Chaim Mordechai Rumkowski, Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team, http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ghettos/rumkowski.html (accessed March 16, 2016). It is written by Pimo Levi, an Italian Jew who was in . Yet, as we have seen with Todorov, it has become common to expand Levi's gray zone to include non-victims. Some might argue that we should not allow Primo Levi to own the term gray zone. This is not the same as the Golden Rule, which states that one should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself.2 The Golden Rule suggests that we are motivated to treat others well by self-interestthat is, by the desire to be treated well ourselves. We are thankful for their contributions and encourage you to make yourown. 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. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide, This PDF is available to Subscribers Only. : Scapegoating in the Writings of Coetzee and Primo Levi, View Wikipedia Entries for The Drowned and the Saved. Print Word PDF This section contains 555 words In The Drowned and the Saved, Primo Levi titles his second chapter The Gray Zone. Here he discusses what he calls National Socialism's most demonic crime: the attempt to shift onto othersspecifically the victimsthe burden of guilt, so that they were deprived of even the solace of innocence.1 He is referring here specifically to the Sonderkommandosthe special squads chosen by the SS at Auschwitz to perform horrendous tasks. They also informed on their fellow prisoners, usually so that they would get better treatment or additional food for themselves. David Patterson, Nazis, Philosophers, and the Response to the Scandal of Heidegger, in Roth, Ethics, 119. 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. . Barbour, Polly. This choice could lead to a secular salvation.15. 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. But regardless of their actions Jews were condemned. Levi's intent in introducing his notion of the gray zone is to say that it is, while Rubinstein argues that it is not. In 1946, Gandhi said in an interview that if he had been a Jew under the Nazis he would have committed public suicide rather than allow himself to be re-located into a ghetto.4 From this perspective, there is no question that the members of the Sonderkommandos would be condemned as collaborators and murderers. Unlike the Spanish Inquisition, or even the authorities of George Orwell's 1984, the Nazis did not torture to change the beliefs or behaviors of their victims. Again, some might argue that we should not allow Primo Levi to own the term gray zone. In the face of the actions of an Oskar Schindler, a Raoul Wallenberg, or the inhabitants of the village of Le Chambon, how can bystanders honestly contend that they were forced to do nothing? Not affiliated with Harvard College. However, as I have argued, Levi does not intend to permanently include perpetrators in the gray zone. While Levi tells us that Muhsfeldt was executed after the war, and contends that this execution was justified, he does suggest that Muhsfeldt's hesitationno matter how momentarywas morally significant. In the latter film, a female collaborator Francoise Hemmerle is portrayed as evil, while her male counterpart, Armand Zuchner, is described simply as an idiot. Horowitz contends that this demonization of female collaborators is widespread and gender-based. Heller's parents suggest that she, too, should keep quiet. The Drowned and the Saved was Levi's last book; he died after completing the essays that comprise it. 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. Todorov presents himself as an admirer of Primo Levi, and in this book he refers to or quotes from Levi on forty-six of his two hundred and ninety-six pages. Levi emphasizes that the tendency to think in binary terms--good/evil, right/wrong--overlooks important characteristics of human behavior, and dangerously oversimplifies: " . It is well known that the members of one Sonderkommando rebelled on October 7, 1944, killing a number of SS men and destroying a crematoriumyet many scholars would still argue that this episode is not enough to exculpate the many who did not rebel. In the anthology Ethics After the Holocaust: Perspectives, Critiques, and Responses, both David Hirsch and David Patterson attack Todorov's positionespecially his refusal to view perpetrators as moral monsters simply because they lived in a totalitarian society. Jonathan Petropoulos and John K. Roth (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006), 299. Survivors such as Primo Levi did engage in self-blame for the tragic choices they had to make or even when they had not transgressed any moral code or principles. As in all the other chapters of his book, Levi discusses the complexity of these situations. . Certainly some of them could have chosen to be martyrs or rescuers. thissection. Even in the worst of circumstances (Auschwitz), it cannot be extinguished. I would argue that, despite his enormous admiration for Levi, Todorov misreads him completely. The intersubjective act, on the other hand, establishes a relationship between two or more individuals. One can give these two categories different names. Despite this concession, Rubinstein rejects Levi's characterization of Rumkowski as a resident of the gray zone. The SS would never have played against other prisoners, as they considered themselves far superior to the average inmate. Counterfeiting in more ways than one, they illustrate what Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi called "the grey zone of collaboration." In The Drowned and the Saved, Levi says of his Holocaust experience, "the enemy was all around but also inside[;] the 'we' lost its limits." The Counterfeiters, then, is about the complexity of defining the "we . The first time he states: Between those who are only guards and those who are only inmates stands a host of intermediates occupying what Primo Levi has called the gray zone (a zone that in totalitarian states includes the entire population to one degree or another).45 He then goes on to discuss how prisoner-guards such as the kapos, or by extension Chaim Rumkowski, exert abusive power towards their victims precisely because of their own lack of power in relation to their oppressors. 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. While they may have traveled there in a special railway car, once they arrived they were Jewish victims no different from the rest. It is as objective and real as its two principled and more commonly recognized alternatives. First, Starachowice was able to meet Himmler's conditions for using Jewish labor in that their work was directly linked to the war effort. The teleological action, like the consequentialist action, is taken to accomplish a purpose. Rubinstein simply does not accept that Rumkowski's will was genuinely good no matter how much suffering he claimed to have endured. Their heads were shaved, their clothing taken and replaced with identical striped shirt and pants that looked similar to pajamas. The Holocaust calls into question the very possibility of ethics. Indeed, as we know, many did make such choices. In the world there is not just black and white, [Levi] writes, but a vast zone of gray consciences that stands between the great men of evil and the pure victims.48, Todorov appears to believe that Levi intended to include all Germans in the gray zone, including the great men of evil mentioned above. Part of my disagreement with Petropoulos and Roth returns us to Levi's discussion of SS-man Eric Muhsfeldt. As Rubinstein agrees that Rumkowski was a victim, the primary disagreement between Levi and Rubinstein may be over the question of whether that victimhood is sufficient to place someone outside our moral jurisdiction. Kant posits that a moral act first requires good will (similar to good intentions). because of the constant imminence of death there was no time to concentrate on the idea of death" (76). The SS never took direct control. Some historians believe that Levi committed suicide, overwhelmed by a penetrating sense of guilt at having survived an experience that killed so many. Himmler's November 1943 decision to liquidate labor camps did not extend to Starachowice. . " Fundamental to his purpose is the fear that what happened once can happen (and in some respects, has happened) again. 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. (And when they refused to collaborate, they were killed and immediately replaced.). The Drowned and the Saved - Chapter 6, The Intellectual in Auschwitz Summary & Analysis. On the few occasions when he mentions women (pp. Kant would say people always have choices, however; the men should have refused to act immorally even if that refusal resulted in their own immediate death. The Drowned and the Saved, however, was written 40 years later and is the work of memory and reflection not only on the original events, but also on how the world has dealt with the Holocaust in the intervening years. Most survivors come from the tiny privileged minority who get more food. In certain ways, this distinction mimics the distinction between the consequentialist and the deontologist. She memorized the details of their lives and eventually was able to deceive a parish priest into creating duplicates. While it is certainly possible to disagree with Melson's use of the concept of the gray zone, it is worth considering. The camps of Starachowice were very much like those described by Levi. Even so, he insists, memory and the historical record are crucial to combating Nazi assumptions that their deeds would go unnoticed (they were destroying the evidence), or disbelieved. Ross, hold that the moral worth of an act is intrinsic to the act itself, while consequentialists, including Utilitarians Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, believe that the moral worth of an act lies primarily in its consequences. Lawrence L. Langer, The Dilemma of Choice in the Deathcamps, in Echoes from the Holocaust: Philosophical Reflections on a Dark Time, ed. Yet, in his final work, The Drowned and the Saved, Levi painted a radically different picture of the Holocaust. Levi tells us that a certain Hans Biebow, the German chief administrator of the ghetto . More books than SparkNotes. The moral action par excellence is caring.43. The Drowned and the Saved Irony These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community. For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription. Alan Rosenberg and Gerald E. Myers (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988), 224. Yet, even within this zone, moral distinctions do exist. 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. Neither forced religious conversion nor phony confession would have saved them. Rubinstein maintains that Levi saw all people as centaurstorn between two natures. In other words, Levi is making a normative argument against the right to judge, not an ontological claim about the possibilities of moral action. Are there different kinds of violence? The Drowned and the Saved - Preface Summary & Analysis. Later in the essay, Rubinstein states that Rumkowski's Give me your children speech indicates that he was under no illusions concerning the fate of the deportees. Individual motivations are many, and collaborators may be judged only by those who have resisted such coercion. Sara R. Horowitz, The Gender of Good and Evil: Women and Holocaust Memory, Petropoulos and Roth, Gray Zones, 165. Another anthology dealing with these issues is Elizabeth Roberts Baer and Myrna Goldenberg, eds., Experience and Expression: Women, the Nazis, and the Holocaust (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2003). In his recent book Primo Levi: The Matter of a Life, Berel Lang argues that Levi opposes this view. Soon after the war ended, he wrote several books about his experience. 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. Print Word PDF This section contains 488 words I will show that certain misuses of the term travel far from Levi's original intention and become part of a relativistic challenge to contemporary ethics. one is never in another's place. The camps were built on a foundation of violence and this is one of the things that Levi looks at in the next essay in the book. IN HIS MUCH-DISCUSSED CHAPTER "The Gray Zone" from The Drowned and the Saved, Primo Levi recounts the disturbing story of the morally corrupt Judenrat leader of the Lodz ghetto, Chaim Rumkowski, whose willing collaboration with the Nazis nonetheless failed to save him from the gas chambers of Auschwitz. As Levi reminds us, Rumkowski and his family were killed in Auschwitz in August 1944. Save for his favorites, he had concern only for that remnant of the group likely to survive the ordeal of the war. On the other hand, he did argue that, because of their status as coerced victims, we do not have the moral authority to condemn their actions. 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. In The Drowned and the Saved, Levi does not explicitly discuss the conditions faced by women in the camps. Levi, however, was never a believer, although he admits to having almost prayed for help once, but caught himself because "one does not change the rules of the game at the end of the match, not when you were losing" (146). SS ritual dehumanizes newcomers and veterans treat them as competitors. See Helga Varden, Kant and Lying to the Murderer at the Door One More Time: Kant's Legal Philosophy and Lies to Murderers and Nazis, Journal of Social Philosophy 41 no.