the drowned and the saved the gray zone summary

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. Order our The Drowned and the Saved Study Guide, teaching or studying The Drowned and the Saved. suicide is an act of man and not of the animal . 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. Yet, Todorov's interpretation of the moral situation of prisoners in the camps is quite different from Levi's as I understand it. In other words, Levi is making a normative argument against the right to judge, not an ontological claim about the possibilities of moral action. 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. Are there different kinds of violence? . The corpses were then taken to the crematoria to be burned. Death and destruction were the only absolutes in this moral universe. 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. In all of these respects, there is relevance for those who work with individuals who are seriously ill or disabled, and in a larger sense, the book forces consideration of the many and ongoing instances of man's inhumanity to man. Ethics commonly distinguishes between deontologists and consequentialists. Deontologists, among them Immanuel Kant and the twentieth-century philosopher W.D. Levi postulates that the Nazi concentration camp system resulted in a massive "biological and social experiment." Within a week, he disappears as some prisoner in the Work Office switches his . This was the chief method employed by the Germans to break the prisoners' spirits. (199). In this chapter Levi also discusses why inmates did not commit suicide during their incarceration:" . Unable to pay the fee, Melson's mother tricked them into showing her their papers. 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. To say that Muhsfeldt, for that brief instant, was at the gray zone's extreme boundary does not mean that perpetrators and bystanders deserve the same moral consideration and leniency that Levi demands for those who were condemned to live in horrific conditions as they awaited their seemingly inevitable deaths. In his epilogue, Todorov further distinguishes between the teleological and the intersubjective. Our moral yardstick had changed [while in the camps]" (75). An editor Read the Study Guide for The Drowned and the Saved The Drowned and the Saved essays are academic essays for citation. Survivor Primo Levi relates how to very few live to tell their stories and unmasks the true depths of Nazi evil. Perhaps the most difficult and controversial use of the notion of the gray zone appears in Levi's discussion of SS-Oberscharfhrer Eric Muhsfeldt. 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. The members of the special squads did the opposite. To me, it seems clear that Levi does not include the guards, much less all Germans, in that zone. . 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. 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. While Levi does not say that Muhsfeldt's moment of hesitation is enough to purge him of his guilt (he still deserved to be executed as a murderer), Levi does say that it is enough, however, to place him, too, although at its extreme boundary, within the gray band, that zone of ambiguity which radiates out from regimes based on terror and obsequiousness.25 I agree with Lang's conclusion that Levi decides on balance that Muhsfeldt does not belong there and concurs in the verdict of the Polish court which in 1947 condemned him to death for the atrocities he had taken part in.26 Levi believes that this was right. He goes on to say: It is not difficult to judge Muhsfeldt, and I do not believe that the tribunal which punished him had any doubts.27, No tribunal could have absolved him, nor, certainly, can we absolve him on the moral plane. We who are not in that zone have no right to judge those whose meaningful choices had been taken away by the Nazis. 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. 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. . Instead, as some seem to suggest, the job of ethics, in the face of postmodern relativism, is to understand why people commit acts of immorality, without condemning them for doing so or demanding their punishment. resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss thenovel. He discusses some of the ways in which the expression has been misappropriated and misunderstoodand why this matters. In certain ways, this distinction mimics the distinction between the consequentialist and the deontologist. SS ritual dehumanizes newcomers and veterans treat them as competitors. Gray Zone Motif. She argues, as did Gandhi, that had Jewish leaders simply refused to cooperate with the Nazis, many fewer Jews would have been killed: after all the Nazis did not have enough men to drag every Jew from his or her home to the camps. The last part of the book consists of letters between Germans and Levi' they ask questions about his experiences and his feelings about his captors, and he answers honestly, describing his ordeal and stating clearly what he sees. These events were beyond the control of the Jewish prisoners and, probably, unknown to most of them. 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. His . Non-victims such as Muhsfeldt had moral responsibility and deserved to be prosecuted for their actions. Her sacrifice directly benefitted anotherher daughter. (St. Paul, MN: Paragon House, 1999), 102. The fact that they may have had a few more choices and that making those choices saved more prisoners does not change their status any more than the status of the rebelling Sonderkommandos of 1944 would have changed had they somehow miraculously survived the war. Rumkowski chose compliance in the hope that he would be able to save some of the victims. Chapter 7, "Stereotypes," addresses those who question why many concentration camp inmates or ghetto inhabitants did not attempt to escape or rebel, and why many German Jews remained in Germany during Hitler's ascendance. Best summary PDF, themes, and quotes. A Jew could choose to commit suicide, or to comply, and those choices did have moral ramifications. 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. "Coming out of the darkness, one suffered because of the reacquired consciousness of having been diminished . Jonathan Petropoulos and John K. Roth, Prologue: The Gray Zones of the Holocaust, in Petropoulos and Roth, Gray Zones, xviii. The Nazis were not trying to coerce their victims into any form of action. 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. Primo Levi was imprisoned at the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944. While I would agree that circumstances varied in the zones of German domination and some bystandersfamilies with young children to protect, for examplecould not have been expected to act heroically, I would still contend that their circumstances were not sufficiently dire to justify their inclusion in Levi's gray zone. Primo Levi is right to demand from us greater moral courage. Sander H. Lee, Primo Levi's Gray Zone: Implications for Post-Holocaust Ethics, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Volume 30, Issue 2, Fall 2016, Pages 276297, https://doi.org/10.1093/hgs/dcw037. dition the "gray zone." A zone where there exist gray, ambiguous persons who, "contaminated by their oppressors, unconsciously strove to identify . We are thankful for their contributions and encourage you to make yourown. and although he feels compelled to bear witness, he does not consider doing so sufficient justification for having survived. Her father urged her to move to Paris, saying: No one will know. Knowing her daughter would never agree to deprive her mother of such protection, Mrs. Tennenbaum asked her to hold the pass for a moment; then she went upstairs and killed herself. Todorov distinguishes between heroic and ordinary virtue. 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. 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. 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. However, Lang insists, and I agree, that Levi emphatically does NOT include perpetrators in the 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. In discussing Chaim Rumkowski and the members of the Sonderkommandos, Levi acknowledges that we will never know their exact motivations but asserts that this is irrelevant to their occupancy of the gray zone. . One may absolve those who are heavily coerced and minimally guilty: functionaries who suffer with the masses but get an extra (read more from the Chapter 2, The Gray Zone Summary), Get The Drowned and the Saved from Amazon.com. The saved are those who learn to adapt themselves to the new environment of Auschwitz, who quickly learn how to "organize" extra rations, safer work, or fortuitous relationships with people in authority. 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. Yes, they lived under a totalitarian government that violated their rights and restricted their choices. For example, in his essay Alleviation and Compliance: The Survival Strategies of the Jewish Leadership in the Wierzbnik Ghetto and Starachowice Factory Slave Labor Camps (in the Petropoulos and Roth volume), Christopher Browning examines the actions of prisoners in camps that differ from Auschwitz in that a surprisingly large proportion of their inmates survived. The Drowned and the Saved - Primo Levi - Google Books By the end of his life survivor Primo Levi had become increasingly convinced that the lessons of the Holocaust were destined to be lost as. It is written by Pimo Levi, an Italian Jew who was in . When Melson asked his mother about the fate of the real Zamojskis, she indicated that she neither knew nor cared, as they had chosen greed over their moral duty to help friends. In doing so he relies on Levi's own criteria and the essential element of mortal risk. 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). Most survivors come from the tiny privileged minority who get more food. 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. I reject this view on moral grounds, and I will show that Levi does so as well. Using lies and coercion they led thousands of victims to a horrible death. . You can help us out by revising, improving and updating . " 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. Gerhard L. Weinberg, Gray Zones in Raul Hilberg's work, in Petropoulos and Roth, Gray Zones, 75. 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). Fundamental to his purpose is the fear that what happened once can happen (and in some respects, has happened) again. 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. They could even choose to be rescuers. I know that murderers existed and that to confuse them with their victims is a moral disease or an aesthetic affectation or a sinister sign of complicity; above all, it is a precious service rendered (intentionally or not) to the negators of truth.9, Having drawn on Levi's discussion to make clear what the gray zone is not, Lang goes on to say what it is: In contrast to these alternatives, the concept of the Gray Zone applies to morally charged conduct in a middle ground between good and evil, right and wrong, where neither side of these pairs covers the situation and where imposing one side or the other becomes itself for Levi a moral wrong.10. Even more important, the camps remained under factory management throughout their existence. Is Browning's discussion an appropriate use of Levi's gray zone? 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. GradeSaver, 5 May 2019 Web. 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? This is a problem when it comes to painting a broad picture of something that has happened to a large group of people. . The prisoners were to an equal degree victims. While it is true that the victims did have choices, and Levi acknowledges that it is important to study those choices, in the end he argues that we must not judge the victims as we do the perpetrators. Part of my disagreement with Petropoulos and Roth returns us to Levi's discussion of SS-man Eric Muhsfeldt. Fundamental to his purpose is the fear that what happened once can happen (and in some respects, has happened) again. 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. One nature is rationally moral while the other is animalistic and amoral. As Levi reminds us, Rumkowski and his family were killed in Auschwitz in August 1944. Levi emphasizes that the tendency to think in binary terms--good/evil, right/wrong--overlooks important characteristics of human behavior, and dangerously oversimplifies: " . Levi's decision to focus on Rumkowski suggests that he believes his actions were immoral no matter what his intentions; he should escape our condemnation solely because of his status as a victim. Furthermore, Levi states: If I were a judge, even though repressing what hatred I may feel, I would not hesitate to inflict the most severe punishment or even death on the many culprits who still today live undisturbed on German soil or in other countries of suspect hospitality; but I would experience horror if a single innocent were punished for a crime he did not commit.50 Todorov's misinterpretation of Levi makes it possible for others to include non-victims in the gray zone, a mistake that I believe diminishes the value of an otherwise useful distinction and opens the door to a form of moral relativism that I believe Levi would abhor. While they may have traveled there in a special railway car, once they arrived they were Jewish victims no different from the rest. 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. Rubinstein simply does not accept that Rumkowski's will was genuinely good no matter how much suffering he claimed to have endured. Privilege is born and spreads where power is in few hands, and power tolerates a zone where masters and servants diverge and converge. Indeed, for Kant, even to consider the results of one's actions is inappropriate. He describes situations in which inmates chose to sacrifice themselves to save others, as well as small acts of kindness that kept others going even when it would have been easier to be selfish. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Penguin Classics, 1994), 119. He survived the experience, probably in part because he was a trained chemist and as such, useful to the Nazis. Order our The Drowned and the Saved Study Guide. 99, 121, 155), his focus is not on issues of gender. Rubinstein maintains that Levi saw all people as centaurstorn between two natures. To his parents disgust, the Zamojskis demanded an exorbitant sum of money. He had no concern for the individual. (And when they refused to collaborate, they were killed and immediately replaced.). 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. This condition did not apply to perpetrators or bystanders. 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. This is not to say that the people saved were those who most deserved to be savedprobably quite the opposite. This view holds that life has become so complicated and difficult that the job of ethics is no longer to determine the proper course of action and to correctly assign moral responsibility to those who have failed to live up to the appropriate moral standards. Indeed, the primary purpose of the concept of the gray zone is to point out the morally dubious actions of many of the Jewish victims. 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. Rubinstein's position here seems to grudgingly accept consequentialism, but only when calculated sacrifices are made in the morally correct frame of mind. 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.

Apex Classes Should Escape Variables Merged In Dml Query, Why Do F1 Teams Have Meetings With Headsets, Articles T