict with conscience. The main question is how far the participant will comply with the experimenter´s instructions before refusing to carry out the actions required of him.

But the reader needs to know a little more detail about the experiment. Two people come to a psychology laboratory to take part in a study of memory and learning. One of them is designated as a “teacher” and the other a “learner”. The experimenter explains that the study is concerned with the effects of punishment on learning. The learner is conducted into a room, seated in a chair, his arms strapped to prevent excessive movement, and an electrode attached to his wrist. He is told that he is to learns a list of word pairs; whenever he makes an error, he will receive electric shocks of increasing intensity.

The real focus of the experiment is the teacher. After watching the learner being strapped into place, he is taken into the main experimental room and seated before an impressive shock generator. Its main feature is a horizontal line of thirty swithches, ranging from 15 volts to 450 volts, in 15-volt increments. There are also verbal designations which range from SLIGHT SHOCK to DANGER-SEVERE SHOCK. The teacher is told that he is to administer the learning test to the man in the other room. When the learner responds correctly, the teacher moves on to the next item; when the other man gives an incorrect answer, the teacher is to give him an electric shock. He is to start at the lowest shock level (15 volts) and increase the level each time theman makes an error, going through 30 volts, 45 volts, and so on.

The “teacher” is a genuinely naïve subject who has come to the laboratory to participate in an experiment. The learner, or victim, is an actor who actually receives no shock at all. The pont of the experiment is to see how far a person will proceed in a concrete and measurable situation in which he is ordered to inflict increasing pain on a protesting victim. At what point will the subject refuse to obey the experimenter?

Conflict arises when the man receiving the shock begins to indicate that he is experiencing discomfort. At 75 volts, the “learner”grunts. At 120 volts he complains verbally; at 150 he demands to be released from the experiment. His protests continue as the shocks escalate, growing increasingly vehement and emotional. At 285 volts his response can o nly be described as an agonized scream.

Observers of the experiment agree that its gripping quality is somewhat obscured in print. For the subject, the situation is not a game; conflict is intence and obvious. On one hand, the manifest suffering of the learner presses him to quit.

 

On the other, the experimenter, a legitimate authority to whom the subjet feels some coomitment, enjoins him to continue. Each time the subject hesitates to administer shock, the experimenter orders him to continue. To extricate himself from the situation, the subject must make a clear break with authority. The aim of

this investigations was to find when and how people would defy authority in the face of a clear moral imperative. (p 2-3-4)

 

The results went far beyond any previous assumptions. By an overwhelming majority, subjects not only consented to participate in the experiment, but they carried it out despite the obvious pain exhibited by the victim. The experimenter calmed the “teacher” by assuring him that the pain was temporary, reversible and, if necessary, by taking responsibility for the entire experiment. Some “teachers” continued reading the list of words and administering shocks even when the “student” appeared to have fainted and no longer responded. The harsh conclusion of this study is that, given the right conditions (a respectable and prestigious university environment, the chance to participate in a scientific experiment that might contribute to a scientific discovery for the good of humanity, the presence of a supervisor as stimulus as well as to take responsibility for the outcome) the average person will overcome his conflicts of conscience and accede to participate in the application of torture.

            The interpretation of the experiment presents a number of problems involving people in general and our participation in and/or reaction to different situations. The book was published in 1975 but, remarkably, has yet to be translated into Spanish, perhaps another sign of the social rejection generated by this kind of material, so contrary to the beliefs we hold concerning ourselves. I don’t intend to argue the relevance of this experiment, only to briefly share its troubling results. I do recommend reading the complete text of the experiment for all those interested, and valiant, readers.

 

            Philip Zimbardo and the simulated prison. The other experiment yielding results that disrupt the ideas and convictions we have about ourselves, as well as complementing Milgram’s experiment, is one that took place at the University of Stanford, carried out by a team directed by Prof. Philip Zimbardo[7]. The following is the account of the experiment published in the Naval Research Review, 30:

 

Introduction. Some psychological studies produce very surprising results for the researchers and the participants. Sometimes the results are so striking that they challenge our explanations of human behaviour and human motivation. One such study is the Milgram study described earlier in this chapter. Another one is the work of Zimbardo and his associates.

The central question in the study concerns how much of our behaviour is structured by the social roles that we occupy. One of the famous 'soundbites' from Shakespeare is, "All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players" (As You Like It). The 'life is drama' metaphor is developed in role theory and the work of, among other, Erving Goffman. This approach to human behaviour and experience suggests that we are what we play, and a limited sense of selfhood and identity is shaped by the demands of the situation we are in.

 

 

The study. Twenty‑four subjects were selected from an initial pool of 75 respondents to a newspaper advertisement which had asked for male volunteers to participate in a psychological study of prison life. The volunteers completed a questionnaire and interview to screen subjects, and the selected people were

described as 'normal' healthy male college students who were  predominantly middle class and White. The simulated prison was created in the basement of the Psychology Department at Stanford University. It was made up of three cells (each 6ft x 9ft) with three prisoners to a cell. A broom cupboard (2ft x 2ft x 7ft) was converted into a 'solitary confinement room'. Several rooms in an adjacent wing of the building were used as guards' rooms, interview rooms and a bedroom for the 'warden' (Zimbardo). There was also a small enclosed room used as a 'prison yard' in which there was an observation window behind which was video equipment, and room for several observers.

The subjects were randomly assigned their roles of either 'prisoner' or 'guard', and signed contracts on that basis. The contract offered $15 a day and guaranteed basic living needs, though it was made explicit to the prisoners that some basic civil rights (for example, privacy) would be suspended. The prisoners were given no information about what to expect and no instructions on how to behave. The guards were told to "maintain the reasonable degree of order within the prison necessary for its effective functioning" (p. 6), though they were explicitly prohibited from using physical aggression.

The prisoner subjects remained in the mock‑prison 24 hours a day for the duration of the study. Nine were arbitrarily assigned three to each cell and the remaining three were on stand‑by at home. The 'guard' subjects worked on three‑man eight‑hour shifts, and went home after their shifts.

Both sets of subjects were given uniforms to promote feelings of anonymity. The guards uniform (plain khaki shirt and trousers, whistle, baton, and reflecting sun glasses) was intended to convey a military attitude and to give symbols of power. The prisoners uniform (loose fitting smock, number on front and back, no underwear, light chain and lock around ankle, rubber sandals and a cap made from nylon stocking) was intended to be uncomfortable, humiliating and to create symbols of subservience and dependence.


 

Zimbardo obtained the help of the local police department to unexpectedly 'arrest' the 'prisoner' subjects. A police officer charged them with suspicion of burglary or armed robbery, advised them of their rights, handcuffed them, thoroughly searched them (often in full view of the neighbours!) and drove them to the police station. Here they had their fingerprints and picture taken and were put in a detention cell. They were then blindfolded and driven to the 'mock prison'. During the induction period the arresting officers did not tell the subjects that this was part of the study. When they arrived at the 'mock‑prison', the prisoner‑subjects were stripped, deloused, made to stand alone and naked in the 'yard' and then given their uniform and cell and told to remain silent.

The prisoners were then greeted by the warden who read them the rules which had to be memorised. After this they were referred to only by their number. The prisoners were to be given three meals a day, allowed three supervised toilet visits, two hours privilege time for reading and letter writing, two visiting periods a week, exercise periods, and film rights. They were also required to conduct work assignments and line up for a 'count' on each new guard shift. The initial purpose of the count was to check that all the prisoners were present, and to test their knowledge of the rules and their I.D. numbers. The first counts took around 10 minutes but as conditions in the prison deteriorated, they increased in length until some lasted for several hours.

  Results. The prison had a much more dramatic effect on all the players in the drama than had been anticipated. The mood of the prisoners and guards became increasingly negative. The prison was internalised by prisoners and guards and they adopted very contrasting behaviours, which were appropriate for their respective roles. Five prisoners were released early due to extreme emotional depression, crying, rage and acute anxiety, and the simulation was brought to an end after six days rather than the projected 14 days.

One question that arises from simulations is 'were the behaviours shown by the subjects merely some very good acting or had the situation become real to them?' One answer to this comes from the private conversation of prisoners which were monitored by the researchers. These conversations were 90 per cent on the prison, which shows that even when they were able to get out of their mental prisons they actually reinforced the experience. The prisoners also adopted the guards' negative attitude towards them, and referred to each other in deprecating ways. When the prisoners were introduced to a priest, they referred to themselves by number, asked for a lawyer to help get them out, and asked for immediate bail and a parole board.

Guard aggression showed a steady increase throughout the study, even after resistance had ceased. They attempted to 'hide' one prisoner in the broom cupboard overnight because the experimenters were being 'too soft'.

The most dramatic demonstration of the reality of the prison came with the mock parole board. The five remaining prisoners were asked by Zimbardo in turn whether they would forfeit the money they had earned as a prisoner if they could be paroled (released from the study). Three of the five said 'yes', which meant they were effectively terminating their contract to take part in the study. Yet  when they were told to return to their cells while it was considered they did so rather than just walk out

Discussion.  Zimbardo suggested that the reason for the deterioration in guard behaviour was power. The guards were able to exert control over the lives of other human beings and they did not have to justify their displays of power as they would have to in their daily lives. After day one, all prisoner rights became redefined as privileges, and all privileges were cancelled. Zimbardo describes the social deterioration of the prisoners as the pathological prisoner syndrome. To start with the prisoners rebelled against their conditions, but every attempt was undermined by the guards, and social cohesion collapsed among the prisoners. Half of the

prisoners responded by becoming sick, and eventually had to be released before the study was finally brought to a conclusion. For those who remained, the model prisoner reaction that developed was passivity, dependence, and flattened affect (emotions). Zimbardo suggested that there were a number of processes that contributed to the deterioration of the prisoners including:

(a) The loss of personal identity;

(b) The arbitrary control exerted by the guards. This made the prisoner's lives increasingly unpredictable and their treatment increasingly unfair. Their behaviour showed the signs of learned helplessness (see the study by Seligman & Maier, 1967, Chapter 5 of

this volume);

8 Dependency and emasculation. The guards created a dependency in the prisoners which emasculated them to the extent that when the prisoners were debriefed they suggested that they had been assigned to be prisoners because they were smaller than the guards. In fact, there was no difference in average height between the prisoners and the guards, and the perceived difference was a response to the prisoners' perceptions of themselves and their power.

What does all this mean? Zimbardo describes it as a simulation of prison life, but that is not quite the case. None of the subjects had any experience of prison life before the study, and their roles were played from the social perceptions of how prison life should be. It is, in

fact, a simulation of what we expect prison life to be, rather than what it is. However, the study still gives a powerful demonstration of the effect of social roles, and also the power of the social psychological experiment to make us behave in ways we did not think possible (see Orne, 1963, Chapter 21 of this volume).

Not altogether surprisingly, there were numerous ethical objections to the study, though like Milgram, Zimbardo made a robust defence (Zimbardo, 1973 and MacDermott 1993). He argued that the studies provide special insight into human behaviour and experience, and illuminate 'a dark side'. His personal criticism of the study concerns his own role as both researcher and warden. He became as trapped in his warden role as the other players in the simulation, and that prevented him responding appropriately as the lead researcher. It is also important to note that the study received the approval of the American Navy (who sponsored the research), the Psychology Department at Stanford, and also the University Committee of Human Experimentation before it was carried out.

None had predicted the outcome, but then why should they? If researchers already knew what was going to happen in their research then there would not be much point in carrying it out.

 

            The experiments summarized here, with their troubling (to say the least) conclusions, give us much to think about. They hold up for inspection some of our most deeply-rooted convictions. Are we as in control of ourselves as we like to believe? To what degree does our need to pertain to a group determine certain elements of our behavior? To what extent can we resist social pressures? How often per day do we question our responsibilities? How many theories or prejudices do we apply in our daily lives? Are we prevented from committing certain crimes by our personal convictions against them, or out of fear of discovery and punishment? How much of our declared respect for the rights and differences of others etc., do we truly exercise in our normal lives with our families and friends?

            If healthy young men, who participate voluntarily in an experiment from which they can withdraw whenever they wish, experience “passivity, dependence and a decrease in affection,” according to Zimbardo in his report, as a “typical reaction” when they play the role of prisoners, then the behavior of the Jews in the camps should not still be described  disdainfully with the shameful phrase, “like lambs to the slaughter.” We find ourselves obliged to consider something else; first, certain doubts now arise as to what we would have done in their place, such that the “voluntary” march of the “silly” lambs acquires a new complexion and, in fact, it seems perfectly feasible that given the situation and the context, nothing else could have been done. “What do you mean, nothing else could have been done? There’s always something else!” an irate and indignant voice rises up from deep within our bodies, a voice that insists upon our status as rational and free beings, lords over our ability to choose. These experiments speak to us of things we do not wish to hear, they tell us that we don’t always have the capacity to take action, they tell us that we may be impotent in the face of certain situations or contexts, they rob us of the illusion that we can control our destinies.

 

Identification with the aggressor: the dilemma

 

            There are still other aspects of the Shoah experience, even darker aspects than are usually mentioned, aspects that are almost impossible to speak about. For example, the question of Jews who were, to varying degrees, collaborators: how do we feel about those who were members of the Jewish police in the ghettos, whose cruelty often surpassed even that of the Nazis? Or the members of the Jewish Councils who were voluntary and enthusiastic accomplices? And how do we feel about the Jews who gave free rein to their most sadistic impulses, who identified with the aggressor and the anti-Semite and not only informed on and betrayed but also killed Jews with their own hands? And the robberies of Jews by other Jews? And the trafficking of influence? And the corruption? Little is known about all of this because all that can be known is what has been spoken about by the victims or the accusers that blame them for these most unforgivable crimes. The “collaborators” who are still alive keep low profiles, fearing, also with good reason, social repudiation.

In addition, little is known because this is one of those things we tend not to want to know about, we are confronted with a new kind of pain, a pain before which we feel stripped bare. The sense of “collective responsibility” is common to many Jews and is part of the legacy of centuries of anti-Semitism. Owing to this legacy, the “Jewish collective,” that is, every Jew, feels somehow responsible for the actions of other Jews, particularly when something bad is done. It is difficult to clear away the elements of such feelings when the confrontation is between the non-Jewish and the Jewish worlds. But it is even more difficult when the confrontation is within the Jewish world. How does “collective responsibility” function relative to the Jews who behaved like Nazis? Is there no point at which evidence of some loyalty to the group can be dredged up? Is anything possible? Is everything possible?

            Identification with the aggressor is a behavior we all know as human beings, it forms part of our life experience, though not to such extreme degrees of iniquity. Perhaps some day we will be able to penetrate the dark recesses of the Shoah experience.

 

Identification with the survivor

 

            What were the limits of what we refer to as ethics? What were the parameters? What were the possibilities? How can ethics be applied when the conditions for life, for mere survival, have changed? Is it more or less ethical to go on living in spite of everything? In spite of what, and how much? And what is the relation between the desire to live and the tolerance of unspeakable degradation?

            The stories told by victim-survivors, if indeed we have listened to them attentively – if we have reflected upon their implications – confront us with one of the most perplexing of all questions: What would I have done in their place?

            For people who are not very familiar with the Shoah, who know only certain statistics and general descriptions of what happened, it is easy to respond to this question. Most people suppose that they would have spontaneously acted out the role of heroes, that they would never have permitted the deaths of their parents, that they would have resisted their child’s being torn from their arms, thrown to the ground and trampled to death, that they would have desperately sought and found a way to fight back against the Nazis, to sabotage their apparatus, to never deliver their bodies in order to save themselves or others, always with a clear idea of what to do and how best to do it. These are the pure of spirit, honest and decent, who then become cruel and implacable judges. The fact is that they have never been in situations of such a disjunctive nature, they have no idea of the real circumstances – nor do they wish to know – the shortages, the absence of possibility, they view the Shoah through eyes accustomed to normality, and the picture makes no sense. It is difficult for people here to appreciate the experiments of Milgram and Zimbardo, perhaps they are too easily dismissed with the oft-expressed attitude, it’s just some more of that “yanqui” nonsense. It is frightening, very frightening, to wonder about the following questions today:

            What would I have done in their place?

            How long would I have lasted?

            How much humiliation would I have tolerated before taking my own life? Would I have been able to kill myself?

            Would I have been able to kill a son or daughter to avoid their being tortured?

            Would I have what it takes to bribe a Nazi?

            Could I have stolen?

            What would I have been able to force myself to eat in order to avoid starvation?

            What would I have done in their place? This is the question. The question itself is horrendous and even remains unasked. We cannot imagine ourselves in such circumstances, so removed from anything we know or have ever experienced, a life of days, weeks, months, years without the possibility for reflection, prediction, anticipation, or making decisions about even the smallest things in life, arbitrarily subjected to an omnipotent and unpredictable other and being forced to perform actions that we never imagined or believed ourselves capable of. The question of “what would I have done?” can not even be properly formulated.

 

            The answer. And if we do indeed dare to formulate the question to ourselves, then comes the worst: the intolerable nature of the supposed answer and the realization that we don’t know our own limits, our thresholds of tolerance or the strength of our convictions.

            If there is anything human beings cannot bear, it is not knowing. The void of ignorance must be filled quickly with an explanation, a theory, a supposition, a religious belief, a justification, something, anything to liberate us from the anguish of not knowing. And if we pose the question to ourselves, “what would I have done?” and we attempt to formulate a sincere response, we find ourselves submerged in naked, bewildered silence.

            The answer is that we don’t know. We would like to think of ourselves as we are now, under any and all circumstances, and that no one could make us think or act differently or change the parameters we know and feel comfortable with. But one of the lessons of the Shoah is that, when thrust into such an extremely limited situation, we are no longer who we were in normal life, the abnormality of the situation finds us unprepared and unprotected, without adequate training or certainty of what to do or how to respond.

            In the testimonies of the appeared, it is common to hear thoughtful expressions of surprise when certain unexpected forms of behavior are described, such as “I don’t know how it occurred to me to do such a thing,” or, “I don’t know where I found the strength for that,” or, “If I had to do it now, surely I wouldn’t dare.”

            The answer, or more accurately, the impossibility of an answer, is not only unpopular, it is also unbearable. It subverts all we were taught. It attacks the basic constructs of what it means to us to be human, an idea that is intrinsically linked to the triumph of reason over instinct, free-will over emotion, society over the individual, ethics over necessity, reflection over action. When we differentiate ourselves from what is considered “animal” – unjustly understood as inferior – we refer to these categories. Of course this leads once again to a mystification of what is “animal.” Curiously, in the animal kingdom, the idea of an animal destroying others of its species outside of the context of self-defense or hunger is non-existent, except in the case of certain birds, for example doves that kill themselves if they are enclosed in excessively small spaces. Hitler initiated the invasion of European territories alleging the need for “vital space” for the Germans. Like the doves, ironically, our symbol of peace.

            However, when we speak of what is “animal,” we tend to refer to what is instinctive, irrational, emotional, related to primary necessities (hunger, fighting, fleeing and sex) and the lack of words or thoughts.

            The Shoah provides us with a harsh lesson on how easy it is for us to “devolve into animals,” with what speed we can lose our “human” qualities. It reveals our fragility, our vulnerability and the relative simplicity of our degradation. The Shoah reveals how unprepared we are to defend ourselves when the rules of the game are changed. And it reveals the true nature of “human strength” that cannot be broken despite the unflagging scientific efforts of the Nazis; the intended devolution was not effectuated.

            The central issues of the Shoah, the issues that are constantly present in the memories of the victim-survivors, those linked to guilt, responsibility, humiliation, shameful behavior, these are issues that still stir up pain and are difficult to confront frankly and directly. We sidestep them, we refer to them euphemistically, covering them over with words that ease our consciences. It is unbearable for us to see ourselves, even minimally, in that mirror. Langer[8] points out the importance of language:

 

The role of language in this search –a subtext of many of these essays- illustrates how easy it is to change the impact of a disastrous event simply by reminding it. When we speak of the survivor instead of the victim and of martyrdoom instead of murder, regard being gassed as a pattern for dying with dignity, or evoke the redemptive rather than the grievous power of memory, we draw on an arsenal of words that urges us to build verbal fences between the atrocities of camps and ghettos and what we are mentally willing –or able- to face.

In p. 5 he says:

Commenting on the disbelief with which Aleksander Solzhenitsyn´s revelations in his Gulag´s Archipelago volumes were greeted –chiefly, that Stalin had left 60 million casualities in his wake- Russian poet Joseph Brodsky reflected: “I have a theory of why these things don´t seep through, and that is a theory about self preservation, mental self preservation. Western man, by and large, is the most natural man, and he cherishes his mental confort. It is almost impossible for him to admit disturbing evidence”. A world in which relatively small number of men can cause the death of so many millions while screaning their crimes and remaining themselves unpunished and unrepentant –for the most part, even after their defeat- is a world deprived of ethical force, one in which power supplants human concern, and indifference to suffering prevails over practical compassion.

 

 

 

Lessons of the extermination camps and political totalitarianism

 

Tzvetan Todorov[9], in his book, “Face à la limite” (Facing the Extreme), undertakes an exhaustive analysis of life in the Nazi extermination camps and the Soviet gulags, considering them to be logical results of totalitarian political systems. He examines both the prisoners and the perpetrators (p. 261):

 

The degree of suffering in the camps surpasses any in recent human memory; it testifies to a deep-rooted illness suffered by the world of before, the world responsible for the emergence of these institutions. In order to prevent any such recurrence, it is necessary to examine the lessons of the camps and to try to understand the profound causes of their existence.

 

In order to prevent the lesson of the camps from being lost, we must overcome a dual-form of resistance: 1) resistance by those who justify the camps and wish to deny the lessons there are to be learned from them, and 2) resistance by those who believe that the event was unique, unrepeatable and unnecessary to discuss; they erect a monument and freeze it in the past.

 

The memory of the camps must serve as an instrument of information to enable us to judge and analyze the present (p. 264).

 

I will now summarize, as succinctly as possible, the ideas I view as being most important in Todorov´s book.

            In his analysis of prisoner behavior in the face of extreme situations, Todorov considers it relevant to carefully examine the virtues and vices exhibited in this behavior. He differentiates between what he calls heroic virtues and daily virtues. Heroic virtues appear to have been rare in the camps; they are those that involve abstractions such as the homeland and humanity; they are extraordinary qualities; the hero takes action without considering his own death, thinking only of excellence and perfection. The author says that, although there were examples of heroic conduct, because of their scarcity, he decided to concentrate his work in the description of daily virtues, as these were the most important in driving prisoners forward.

 

The daily virtues. They may be observed in daily behaviors in connection with concrete situations (obtaining food, encouraging a fellow prisoner, etc.), whose main objective was the action itself without pretensions of gaining anything related to intellectual abstractions or constructions. There are three types: dignity, caring and spiritual activity.

a)     Dignity, a virtue that reveals a prisoner’s relationship to himself; it is the most powerful driving force behind his will to live. Two basic conducts sustain a person’s dignity:

-        the exercise of free will (in the form of resisting an order, committing suicide as an affirmation of free will, the transformation of an act of submission into one of free-will, singing a song, etc.)

-        respect for oneself (keeping oneself clean, caring about others, not suffering unnecessary humiliation)

b)     Caring, a virtue that reveals the way in which a prisoner relates to other prisoners like himself, a personal me-you relationship. The most simple and important act is that of sharing food with another person. In the dynamics of the camps, prisoners are rare who do not have some such experience in their history in which they were cared for by another prisoner. Caring behavior must be examined from a variety of perspectives.

-        The agents, those who cared for others. “They can be found in every social and professional category, although they are often rare. There were also kapos or Blockaltesete who were concerned for their subordinates. Or watchmen and prison-guards who allowed good to triumph over “duty” (page 83). Naturally, among friends, acquaintances and people from the same villages, there was mutual caring and helping, although it is in the relationships between family members, whose paradigm is the mother-child relationship, that such behavior was most frequent. In this respect, Todorov comments that it is not surprising that more women survived than men given that women, in contrast to men, are trained in the exercise of caring for others.

-        The limits of the concept. Caring is differentiated from solidarity because it is not a moral act, it cannot be assumed automatically, it is, rather, an individual and voluntary act directed at one person, not because the person belongs to any particular group but just due to circumstance. It is also differentiated from charity or pity, which are given to everyone, to anonymous beings, giving rise to an asymmetry between those who give and those who receive, with the additional ingredient of humiliation in the case of the latter. Nor is it a sacrifice, an act without reciprocity, through which one person becomes poorer while in the act of caring for another one becomes richer.

-        The effects. Acts of caring produce an immediate satisfaction for both the provider and the beneficiary; on one hand, a concrete necessity is attended to and, on the other hand, both maintain their humanity.

c)     Spiritual activities. These are ethical or intellectual actions whose objective has to do with the search for beauty or intellectual solace (playing music, reciting poetry or books, drawing, making ornaments) or are related to understanding and knowing about the world (the decision of many prisoners to tell the stories of what they lived through so that the world would know; the effort to remember and record as much as possible was the driving force for the survival of many). These are activities directed at a group of people, the relationship is me-them, activities whose only end was to sustain the will to live.

Daily virtues were always directed at concrete and particular people. They are subjective and obey a morality of sympathy rather than the morality of principles. Daily virtues are differentiated from kindness and goodness in that they are not guided by these abstractions. Someone who exercises daily virtue is not interested in the exercise of good as an anonymous entity, but rather considers the action to be something concrete and effective and directed at someone in particular, for the sheer fact of doing something, and, consequently, feeling well.

 

            The irruption of evil. Todorov also attempts to understand the conduct of the perpetrators, to probe this irruption of evil. Considering the cases he has studied, he says that traditional explanations do not account for what happened. According to Todorov, we cannot understand the behavior of the perpetrators from a pathological perspective because only 5 to 10 per cent of them may be considered to have been sadists; nor can we consider it as a phenomenon of returning to primitive instincts, for two reasons: first, because in the animal world there is no torture or extermination and, second, because the perpetrators did not betray the social contract inasmuch as they complied with laws and obeyed orders; nor can we explain it as fanatical idealism given that they were a minority, that is, the majority consisted in obedient, conformist bureaucrats who were only interested in their personal well-being. Todorov concludes that, rather than focusing on individuals or psychology, we should direct our attention more towards the socio-political level[10]. He goes on to question what conditions must be necessary in a society for the committing of such crimes to be possible. In his view, this could only happen in a totalitarian society such as that of the Nazis, who could exercise powerful control over the moral conduct of the individual. Todorov characterizes totalitarian societies according to the following:

            1) designation of the enemy as an internal agent, as all those who oppose State designs, “an enemy among us” that must be eliminated;

            2) negation of the universality of the concepts of good and evil, which go on to become defined by, and property of, the State;

            3) the State aspires to absolute control over the social life of the individual, there is no place to hide or take refuge, total submission is required.

            The above-mentioned characteristics have powerful behavioral consequences:

            1) once the enemy is defined, hostility towards him is commended;

            2) individual responsibility is alleviated because it becomes domain of the State; this enables individuals to concentrate on procedures and lose sight of the ends;

            3) behavior becomes docile and there is passive submission to orders.

            Totalitarian States also exercise a powerful control over their victims, who have also become submissive. All those who are defined as “internal enemies” see themselves as solitary and impotent in the face of a vastly superior force. Todorov considers it highly inappropriate to invoke Jewish tradition or the ghetto mentality for understanding the absence of mass rebellion. He feels that such an uprising would be impossible under a totalitarian regime, which crushes all forms of organized opposition and resistance.

            Once a totalitarian system is installed, a subtle slipping process begins, a progressive change in the thresholds of tolerance, the population is converted into a criminal accomplice, gradually adopting a “see-no-evil attitude.”

 

            The daily vices. There emerge, then, what Todorov calls daily vices, which are developed by the agents of evil. He describes three:

            1) fragmentation or discontinuity in personality or in life as one of the consequences of living in a totalitarian system; this assumes different forms and levels.

            - first form: an incoherence in behavior that alternates between good and evil; this is a common characteristic among perpetrators. The same individual that tortured and killed, could also make a humane gesture to a victim.

            - second form: this is more systematic and feeds off two daily virtues which do not occur simultaneously – caring and spiritual activity; the same individual that killed could love music and art and be moved by their expression.

            - third form: this is a discontinuity between the public and private spheres which appears to play a kind of primordial role in totalitarian regimes (an executioner in the extermination camps and a loving husband at home).

            The fragmentation of their lives was absolutely necessary so that pity would not hinder their “work” and also to preserve a satisfactory private life. There had to be a complete rupture between the principles that reigned in each of the two spheres. Todorov thinks that the theory held by some historians that this characteristic is unique to Germany is unsustainable because it can also be found in the conduct of Russian perpetrators. He believes that it is a question of how totalitarian systems influence the behavior of people,  generating sealed-off internal compartments and partitions. In a totalitarian system where the State defines what is good and what is bad, individuals only have to concern themselves with their tools, with doing what they know how to do best; everyone minds his own business, turns a blind eye to the neighbor since no one has an overview of the entire situation, no one knows the superior State designs; compartmentalization and bureaucracy lead to the absence of a feeling of responsibility, moral conscience is suspended and, if everyone does his job and minds his own business, the crimes are easier to commit.

            2) depersonalization, focused on in three sections:

- dehumanization of the victims, the totalitarian system views individuals as instruments; Todorov considers this to be the principal vice in the evil of totalitarianism. The transformation of persons into non-persons involves various techniques: victims are stripped because, without clothing, they become less human, they must live with their excrement, they are deprived of their names, they are given numbers, they are not referred to as “persons” but as “pieces,” or “cargo,” they are never confronted face-to-face, all eye-contact is avoided.

- submission of the guards, the same process of dehumanization but applied to the perpetrators. Inasmuch as their over-riding duty is obedience, to carry out orders, they readily accept being converted into tools. Totalitarian systems are characterized by their dependence upon blind obedience and train every individual to see himself as a cog in an immense machine. Obedience diminishes responsibility and leads to a powerful moral transformation: he who merely obeys is no longer a person.

- the perpetrators, those who give the orders, who see themselves as technocrats, they kill not out of hate but as part of their job; they protect themselves behind the dehumanization of the victims. Todorov reminds us that Eichmann, during his trial, defined himself as an idealist because he preferred ideas to human beings. The perpetrators, those who acceded to the construction of the totalitarian system, actively avoided applying personal judgement to the fundaments of the orders they gave and received under the logic that “the ends justify the means.”

3) the enjoyment of power

- power over others is a particular case of instrumentation and depersonalization. Totalitarian systems permit indulgence in the enjoyment of power to its maximum intensity. The other, the victim, is an instrument for heightening power, the notion of self-importance, submission, dependence, the knowledge of having another at one’s mercy offers sure satisfaction of the thirst for power that is so highly stimulated by totalitarian regimes. There were no limits on its indulgence in the camps, the guards became drunk on power, they were supermen. The kapos pertained to a grayer area, as Primo Levi has said: oppressors and oppressed, hence their zeal for demonstrating their power; for good reason they were generally recruited among the common criminals.

The saviors. Todorov also refers to saviors as one of the groups that sustained a possible form of resistance. For the population in general, there appeared to be only two possible options: imitating the enemy, that is, responding to evil with evil, or resignation, that is, accepting that all resistance was useless. Some people opted for other routes, one of which was non-violent and was the option chosen by the saviors, whose conduct is situated midway between heroic acts and daily virtues.

Characteristics of the saviors. In contrast to the heroes, who fight for principles, abstractions, not for concrete persons, for saviors, life had maximum value, they did not seek martyrdom, they only took calculated risks; they did not take action for abstractions but for persons; they did not see themselves as exceptional people, nor as protagonists of tales of glory. In contrast to the daily virtues, caring was often offered to strangers, foreigners and, especially in Polish territory, the entire family was thus exposed to danger.

The savior has the courage and generosity of the hero and the interest in the well-being of others as follows from the logic of caring, one of the daily virtues.

The savior is neither passive nor resigned, he believes in the strength of free-will, in taking action because he believes there is always something that can be done.

The saviors are few, given that they are exceptional people, although it would be almost impossible to find in them – just as in the case of the perpetrators – any particular feature that distinguishes them from common people.

They are not conformists. They see themselves as outsiders, people who resist obedience, they respect laws but also the exercising of a clear and critical conscience.

They are not enamored of principles. They tend toward universalization because they are disposed to help strangers, but also toward individualization, given that their actions are directed at concrete persons.

Although there were some saviors who took up their work in return for economic compensation, this was not the case by and large; in general, in the act itself, they felt both gratified and compensated.

Eva Fogelman[11] says:

 

These men, women, and children who risked their lives to save others were flesh-and-blood human beings with strengths and faults. Yet they saw people who were different from them and responded, not to these differences, but to their similarities. While most people saw Jews as pariahs, rescuers saw them as human beings. This humanistarian response sprang from a core of firmly held inner values. These values, which included an acceptance of people who were different, were unwavering and immutable. And central to these beliefs was the conviction that what an individual did, or fail to do, mattered. They recognized that for many Jews the choice made by a bystander could mean life or death. (p.6)

 

Raquel Hodara[12] says that the subject of the saviors has not been sufficiently researched. She attributes this to three main reasons:

1) an ideological objection: if the subject is given too much attention it could lead to a distortion in the proportions of perpetrators to saviors as well as generating the idea that there were many of them or, at least, a significant number; in fact, they were a very small number of people, 0.1% would be a very generous estimate;

2) a subjective objection: the subject as such could open old wounds for people who were profoundly affected and who believe – and need to believe – there were no saviors;

3) an existential objection: to recognize the existence of saviors who placed their own lives, and the lives of their children, in danger in order to save some complete strangers raises the question, “would I have done the same thing?”

Just as the Shoah teaches us that we can no longer say that there are some things human beings are incapable of doing to other human beings, the existence of saviors suggests that the impossible also exists, that one can always do something.

 

The unique situation of Poland. Professor Hodara reminds us that the situation in Poland was different from that of other occupied countries. On one hand, because the largest concentration of Jews was in Poland and, on the other hand, due to the way the Germans treated the Polish people. The SS authority exercised terror and cruelty over the people of Poland, who they looked down upon. The Polish people suffered terribly during the war. In the first weeks, 10 thousand Polish leaders were executed. In all, the Nazis killed between 1 and 2 million Poles, 2.5 were driven into forced labor, the rest were placed on rations and treated with extreme cruelty. Of all the territories under Nazi occupation, only in Poland was helping Jews punishable, on the spot, by summary execution not only of the person who gave aid but also of the person’s entire family. Those were not auspicious conditions for the actions of saviors. Nonetheless, it should be noted that they existed, though rare.

It is difficult to establish how many saviors there were in Poland. This is due, in part, to the fact that some were unfortunately discovered and killed; there are many who, due to Polish anti-Semitism that is still active today, prefer not to discuss their deeds of rescue or protection on behalf of Jews; in addition, there are some survivors who are reluctant to speak out. After 1943, the Polish organization, Zegota, supported by the Polish government-in-exile, was able to save some ten thousand Jews.

The reference to saviors, according to Raquel Hodara, includes those who hid Jews, but not necessarily those who brought them food, carried messages for them, or helped them to escape. Scholars calculate that for every Jew that was saved, at least 10 Poles participated. From compiled testimonies, it is estimated that the initiative originated with the person who was saved in 65% of the cases.

The barriers. Raquel Hodara reminds us that the act of rescuing someone was extremely difficult and almost unimaginable, all the odds were against succeeding. Hodara recognizes four principal barriers that saviors had to overcome:

- location: the city was always simpler than the countryside; it was more anonymous, but establishing adequate facilities was complicated and there was the constant fear of discovery by neighbors or acquaintances;

- food: under conditions of strict rationing, obtaining additional food was a daily feat;

- sociology: the social environment consisted in people who had been raised on deep-seated anti-Semitism; saviors and victims were surrounded by people who, one way or another, justified what was happening;

- psychology (a consequence of the preceding): people had been educated to hate the Jews.

            Once these barriers had been overcome, day-to-day living presented constant cohabitational problems. For example, the question of what to do in the case of illness on the part of a Jew in hiding, or how to resolve the problem of burial in the case of a death, or how to deal with such problems as disagreements between a family member and a Jew in hiding, or disagreements between the Jews themselves. Thus, in addition to the difficulty of the context itself - the concrete barriers faced in the act of offering salvation - there were also the thousand-and-one conflicts to be resolved in questions of daily life. Each of these difficulties brought to the surface the ever-present question of, “What am I doing? They might kill us at any moment...”

            Both the saved and the saviors had characteristics worth taking a moment to consider.

            The saved (the Jews). Hardly anyone had planned beforehand for their rescue, they were unprepared and had to improvise.

            - It has been estimated that around 30% of the Jews that were hidden had financial resources.

            - Among those that survived by falsifying their identities, it was not enough just to provide documents that established Polish citizenship, they also needed personality characteristics that supported their invented biographies such as correct behavior in church, prayer, and new family relations.

            - Physical appearance was also important given that the more they appeared as Poles, the better their chances at survival became. Professor Hodara mentions that there was an association of Catholic doctors that operated on noses in order to have a more “Aryan” appearance. However, it was easier to save women than men due to the practice of circumcision.

            The saviors. Of the known cases of rescue and salvation, certain characteristics of the saviors emerge that outline the requirements for overcoming the enormous difficulties involved.

            Social characteristics:

            - They pertained to all different social classes and cultural levels

            - Marriage to Jewish spouses was not a determining factor

            - Single women had more compassion for children

            Psychological characteristics:

            - The objective or subjective degree of danger did not seem important to the saviors

            - They did not accept official reports as the truth, but they did take the trouble to interpret them

            - They had the firm conviction that they could maintain control over situations

            - They were concerned for the well-being of others

            Education:

            - They were disciplined but not rigid, they had not been beaten

            - They believed in equity, all people deserve the same opportunities

            - They exercised individual responsibility

            - They exercised freedom of belief, independent of the opinions of others

            - They maintained their belief in the brotherhood of all human beings

Previous activities:

- Half of all saviors participated in clandestine anti-Nazi movements

- 60% of all saviors had performed altruistic acts before the war

As Eva Fogelman says in the title of her book, what was necessary was conscience and courage – two conditions that were not always very spontaneous or as present as we might suppose.

 

The Shoah as lesson

 

            The Shoah, laboratory of some of the darker aspects in human nature, offers us certain possibilities for learning about ourselves, what we can expect of ourselves and others like us and, perhaps, what aspects we should develop and reinforce in order to create a better society.

            Todorov[13] suggests that there are four lessons to be extracted from the harsh experiences suffered by victims in the camps:

            1) The rise of evil. Evil consists in denying someone his/her human rights. Evil exists and has always been the same, there have been no mutations. Perhaps this century, with its fragmentation of the world and depersonalization of human relations, has enabled evil to rear up so monstrously. The world of human beings has been invaded by a technological mentality that seems to distance it further and further from what it is to be human.

            2) The Triviality of good. Good also exists and continues to be practiced. There were simple examples of kindness in the camps, reflexive acts that revealed, in Rousseau’s words, pity in action, from which all social virtues derive. To feel pity seems natural, though we might not all feel it in the same way. It is natural but not instinctive, it is a voluntary gesture, free. But let us not forget that egoism and convenience are also natural.

            3) Gendered values. To the masculine universe  are attributed values related to work, public life, principles and grand objectives; to the feminine universe, the private sphere, interpersonal relations, empathy and pity. Western society tends to regard masculine qualities very highly, as the “true” qualities, and to disregard feminine qualities, those that lean towards the daily virtues.

            4) The phenomenon of the just. It’s enough to say that they have been far too few.

            Todorov concludes somberly saying that the bystanders, in general, let things happen; they knew, they could have helped others in different moments, but they didn’t, although each person’s case was unique. “The pain of another left us cold, if alleviating it meant giving up our own tranquility” (page 161).

            Teaching in times of peace, to care for our loved ones, and in difficult times, to find the force within us to open our group of pertinence, beyond the normal limits, and recognize other people as our brothers though they may be strangers.

            It is easier for us to say that the victims were human beings than it is for us to say the same about their executioners. The agents of evil were common people. It is difficult for us to accept this. It is more comfortable to think that evil exists at some distance from ourselves, not within, but without, that we have nothing in common with such monsters.

            The eternal question still resonates: is man good or evil? Todorov believes human beings are both, that both egoism and altruism are innate.