I reject this view on moral grounds, and I will show that Levi does so as well. and although he feels compelled to bear witness, he does not consider doing so sufficient justification for having survived. This violates the second formulation of the Categorical Imperative, which requires that we always treat others as ends in themselves and never as means (to survival, in this instance). Yes, they lived under a totalitarian government that violated their rights and restricted their choices. Robert Melson's Choiceless Choices: Surviving on False Papers on the Aryan Side also usefully expands Levi's original concept of the gray zone, applying it to Jews living on false papers. Melson describes the experiences of his own parents as they managed to obtain falsified identity papers allowing them to evade the Nazis throughout the war. 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. Members of these special squads received marginally better provisions of food and other supplies than most camp inmates, yet they knew thatlike all other prisonersthey were doomed. 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. Levi profiles Rumkowski not because he believes that his actions were justified, but precisely because he believes that they were not. I would argue that it is appropriate to expand Levi's zone beyond Auschwitz so long as its population is made up only of victims. Order our The Drowned and the Saved Study Guide. The Drowned and the Saved essays are academic essays for citation. I would argue that, despite his enormous admiration for Levi, Todorov misreads him completely. Adam Czerniakw, Jewish Virtual Library, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Czerniakow.html (accessed March 16, 2016). 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. 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. Yet, he argues, his parents feelings of guilt and shame should not be confused with moral blame for their behavior. Indeed, Todorov builds his new morality on his observations of the inherent goodness that remains in individuals even in the worst of conditions. It is an exploration of complex human responses to unimaginable trauma. The text of the speech is available at http://www.datasync.com/~davidg59/rumkowsk.html (accessed May , 2016). Bystanders also had meaningful choices. 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. Levi's account of Henri is part of his extended analysis of "the drowned and the saved," those who will go under (Dante's "sommersi") and those who can survive. Thus, Melson concedes that his mother acted immorally, yet he argues that her choices, like those of the prisoners Levi describes, were inescapable and dictated by circumstances.. But regardless of their actions Jews were condemned. Todorov dismisses Primo Levi's disgust with his own acts of selfishness in the camp as a form of survivors guilt. 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. These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community. 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. Abstract. one is never in another's place. The corpses were then taken to the crematoria to be burned. This Levi attributes to shame and feelings of guilt. 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. 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. You'll be clean, I promise you.34 While the actions of male victims are accepted as guiltless ones coerced by what Lawrence Langer calls choiceless choices (e.g., Heller's grandfather gave up his wife to save himself), women have been judged by a harsher standard that condemns forbidden sexual contact. 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). On September 4, 1942, Rumkowski delivered his infamous Address at the Time of the Deportation of the Children from d Ghetto.20 Rubinstein quotes Rumkowski as saying, I share your pain. Clearly, Jews and members of other groups chosen for extermination (e.g., Roma) must be included. While Horowitz does not examine the conditions that prisoners faced in the camps, she does, in my view, legitimately expand the gray zone to include female victims in ways that further our understanding of Levi's primary moral concerns. Soon after the war ended, he wrote several books about his experience. The Nazis were not trying to coerce their victims into any form of action. He is careful to make clear from the outset that unusual external events contributed to the large number of survivors. 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. 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. I agree that we do need more ways of speaking with precision about regions of collaboration and complicity during World War II.57 However, with Levi and Lang, I oppose moral determinismthe belief that in the contemporary world almost no one can be held completely responsible for his or her acts, and that the job of ethics, in the face of post-modern relativism, is to understand why people commit acts of immorality without condemning them for doing so. Preferably the worst survived, the selfish, the violent, the insensitive, the collaborators of the gray zone, the spies.44, Todorov disagrees. This is not a novel but more of an essay The Drowned and the Saved is an attempt at an analytical approach. will review the submission and either publish your submission or providefeedback. . Levi tells a story from the diaries of Mikls Nyiszli, a Hungarian-Jewish doctor who survived Auschwitz. Read the Study Guide for The Drowned and the Saved, Will the Barbarians Ever Arrive? In doing so he relies on Levi's own criteria and the essential element of mortal risk. 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 . We are neither angels nor demons but ordinary human beings comprising both good AND evil. http://www.amazon.com/review/R3GSXXVIVI3IV5/ref=cm_cr_dp_title?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0691096589&channel=detail-glance&nodeID=283155&store=books (accessed March 16, 2016). Levi's intent in introducing his notion of the gray zone is to say that it is, while Rubinstein argues that it is not. 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. Sara R. Horowitz does important work in examining the role of gender in the experiences of women caught in the gray zone. 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. It is written by Pimo Levi, an Italian Jew who was in . There is some evidence to suggest that he bribed Baumgarten to arrange the removal of the sadistic camp commandant Willi Althoff, and to have the Ukrainian guards moved outside the camp fence. The Nazis victims did not choose to be victims, and they could not choose to stop being victims. Written by people who wish to remain anonymous Subjectivity and irony The irony of subjectivity comes through loud and clear in this account of Nazi concentration camps. . Most survivors come from the tiny privileged minority who get more food. Read the Study Guide for The Drowned and the Saved The Drowned and the Saved essays are academic essays for citation. Levi wonders about the nature of these men and considers whether their "survival of the fittest" mentality is the natural reaction to being imprisoned in a death camp where they might be killed at any moment. After you claim a section youll have 24 hours to send in a draft. Since Levi was one of those saved, he is "in permanent search of a justification . Even with the show of force the Germans would display, they often lacked the necessary personnel in camps to keep control of the sheer number of prisoners kept there. Sometimes villagers would feel sorry for the prisoners and tell them how the war was progressing. The Drowned and the Saved - Preface Summary & Analysis. Rubinstein quotes an American Orthodox rabbinical ruling that, while it is permissible for a soldiers to eat pork when no other food is available, they must not lick the bones (Lecht nicht die bayner).18 He concludes that for Rumkowski the gray zone had turned black.19. Had the Melsons been arrested and their deception uncovered, it is likely that the Germans would have arrested and punished the Zamojskis for aiding Jewseven if they protested that they had not known. 1The 'grey zone' is a term coined by the Italian Holocaust survivor Primo Levi in his essay collection The Drowned and the Saved (1989; originally published in Italian in 1986), the last book he completed before his death. A Jew could choose to commit suicide, or to comply, and those choices did have moral ramifications. From this perspective, perhaps Hitler was the only German who was not in the gray zone.47, In his second mention of the gray zone, Todorov praises Levi's description of life in the camps as an accomplishment unparalleled in modern literature. He admires Levi's rejection of Manicheanism whether in reference to groups (Germans, the Jews, the kapos, the members of the Sonderkommandos) or individuals. An editor 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? He is the author of Woody Allen's Angst: Philosophical Commentaries on His Serious Films (2013); Eighteen Woody Allen Films Analyzed: Anguish, God and Existentialism (2002); and Rights, Morality, and Faith in the Light of the Holocaust (2005). Part of my disagreement with Petropoulos and Roth returns us to Levi's discussion of SS-man Eric Muhsfeldt. Nevertheless, from a consequentialist perspective, Jewish leaders such as Wilczek may have acted morally. Yet, in his final work, The Drowned and the Saved, Levi painted a radically different picture of the Holocaust. The next subject that he introduces is the way in which the Nazis broke the will of the prisoners. . He acknowledges that, using consequentialist tactics of sacrificing the weak and powerless (e.g., children) in order to save the maximum number, Rumkowski did in fact save more lives than he would have if he had instead followed the path of Czerniakw. 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. The first subject Levi brooches is the problem with memory; chiefly, it is fallible and it is also subjective. dition the "gray zone." A zone where there exist gray, ambiguous persons who, "contaminated by their oppressors, unconsciously strove to identify . Is Browning's discussion an appropriate use of Levi's gray zone? The prisoners were to an equal degree victims. He has also written numerous essays on issues in aesthetics, ethics, Holocaust studies, social philosophy, and metaphysics. Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. . Fundamental to his purpose is the fear that what happened once can happen (and in some respects, has happened) again. 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. Heroes such as Colonel Okulicki of the Polish Home Army choose to fight and die for principles that usually are abstractions (such as the idea of the Polish nation). 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. Privilege is born and spreads where power is in few hands, and power tolerates a zone where masters and servants diverge and converge. Does Levi really mean to suggest in this haunting passage that we all exist in the gray zone nowthat none of us deserves to be judged morally because our current situation is indistinguishable from that of the Jewish victims in the ghettos and death camps? Victims would do better psychologically to hate their oppressors and leave the understanding to non-victims: One almost regrets Levi's commitment to his project of understanding the enemy (for his sake, not for ours: as readers we are only enriched by his accomplishment). 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. One nature is rationally moral while the other is animalistic and amoral. This condition did not apply to perpetrators or bystanders. Thus, Rumkowski created in the ghetto a caricature of the totalitarian German state.46 Ignoring Levi's distinction between victims and perpetrators, between those who had viable choices and those whose meaningful choices had been destroyed, Todorov sees the gray zone as permeating the entire totalitarian German state: everyone had his or her freedom limited by people higher up in the hierarchy. 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. The Gray Zone Chapter 3, Shame Chapter 4, Communicating . In 'The Grey Zone', the second chapter and the longest essay in the book, Levi acknowledges the human need to divide the social field into 'us' and 'them . They therefore used prisoners to police other prisoners; these men would receive more rations and sometimes access to privileges. SS ritual dehumanizes newcomers and veterans treat them as competitors. Indeed, for Kant, even to consider the results of one's actions is inappropriate. The Drowned and the Saved study guide contains a biography of Primo Levi, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis. The speech also gives expression to his rationalization of the grisly task.23 For Rubinstein, as for Kant, good will is a necessary precondition for the possibility of morally justifiable behavior. In other words, Levi is making a normative argument against the right to judge, not an ontological claim about the possibilities of moral action. Their heads were shaved, their clothing taken and replaced with identical striped shirt and pants that looked similar to pajamas. Best summary PDF, themes, and quotes. Hirsch asks, Would Todorov wish to argue that the social regimen (if it can be called that) created by the Germans throughout the Konzentrationslager system is what he would consider a normal social order?51 Patterson goes much further, claiming that good and evilin the eyes of Arendt and Todorov, as well as the Nazisare matters either of cultural convention for the weak or of a will to power for the strong. With regards to the premises of their thinking, Arendt and Todorov are much closer to the Nazis than they are to the Jews.52 While I reject such hyperbole as inflammatory, I do agree with Hirsch and Patterson that Todorov's claim that the entire German population could be located in the gray zone is a misuse of Levi's terma misuse that undermines our ability to properly assign moral responsibility.
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