Louis Fischer, The Life of Mahatma Gandhi (New York: HarperCollins, 1983), 348. The camps of Starachowice were very much like those described by Levi. In her next section, Horowitz compares the portrayal of female collaborators to that of men in Marcel Ophuls's films The Sorrow and the Pity and Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie. Richard L. Rubinstein, Gray into Black: The Case of Mordecai Chaim Rumkowski, in Gray Zones: Ambiguity and Compromise in the Holocaust and its Aftermath, ed. On the other hand, in choosing to take his own life without revealing to the community the fate that awaited it, without exhorting people to fight back, Czerniakw acted with dignity but without real concern for others.41. Todorov dismisses Primo Levi's disgust with his own acts of selfishness in the camp as a form of survivors guilt. This condition did not apply to perpetrators or bystanders. Collaboration springs from the need for auxiliaries to keep order as German power is overtaxed, and the desire to imitate the victor by giving orders. Willingly or not, we come to terms with power, forgetting that we are all in the ghetto, that the ghetto is walled in, that outside the ghetto the lords of death reign, and close by the train is waiting.29. Levi begins it by discussing a phenomenon that occurred following liberation from the camps: many who had been incarcerated committed suicide or were profoundly depressed. Here Todorov allies himself with Kant's deontological approach, essentially re-stating Kant's second formulation of the Categorical Imperative. Print Word PDF. Browning concludes that such strategies of alleviation and compliance, while neither heroic nor admirable, without doubt saved Jewish lives that otherwise would have been lost. Nor, finally and most fundamentally, is the Gray Zone a place to which all human beingsby the fact of human frailtyare granted access, since that would then enable them conveniently to respond to any moral charge with the indisputable claim that I'm only human.8. Toggle navigation . All of these unusual conditions, together with the fact that no selection took place when the prisoners were finally transferred to Auschwitz-Birkenau in July 1944, meant that a much larger number of prisoners survived here than in other such camps. For example, in her memoir Strange and Unexpected Love, Fanya Heller describes her relationship as a teenager with a uniformed Ukrainian with the right to grant or take her life. As the repeated urging of her parents to be nice to Jan reminds us, love was a viable currency in the genocidal economy.33 While Heller suggests that her relationship was uncoerced and that she and Jan were able to create their own private and contained world, removed from the horrors outside of it, there was no chance that the affair would continue after the war, much less that she and Jan would marry. John Roth. Melson describes his parents feelings of guilt at their inability to save his maternal grandparents from death in the ghetto; after the war, his mother suffered from depression and required electroshock treatments to deal with her guilt. everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Drowned and the Saved. Some might argue that we should not allow Primo Levi to own the term gray zone. Some might respond that the members of these special squads had no choice because the Nazis forced them to act as they did. Or, Primo Levi'S Ending - Jstor He acknowledges that his parents situation, while life-threatening and humiliating, never approached the level of horror and despair faced by Levi and other camp prisoners. In my opinion it is. In my view, what is at stake here is the possibility of ethics in a world misconstrued as a universal gray zone. The SS would never have played against other prisoners, as they considered themselves far superior to the average inmate. The Drowned and the Saved - Chapter 6, The Intellectual in Auschwitz Summary & Analysis. Since Levi was one of those saved, he is "in permanent search of a justification . While there is no question that Wilczek used his power to gain advantages for himself and for members of his family, Browning points out that he also used his influence with a factory manager named Kurt Otto Baumgarten in ways that benefitted the entire community. He discusses some of the ways in which the expression has been misappropriated and misunderstoodand why this matters. There are various ways in which they were able to do this, not least, starving them and working them to the point of exhaustion. Once the victims were dead, Sonderkommando members removed and collected all items considered to be of value (including clothing, hair, and gold teeth). The Drowned and the Saved Irony | GradeSaver . With his emphasis on caring, Todorov adds a dash of Heidegger, Levinas, and Buber into the mix. Primo Levi's Gray Zone : Implications for Post-Holocaust Ethics Levi argues therefore that, while we should think seriously about the different choices made by people such as Czerniakw and Rumkowski, we ultimately have no right to condemn them. Barbour, Polly. The intersubjective act, on the other hand, establishes a relationship between two or more individuals. One can give these two categories different names. Not affiliated with Harvard College. Primo Levi. However, as a deontologist, Kant believes moral acts should be motivated by a sense of duty, never by a calculation of self-interest. I do not believe so. 4 (2010): 40321. The Drowned and the Saved Summary - www.BookRags.com Using traditional Western moral philosophy, it would be difficult not to condemn them. The situation of the victims was so constrained that they truly reside in the gray zone, a place too horrific to allow for the use of the usual ethical procedures for evaluating moral culpability. My primary purpose has been to argue that Primo Levi's term gray zone should be reserved for the purpose for which he intended it. The case of Wilczek substantiates Weinberg's point in that the Starachowice camp operated until comparatively late in the war, and as a result, Wilczek succeeded in saving hundreds of lives. While these analyses are admittedly simplistic, they are sufficient to indicate my point that the acts of the Sonderkommandos would be difficult to justify using traditional moral theories. Once again, the Nazis most demonic crime was to coerce victims into the role of perpetrator, to force Jews to participate in the humiliation and murder of their fellow Jews. Given his belief that humanity's moral nature is immutable, and that many people chose to display ordinary virtue and act intersubjectively even in the camps, he can have little use for Levi's notion of the gray zone. Those who survived were able to remind themselves in small ways every day that they were still human. As Lang points out, Levi acknowledged that it might be interesting to compare the actions of ordinary people who chose to become perpetrators with immoral acts committed by victims. it draws from a suspect source and must be protected against itself" (34). Tzvetan Todorov, Facing the Extreme: Moral Life in the Concentration Camps (New York: Henry Holt, 1996), 12. Only through deathwhether one's own or that of othersis it possible to attain the absolute: by dying for an ideal one proves that one holds it dearer that life itself.39, Todorov prefers ordinary virtue, an act of will that affirms one's dignity while demonstrating concern for others. I believe that the most meaningful way to interpret Levi's gray zone, the way that leads to the greatest moral insight, requires that the term be limited to those who truly were victims. She uses this story to illustrate her contention that Jewish tradition demands of women that they give up their lives rather than submit to rape. Yet, in his final work, The Drowned and the Saved, Levi painted a radically different picture of the Holocaust. Sara R. Horowitz, The Gender of Good and Evil: Women and Holocaust Memory, Petropoulos and Roth, Gray Zones, 165. We are thankful for their contributions and encourage you to make yourown. Indeed, a deontologist would argue that the uprising did not cleanse the rebels of the moral stain from the thousands of murders in which they were already complicit. It is an exploration of complex human responses to unimaginable trauma. Chapter 1, "The Memory of the Offense," dissects out the vagaries of memory, rejection of responsibility, denial of unacceptable trauma and out and out lying among those who were held to account by tribunals as well as among the victimized. She memorized the details of their lives and eventually was able to deceive a parish priest into creating duplicates. Had they liberated it in 1942 instead of January 1945, Rumkowski might have been credited with saving thousands of lives: What if Joseph Stalin's hopes of a decisive victory in early 1942 had been realized, and, as a result, the ghettos of Vilna, Kovno, d, and perhaps even Warsaw, as well as many others had been liberated in the spring or summer of 1942? Sonja Maria Hedgepeth and Rochelle G. Saidel, eds., Sexual Violence against Jewish Women during the Holocaust (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2010), 177. Search for other works by this author on: 2016 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, From a Holocaust Survivors Initiative to a Ministry of Education Project: Fredka Mazia and the First Israeli Youth Journeys to Poland 19651966, Artwork That Helps Frame History: Toward a Visual Historical and Sociological Analysis of Works Created by Prisoners from the Terezin Ghetto, About the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Hannah Arendt, Berel Lang, and the True Meaning of the Gray Zone, Richard Rubinstein, Gerhard Weinberg, and the Case of Chaim Rumkowski, Morally Questionable Expansions of Levi's Gray Zone, Receive exclusive offers and updates from Oxford Academic, Copyright 2023 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Within a week, he disappears as some prisoner in the Work Office switches his . From the heroic perspective, it does not matter that the Warsaw Rising failed. It existed before he used it, and is useful in distinguishing between the types of behavior engaged in by members of various groups within Nazi Germany. It is written by Pimo Levi, an Italian Jew who was in . In this chapter he considers also whether religious belief was useful or comforting, concluding that believers "better resisted the seduction of power [resisted collaborating]" (145) and were less prone to despair. In the entire book, he mentions it only twice. The prisoners were to an equal degree victims. The Drowned and the Saved - jstor.org They could even choose to be rescuers. It seems to me that Levi views the Hobbesian world of the Lager as so insane, so far removed from the niceties of everyday reality, that we do not have the moral authority to judge the actions of its victims. Even though his first book Se questo un uomo -published in English as Survival in Auschwitz -did not sell well when first published by De Silva in 1947 (2,500 copies published, of which 600 remained unsold and were eventually destroyed by the 1966 flood in Florence), it . In "The Gray Zone" (2) Levi challenges the tendency to over-simplify and gloss over unpleasant truths of the inmate hierarchy that inevitably developed in the camps, and that was exacerbated by the Nazi methodology of singling some out for special privileges. Still others are willing to defend Rumkowski. Her sacrifice directly benefitted anotherher daughter. The world of the Lager was so insane, so far removed from the niceties of everyday reality, that we do not have the moral authority to judge the actions of its victims. Horowitz traces the growth of this story, which has been proven false, into a powerful myth immortalized in a popular poem and repeated in certain Jewish religious services. Only the drowned could know the totality of the concentration camp experience, but they cannot testify; hence, the saved must do their best to render it. In his landmark book The Drowned and the Saved (first published in 1986), Primo Levi introduced the notion of a moral "gray zone." The author of this essay re-examines Levi's use of the term. The project is more than admirable, but the former victim may not be the most suitable person to carry it out. Better for them to hate their enemies.49. Fundamental to his purpose is the fear that what happened once can happen (and in some respects, has happened) again. I would argue that, despite his enormous admiration for Levi, Todorov misreads him completely. Yet, even within this zone, moral distinctions do exist. In The Gender of Good and Evil: Women and Holocaust Memory, she explores the images of good and evil associated particularly with women under Nazism, as these shape our perception of the Holocaust.32. In The Drowned and the Saved, Levi does not explicitly discuss the conditions faced by women in the camps. They also informed on their fellow prisoners, usually so that they would get better treatment or additional food for themselves. He is careful to make clear from the outset that unusual external events contributed to the large number of survivors. "The Drowned and the Saved Summary". While they may have traveled there in a special railway car, once they arrived they were Jewish victims no different from the rest. Sander H. Lee is Professor of Philosophy at Keene State College in New Hampshire. It seems to me that a defender of Levi could respond to Rubinstein by arguing that Levi did not attempt to justify or excuse Rumkowski. For example, he seemingly agrees with Levi's assessment of the members of the Sonderkommandos, who also compromised morality for the sake of short-term survival. If one passed the Nazis genetic test, one's choices did make a difference. In her final section, titled The Gray Zone, Horowitz examines the moral ambiguities present in stories of Jewish women who survived by trading sexual services for food or protection. Important as all these topics may be, I argue that to fold them into Levi's notion of the gray zone dilutes the moral force of his position. . " The woman's guardian angel discovers that she once gave a beggar a small onion, and this one tiny act of kindness is enough to rescue her from Hell. She asserts that Rumkowski acted as the Fhrer of d, noting that he went so far as to mint coins with his image on them.14, In his essay Gray into Black: The Case of Mordecai Chaim Rumkowski, Richard Rubinstein presents a scathing critique of Levi's decision to place Rumkowski in the gray zone. Chapter 2, The Gray Zone Summary and Analysis Survivors simplify the past for others to understandstark we/they, friend/enemy, good/evil divisionsbut history is complex. Horowitz tells us that when Heller's memoirs appeared in the 1990s, she was condemned by many in the Jewish community and caught in a gender-specific double-bind: if Heller did not love Jan then she prostituted herself; if she did love him, then she consorted with the enemy., Heller's aunt also suffered sexual violationshe was raped by a German soldierbut she chose to keep it secret from all but a few close relatives. On the Grey Zone. Michael Rothberg - Centro Primo Levi New York As Levi reminds us, Rumkowski and his family were killed in Auschwitz in August 1944. In his landmark book The Drowned and the Saved (first published in 1986), Primo Levi introduced the notion of a moral gray zone. The author of this essay re-examines Levi's use of the term. : Scapegoating in the Writings of Coetzee and Primo Levi, View Wikipedia Entries for The Drowned and the Saved. In normal moral circumstances, Levi would not hesitate to condemn Rumkowski, but because he was a victim living in nightmarish conditions, we have no right to condemn himalthough we do have an obligation to consider the moral implications of his actions. In The Drowned and the Saved, Levi argues that it is unfair to judge the victims of genocide using moral tools that are appropriate to normal, everyday life. Levi gives another example of the gray zone when he writes about Chaim Rumkowski, the Elder of the Jewish Council in the ghetto in d, Poland. Translated by Raymond Rosenthal. The Drowned and the Saved Summary - www.BookRags.com "Useless Violence" (5) gives examples of how the Nazis tormented their prisoners with "stupid and symbolic violence.". A chemist by profession and a writer by compulsion, Levi, an Italian Jew forced to become Prisoner 174517 in a Nazi death camp, refused afterward to have his tattoo erased; for forty years, he wore. The Gray Zone Chapter 3, Shame Chapter 4, Communicating . Our moral yardstick had changed [while in the camps]" (75). However, in expanding the sphere of Levi's zone there lies a form of moral determinisma growing sense that in the contemporary world almost no one can be held completely responsible for his or her acts. The gray zone is NOT reserved for what Lang calls suspended judgmentsthose made through the lens of moral hindsight. Some argue that we have no right to judge the actions of people who could not have known what we know today. Ethical Grey Zones - A Companion to the Holocaust - Wiley Online Library He establishes four categories: criminal guilt, political guilt, moral guilt, and metaphysical guilt. At the beginning of his book, Todorov tells us that his interest in comparing the events of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the 1944 Warsaw Rising is motivated by his belief that: they did indeed shed light upon the present.37 He repeats this assertion in the book's epilogue and adds: What interested me is not the past per se but rather the light it casts upon the present.38 Indeed, the purpose of his book is clearly to articulate a post-Holocaust ethics based on insights he develops through his examination of life in totalitarian societies. . It follows immediately after an extended description of Elias the dwarf, whom Steinberg also remem-bers as extraordinary. More books than SparkNotes. Those who were not victims did have meaningful choices: they could choose not to engage in evil. Browning examines the strategies used by Jewish prisoners to survive; he finds, not surprisingly, that those willing to exploit the corruption of the German guards and managers had the best chance.
