Table Of ContentProblems Unique to the Holocaust
Problems Unique
to the Holocaust
HARRY JAMES CARGAS
Editor
THE
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Problems unique to the Holocaust / Harry James Cargas, editor.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8131-9048-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945)—Moral and ethical aspects.
2. Concentration camps—Moral and ethical aspects.
I. Cargas, Harry J.
D804.3.P77 1999
940.53'18—dc21 98-41612
ISBN-13: 978-0-8131-9048-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting
the requirements of the American National Standard
for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.
Manufactured in the United States of America.
Member of the Association of
American University Presses
Contents
Preface V1!
Can Betrayal Ever Be Legitimate? 1
STEVEN L. JACOBS
The Moral Dilemma of Motherhood in the Nazi Death Camps 7
DAVID PATTERSON
Holocaust Victims of Privilege 25
SUSAN L. PENTLIN
Suicides or Murders? 43
CHARLOTTE GUTHMANN OPFERMANN
Holocaust Suicides 51
JACK NUSAN PORTER
Victims of Evil or Evil ofV ictims? 67
DIDIER POLLEFEYT
Medicine in the Shadow of Nuremberg 83
DIANE M. PLOTKIN
Is Objectivity Morally Defensible in Discussing the Holocaust? 98
ROBERT S. FREY
Indifferent Accomplices 109
ERIC STERLING
Intruding on Private Grief 122
ALASTAIR G. HUNTER
Christians as Holocaust Scholars 135
LEON STEIN
Art After Auschwitz 152
STEPHEN C. FEINSTEIN
Reflections on Post-Holocaust Ethics 169
JOHNK.RoTH
Afterword 182
HARRy JAMES CARGAS
Contributors 190
Index 193
A Note on Harry James Cargas 197
Preface
~
I A MURDERERr, Calel Perechodnik's "confession" of how a Jew agreed
to collaborate with the Nazis in exchange for the safety of his daughter and
wife, gave me the impetus for this colloquy. In spite of the Nazis' promises,
Perechodnik's Polish-Jewish family was murdered by the conquerors. I tried
to reflect on the situation. Would I, under extreme circumstances, have done
anything to save my family? I know of cases of parents, hiding behind fake
walls or in fields, who smothered their own babies whose cries otherwise
would have revealed their secret positions and those of others concealed with
them.
Such decisions had to be made almost instantaneously. What were the
moral implications of these actions or inactions? What were some of the other
moral problems faced by people who were being rounded up to die? Of the
terrible drama faced in Am I a Murderer?, translator Frank Fox writes in the
foreword: "Perechodnik and other policemen [help] eight thousand Otwock
Jews into the town square, where they are loaded into boxcars. The police
men are promised immunity for their own wives and children, but the
German enemy deceives them. Perechodnik watches in horror as his wife and
daughter are loaded into wagons headed for the Treblinka death camp."
In my review of the book in Commonweall wrote: "Just before his own
death during the war, probably by his own hand, Calel Perechodnik gave the
document to a friend; it finally came into the hands of Fox, who prepared it
for publication. Perechodnik begins by saying that, though he is not a man
of faith, this memoir is his deathbed confession. Telling the story, he blames
himself completely, never offering any mitigating circumstances. Pain fills
every word of the record."
Dare we throw stones at this man? Is there some value in considering
questions about moral situations at Auschwitz, Dachau, Treblinka, Sobibor,
VIl
V111 Harry JAMES CARGAS
and other death camps? My answer to the latter question is yes. So is the
answer of other contributors to this anthology.
The problem that each writer of a chapter of this book had to recognize
was how to write sensibly about an indelicate subject. For Rabbi Steven
Jacobs the answer to his question about the moral legitimacy of betraying
someone to save others is steeped in ambiguity. David Patterson expresses a
similar difficulty in the very first sentence of his essay on motherhood in the
Nazi death camps, and he concludes that the only responses to the murder
of babies may be in silence, and the birth of other Jewish babies.
Susan Pentlin deals further with ambiguity, asking why some Holocaust
survivors remain silent. Charlotte Guthmann Opfermann herself raises a
dilemma of ambiguity by asking whether or not certain suicides ofJews were
morally not suicides but murders by the conquerors. "Holocaust suicides" are
also discussed by Jack Nusan Porter, who investigates the self-inflicted deaths
ofJerzy Kosinski, Bruno Bettelheim, Terrence Des Pres, and others.
Does the behavior of Holocaust victims reveal the true nature of human
beings? The philosophical answer by Didier Pollefeyt is found in his concept
of the "banality of the good." Issues regarding the value of life are considered
by Diane Plotkin in her segment on medicine in the death camps: who shall
live and who shall die. Science and its relationship to the human spirit come
under scrutiny by Robert S. Frey as he relates his thinking to the Shoah. He
also addresses the controversial question of the uniqueness of the Holocaust.
Eric Sterling discusses the guilt of those who stood by and did or said
nothing during the tragic Event. How responsible were the onlookers? The
problem of the appropriateness of Christian scholars in Holocaust studies is
examined by both the Reverend Alastair Hunter and Leon Stein. Is this his
torical occurence to be analyzed only from within, from a Jewish perspective?
Stephen Feinstein talks about art after Auschwitz. Is it "correct" or "neces
sary" to have creation after distraction? John Roth, in what was intended to
be the final chapter of this book, brings us back to the beginning, in a way,
back to the death (and life) of Calel Perechodnik. But given the popularity
and controversy surrounding Jonathan Goldhagen's book, Hitler's Willing
Executioners, I thought a brief discussion of that work should be included;
hence the Afterword. I have met and talked over his work with Jonathan
Goldhagen, and our meeting was a pleasant one. He is a gentleman and a
man of strong convictions. I disagree with Goldhagen's thesis, but unlike
some of his critics I do not attack him personally. I like him, he is wrong, and
that is that.
Can Betrayal Ever Be Legitimate?
STEVEN L. JACOBS
IN
THE CRUCIBLE OF THE SHOAH (Holocaust), the act of betrayal, whether
seemingly well-intentioned or misguided, becomes synonymous with that of
slander of informing. In the Hebrew language one finds three terms: malshin
(from the root lashone, speaking or language), mosair (from the root masar,
transmitter), and delator (from the Latin, probably reflecting its origin during
the period of Roman oppression). All such words are indicative of a reality
with which the Jewish people would rather not deal directly: that of traitors
or turncoats who, for self-advancement; would denounce their fellow Jews to
the authorities, all too often with baseless calumnies and invented charges of
religious lies or seditious fabrications. Such individuals may be further sub
sumed under the general category of mishumaddim or "destroyers." Such
"turncoatism" reached its high point during the Middle Ages in both the
Germanic or Ashkenazic communities and the Spanish or Sephardic com
munities. It continued beyond into Eastern and Central Europe in the
controversies between the Hasidim and their opponents the misnagdim, the
most famous example of which was the arrest and imprisonment of Rabbi
Shneur Zalman of Lyadi, the acknowledged leader of Habad Hasidism, in
1800. In the so-called modern period, under the Soviets, informing on both
friends and family became a test of "good" citizenship for non-Jews as well
as Jews.
During the brutally intense years of the Shoah, specifically 1939-45, Jews
were confronted with moral and ethical dilemmas unlike those with which
they had previously and historically wrestled. In addition, even those who
sought to ally themselves with the Nazi authorities, either to save themselves
or their loved ones or to advance their own desire for personal wealth and
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