Bystanders to the Holocaust: A Re-Evaluation by David Cesarani & Paul A. Levine

Author:David Cesarani & Paul A. Levine [Cesarani, David & Levine, Paul A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Holocaust, Europe, General
ISBN: 9780714682433
Google: 0lm4AwAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0714682438
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2002-01-03T00:00:00+00:00

The Lost Honour of Bystanders? the Case of Jewish Emissaries in Switzerland

RAYA COHEN

In the circle of violence in which all moral values and the basic principles of humanity are lost, only one thing remains to guide our paths through this inferno, and that is all of those individuals, in the positive meaning of the word, who are prepared to give up their lives, their existence, for others.

(Gisi Fleischmann, Slovakia, 27 August 1942)1

I

The term ‘bystander’ has earned a place of distinction in Holocaust historiography: having become one of the pillars of Holocaust research, it now stands alongside the very perpetrators of the crimes and their victims. Accusatory questions such as why Auschwitz was not bombed, or why the flight of Jewish refugees to the USA or Palestine was made so difficult during the war, have recently been joined by questions regarding the role of Switzerland during the war. The mask of neutrality having been ripped from Switzerland’s face, the financially and economically active role that country played in assisting the Nazi regime has been exposed. The Swiss historian Jacques Picard has performed a deconstruction of the term ‘Swiss neutrality’, showing that Switzerland is rapidly moving from the position of a witness to that of one of the accused.2 This in itself indicates the fundamental question as to whether in a war whose main paradigm has become Auschwitz, it is possible to justify a position of neutrality or any passive stance at all.

The Fall, by Albert Camus, is perhaps a good starting point for an analysis of the role of ‘bystanders’ in the Second World War. In that novel, written in the early 1950s, Camus tells of a man standing on the edge of a bridge who witnesses a young woman commit suicide by jumping from it. This event dramatically alters the life of the narrator, a respected and successful lawyer, for no apparent reason. The fact of his accidental presence at the place and that he did nothing to assist, trouble his conscience, despite his clear knowledge that he could not have saved the woman anyway. He quits his home, his city, his profession, but all in vain: he cannot escape the terrible event. In contrast with the hero of Camus’s novel The Plague, in which the bystander is the classical hero, an altruist who endangers his own life by saving others, this bystander can do nothing but keep returning to the tormenting memory of that moment.3

And indeed, despite the years that have passed, the memory of Auschwitz continues to dominate reflections of the past in Europe, and Europe cannot free itself of that memory. Dormant bank accounts, looted art treasures, expropriated real estate and legal actions against collaborators — all these prevent the past from passing. As Germany completes its process of reunification and removes the last vestiges of defeat, it sometimes appears as though it is the bystanders — Switzerland, the Vatican, the Municipality of Paris or the Jewish leadership — that are occupying the seat of the accused in place of the actual perpetrators.

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