Modernity and the Holocaust by Zygmunt Bauman

Author:Zygmunt Bauman
Language: eng
Format: azw3, pdf
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Individual rationality in the service of collective destruction

Inhuman oppression of the Nazi type leaves admittedly little room for manoeuvre; many of the options people are trained or educated to choose under normal conditions are excluded or beyond their grasp. Under exceptional conditions, conduct is by definition exceptional; but it is exceptional in its overt form and its tangible consequences, not necessarily in the principles of choice and the motives which guide it. Throughout their journey to the final destruction most people, most of the time, were not completely devoid of choice. And where there is choice, there is a chance to behave rationally. And behave rationally most people did. While in full command of the means of coercion, the Nazis saw to it that rationality meant co-operation; that everything the Jews did to serve their own interest brought the Nazi objective somewhat nearer to full success.

Co-operation is perhaps too vague and too inclusive a notion. It may be callous and unjust to consider mere refraining from an open rebellion (and following the established routine instead) as an act of co-operation. All responsibilities of the future Jewish Councils spelled out in Heydrich’s Schnellbrief were concerned with the services the Jewish leaders were obliged to render to the German authorities; Heydrich did not concern himself with other functions Judenräte might think useful or necessary to undertake. He presumably counted on such functions to be undertaken on the councils’ own initiative, out of the rational consideration of the needs of a community crowded together in a narrow space and faced with a necessity to secure its coexistence and means of survival. If there was such a wager, it proved to be well chosen. Jewish Councils did not need German instructions to take care of the religious, educational, cultural and welfare needs of the Jews. By so doing, they already willy-nilly accepted the role of the lower rung of the German administrative hierarchy. Their activity, which took all the problems related to the daily life of the Jews off German hands, was already a co-operation – of sorts. In this however, the role of Jewish communal authorities, notwithstanding the extremity of the oppressive regime, was not essentially different from the roles normally played by the leaderships of oppressed minorities in making the continuation of repression (indeed, the sheer reproduction of the oppressive regime) feasible. It was not essentially different either from the traditional forms of Jewish self-government (particularly in Poland and some other parts of Eastern Europe) and the closely guarded autonomy of the kehila.

At the start of German occupation, and before the Judenräte became an official link in German administrative structure, the pre-war kehila elders undertook on their own initiative the task of representing Jewish interests in elaborating a modus vivendi with new authorities. By habit and training, they tried to employ the old and tested methods of writing petitions and complaints, obtaining hearing for their grievances, negotiating – and bribing. They did not oppose the German decision to concentrate the Jews in the ghettos.

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