the drowned and the saved the gray zone summary the drowned and the saved the gray zone summary

He sees Rumkowski as an example of Anna Freud's concept of identification with the aggressor.17 Rumkowski did not simply comply with the Nazi orders so as to save liveshe thought like a Nazi and acted like one. 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. From the heroic perspective, it does not matter that the Warsaw Rising failed. 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. . After you claim a section youll have 24 hours to send in a draft. Non-victims such as Muhsfeldt had moral responsibility and deserved to be prosecuted for their actions. Under Bentham's Utilitarian Principle, one should act to bring the greatest amount of pleasure to the greatest number of people while inflicting the least amount of harm to the least number of people. Sonja Maria Hedgepeth and Rochelle G. Saidel, eds., Sexual Violence against Jewish Women during the Holocaust (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2010), 177. David H. Hirsch, The Gray Zone or The Banality of Evil, in Ethics After the Holocaust: Perspectives, Critiques, and Responses, ed. Toggle navigation . To an extent apparently unsurpassed by any other Nazi-appointed Jewish leader, he was the Fhrer of his tiny kingdom for much of his reign, a role he appears at times to have savored.22. To me, it seems clear that Levi does not include the guards, much less all Germans, in that zone. . 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. The doctor revived her and explained to Muhsfeldt what had happened. In other words, Levi is making a normative argument against the right to judge, not an ontological claim about the possibilities of moral action. Famously, in his speech Give Me Your Children, Rumkowski begged the Jews of the d ghetto to comply with a German order to hand over their children aged 10 and under in order to save as many adults as possible.13, Hannah Arendt attacked Rumkowski as a traitor and believed that, had he lived, he should have been put on trial as though he were a Nazi war criminal. 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. Her father urged her to move to Paris, saying: No one will know. Melson acknowledges that his mother's actions were morally dubious: whether she was willing to admit it or not, Melson's mother put the lives of the Zamojskis at risk when she stole their identities. "Letters from Germans" summarizes his correspondence with Germans who read his earlier books. He states that for Levi, just as there is an objective line between good and evil, there exists the same status for an area between the two.5 He explains Levi's notion of the gray zone by first clarifying the ways in which the term is most often misunderstood: The gray zone is NOT reserved for ethical judgments in which it is difficult to decide whether good or evil dominates.6 The purpose of the gray zone is not to label so-called hard cases. While Levi acknowledges that these exist, not all hard cases are in the gray zone and not all moral situations in the gray zone are hard cases.7. Richard L. Rubinstein, Gray into Black: The Case of Mordecai Chaim Rumkowski, in Gray Zones: Ambiguity and Compromise in the Holocaust and its Aftermath, ed. Todorov distinguishes between heroic and ordinary virtue. Sara R. Horowitz, The Gender of Good and Evil: Women and Holocaust Memory, Petropoulos and Roth, Gray Zones, 165. 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. . Primo Levi has been well known in Italy for many years. 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. However, as I have argued, Levi does not intend to permanently include perpetrators in the gray zone. The case of Wilczek substantiates Weinberg's point in that the Starachowice camp operated until comparatively late in the war, and as a result, Wilczek succeeded in saving hundreds of lives. Chaim Mordechai Rumkowski, Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team, http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ghettos/rumkowski.html (accessed March 16, 2016). Read Argumentative Essays On The Drowned And The Saved - Primo Levi and other exceptional papers on every subject and topic college can throw at you. 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. This Study Guide consists of approximately 34pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - Levi clearly opposes the view that ethics should seek merely to understand perpetrators of immoral acts without condemning or punishing them. Jonathan Petropoulos and John K. Roth (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006), 299. They could even choose to be rescuers. On Amazon.com one reviewer of Todorov's Hope and Memory was inspired to claim that Levi talks about a Gray Zone inside which we all operate. These two kinds of virtuethe ordinary and the heroicdiffer with respect to the beneficiaries of the acts they inspire: acts of ordinary virtue benefit individuals, a Miss Tenenbaum, for example, whereas acts of heroism can be undertaken for the benefit of something as abstract as a certain concept of Poland.40 Todorov views Mrs. Tennenbaum's suicide as morally superior to that of Adam Czerniakw, the leader of the Warsaw Ghetto. This condition did not apply to perpetrators or bystanders. The gray zone is NOT reserved for good people who lapse into evil or for evil people who try to redeem themselves through an act of goodness. We are thankful for their contributions and encourage you to make yourown. 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. This is what makes him a deontologist rather than a consequentialist. This is a problem when it comes to painting a broad picture of something that has happened to a large group of people. 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. Although the Oberscharfhrer, too, was amazed, and hesitated before deciding, ultimately he ordered one of his henchmen to kill the girl; he could not trust that she would refrain from telling other inmates her story. As in all the other chapters of his book, Levi discusses the complexity of these situations. They saw what was going on around them and, despite the possible effects of propaganda, they had the capacity to recognize the Nazis actions as evil. As head of the Judenrat (Jewish Council), Rumkowski chose the utilitarian approach to his dilemma: he hoped that by working with the Nazis, and proving to them that the d ghetto was so productive that it was worth maintaining, he could save as many Jewish lives as possible. In my view, what is at stake here is the possibility of ethics in a world misconstrued as a universal gray zone. Jonathan Petropoulos and John K. Roth, Prologue: The Gray Zones of the Holocaust, in Petropoulos and Roth, Gray Zones, xviii. He has also written numerous essays on issues in aesthetics, ethics, Holocaust studies, social philosophy, and metaphysics. Morality was transformed. universal sense) has usurped his neighbor's place and lived in his stead" (81-82). 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. Order our The Drowned and the Saved Study Guide. Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, 5869. 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. Bulgarian-born philosopher Tzvetan Todorov has written extensively about moral issues relating to the Holocaust, perhaps most famously in his book Facing the Extreme: Moral Life in the Concentration Camps. Translated by Raymond Rosenthal. This Study Guide consists of . One nature is rationally moral while the other is animalistic and amoral. In this chapter he considers also whether religious belief was useful or comforting, concluding that believers "better resisted the seduction of power [resisted collaborating]" (145) and were less prone to despair. Adam Czerniakw, the leader of the Warsaw Ghetto, adopted the opposite approach. Yet, he argues, his parents feelings of guilt and shame should not be confused with moral blame for their behavior. Is all violence created equal? thissection. The drowned, meanwhile, are those who do not organize, who pass their time thinking of home or complaining, and who quickly perish. Chapter 2, The Gray Zone Summary and Analysis Survivors simplify the past for others to understandstark we/they, friend/enemy, good/evil divisionsbut history is complex. David Patterson, Nazis, Philosophers, and the Response to the Scandal of Heidegger, in Roth, Ethics, 119. The Drowned and the Saved ( Italian: I sommersi e i salvati) is a book of essays by Italian - Jewish author and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi on life and death in the Nazi extermination camps, drawing on his personal experience as a survivor of Auschwitz ( Monowitz ). 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. 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. Soon after the war ended, he wrote several books about his experience. Berel Lang, Primo Levi: The Matter of a Life (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013), 125. Yet, as we have seen with Todorov, it has become common to expand Levi's gray zone to include non-victims. 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. They also informed on their fellow prisoners, usually so that they would get better treatment or additional food for themselves. Her sacrifice directly benefitted anotherher daughter. He acknowledges that his parents situation, while life-threatening and humiliating, never approached the level of horror and despair faced by Levi and other camp prisoners. Survivor Primo Levi relates how to very few live to tell their stories and unmasks the true depths of Nazi evil. Indeed, for Kant, even to consider the results of one's actions is inappropriate. 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. Thus, the gray zone refers to a reality so extreme that those who have not experienced it have no right to judge. Gray Zone Motif. 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. 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. Levi gives another example of the gray zone when he writes about Chaim Rumkowski, the Elder of the Jewish Council in the ghetto in d, Poland. 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. In his recent book Primo Levi: The Matter of a Life, Berel Lang argues that Levi opposes this view. Print Word PDF. Even in the worst of circumstances (Auschwitz), it cannot be extinguished. Yet, they viewed the members of the Sonderkommandos as colleagues, as accomplices in their horrific crimes, fellow murderers. 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. Copyright 1999 - 2023 GradeSaver LLC. While a Kantian might condemn both his motives and his means, consequentialists are primarily interested in results, and the results in this case were more positive than they otherwise would have been. Bystanders also had meaningful choices. On July 22, 1942, when the Nazis demanded that lists of Jews be drawn up for resettlement to the East, Czerniakw pleaded for the lives of orphaned children. 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. 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. Those who survived were able to remind themselves in small ways every day that they were still human. In the entire book, he mentions it only twice. Levi believed in free will, in the possibility that each of us could choose to engage in the Jewish activity of tikkun olam (the repair of the world's injustices). 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. The book ends ("Conclusion") with the exhortation that "It happened, therefore it can happen again . 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.. Indeed, as we know, many did make such choices. 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. I would argue that, despite his enormous admiration for Levi, Todorov misreads him completely. "Useless Violence" (5) gives examples of how the Nazis tormented their prisoners with "stupid and symbolic violence.". Privilege is born and spreads where power is in few hands, and power tolerates a zone where masters and servants diverge and converge. There are various ways in which they were able to do this, not least, starving them and working them to the point of exhaustion. Fundamental to his purpose is the fear that what happened once can happen (and in some respects, has happened) again. Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. While one may disagree specifically with his way of making these distinctions or the conclusions he reaches in each of these areas, I believe that this approach is much more useful than the multiplication and stretching of Levi's gray zone in ways that were clearly unintended. 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. 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.