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. 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. 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. A Jew could choose to commit suicide, or to comply, and those choices did have moral ramifications. Chapter 3, " Shame," is, in my opinion, the most profound and moving section of the book. In her final section, titled The Gray Zone, Horowitz examines the moral ambiguities present in stories of Jewish women who survived by trading sexual services for food or protection. 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. 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. 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). For this reason, Levi insists that we examine the actions of the Sonderkommandos. Primo Levi. Non-victims such as Muhsfeldt had moral responsibility and deserved to be prosecuted for their actions. To me, it seems clear that Levi does not include the guards, much less all Germans, in that zone. Jonathan Petropoulos and John K. Roth, Prologue: The Gray Zones of the Holocaust, in Petropoulos and Roth, Gray Zones, xviii. (And when they refused to collaborate, they were killed and immediately replaced.). In The Gender of Good and Evil: Women and Holocaust Memory, she explores the images of good and evil associated particularly with women under Nazism, as these shape our perception of the Holocaust.32. This was the chief method employed by the Germans to break the prisoners' spirits. dition the "gray zone." A zone where there exist gray, ambiguous persons who, "contaminated by their oppressors, unconsciously strove to identify . 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. Here Todorov allies himself with Kant's deontological approach, essentially re-stating Kant's second formulation of the Categorical Imperative. 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. 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. The Drowned and the Saved Summary - www.BookRags.com 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. Read the Study Guide for The Drowned and the Saved, Will the Barbarians Ever Arrive? Levi postulates that the Nazi concentration camp system resulted in a massive "biological and social experiment." 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. 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. The Drowned and the Saved - Chapter 3, Shame Summary & Analysis 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). I will argue that Tzvetan Todorov commits this last fundamental error with his claim that all people living in totalitarian societies reside in the gray zone. 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. John Roth. This Study Guide consists of . The Drowned and the Saved Irony | GradeSaver It is as objective and real as its two principled and more commonly recognized alternatives. In the prologue to the 2006 anthology Gray Zones, editors Jonathan Petropoulos and John Roth acknowledge that while Levi spoke of the gray zone in the singular his analysis made clear that this region was multi-faceted and multi-layered. They go on to say: Following Levi's lead, we thought about the Holocaust's gray zones, the multitude of ways in which aspects of his gray-zone analysis might shed light both on the Holocaust itself and also on scholarship about that catastrophe.53 They list a number of gray zones, including: ambiguity and compromise in writing and depicting Holocaust history; issues of identity, gender, and sexuality during and after the Third Reich; inquiries about gray spacesthose regions of geography, imagination, and psychology that reflect the Holocaust's impact then and now; and dilemmas that have haunted the pursuit of justice, ethics, and religion during and after the Holocaust.54. 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. At the camps, prisoners were not permitted to communicate with those on the outside, although sometimes they did, when their particular work detail was working outside the camps, in villages nearby. 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. Her father urged her to move to Paris, saying: No one will know. 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. This is a difficult question but Levi explains how violence is different depending on the motivation behind it rather than the strength of it. Abstract. Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, 5869. Yet, in his final work, The Drowned and the Saved, Levi painted a radically different picture of the Holocaust. Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. Even in the worst of circumstances (Auschwitz), it cannot be extinguished. 1. Why does Primo Levi think it was so difficult to "be moral" in the He discusses some of the ways in which the expression has been misappropriated and misunderstoodand why this matters. The Drowned and the Saved Summary - eNotes.com 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? SS ritual dehumanizes newcomers and veterans treat them as competitors. Horowitz traces the growth of this story, which has been proven false, into a powerful myth immortalized in a popular poem and repeated in certain Jewish religious services. 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. 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). 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. The Drowned and the Saved - Chapter 2, The Gray Zone Summary & Analysis 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. 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. According to this story a 16-year-old girl miraculously survived a gassing and was found alive in the gas chamber under a pile of corpses. The Nazis were not trying to coerce their victims into any form of action. Indeed, for Kant, even to consider the results of one's actions is inappropriate. 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. The Holocaust calls into question the very possibility of ethics. This is not to say that the people saved were those who most deserved to be savedprobably quite the opposite. resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss thenovel. . Using bribery and payoffs (including the extortion of sexual favors from female prisoners), Wilczek became a Jewish Fhrer comparable to, and, some would say, even more immoral than Chaim Rumkowski. . Survivors simplify the past for others to understandstark we/they, friend/enemy, good/evil divisionsbut history is complex. Yet, Todorov's interpretation of the moral situation of prisoners in the camps is quite different from Levi's as I understand it. 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). Sara R. Horowitz does important work in examining the role of gender in the experiences of women caught in the gray zone. . Important as all these topics may be, I argue that to fold them into Levi's notion of the gray zone dilutes the moral force of his position. GradeSaver, 5 May 2019 Web. Levi clearly opposes the view that ethics should seek merely to understand perpetrators of immoral acts without condemning or punishing them. 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. The Holocaust calls into question the very possibility of ethics. In this chapter Levi also discusses why inmates did not commit suicide during their incarceration:" . Primo Levi. However, as a deontologist, Kant believes moral acts should be motivated by a sense of duty, never by a calculation of self-interest. With his emphasis on caring, Todorov adds a dash of Heidegger, Levinas, and Buber into the mix. Primo Levi is right to demand from us greater moral courage. The Question and Answer section for The Drowned and the Saved is a great I suffer because of your anguish, and I don't know how I'll survive thiswhere I'll find the strength to do so.21 But Rubinstein does not find this apparent agonizing to be credible: This speech exemplifies Rumkowski's mindset and modus operandi. 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. Primo Levi has been well known in Italy for many years. In this sense, Levi may be harsher in his evaluation of Rumkowski than is Rubinstein. When those pleas were denied, he returned to his office and committed suicide, leaving a note that said: I can no longer bear all this. Some historians believe that Levi committed suicide, overwhelmed by a penetrating sense of guilt at having survived an experience that killed so many. The individual was whittled away and soon the part of every man that was a human was taken away as well. 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. Levi argues therefore that, while we should think seriously about the different choices made by people such as Czerniakw and Rumkowski, we ultimately have no right to condemn them. An editor Themes Style Quotes Topics for Discussion. In the concentration camp, says Levi, it was usually "the selfish, the violent, the insensitive, the collaborators of the 'gray zone,' the spies" who survived ["the saved"] while the others did not ["the drowned"] (82). . 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. Print Word PDF This section contains 488 words 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. : Scapegoating in the Writings of Coetzee and Primo Levi, View Wikipedia Entries for The Drowned and the Saved. All of these unusual conditions, together with the fact that no selection took place when the prisoners were finally transferred to Auschwitz-Birkenau in July 1944, meant that a much larger number of prisoners survived here than in other such camps. We are thankful for their contributions and encourage you to make yourown. In his epilogue, Todorov further distinguishes between the teleological and the intersubjective. Rubinstein maintains that Levi saw all people as centaurstorn between two natures. In his recent book Primo Levi: The Matter of a Life, Berel Lang argues that Levi opposes this view. 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. Berel Lang, Primo Levi: The Matter of a Life (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013), 125. They brought the greatest amount of harm (a terrifying death) to the greatest number of people (the thousands of victims) while bringing pleasure to very few (Nazis dedicated to the extermination of the Jews). You can help us out by revising, improving and updating Privilege defends and protects privilege. Yes, they lived under a totalitarian government that violated their rights and restricted their choices. 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. Not affiliated with Harvard College. The Drowned and the Saved - Primo Levi - Google Books 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 Grey Zone - OpenEdition The Drowned and the Saved essays are academic essays for citation. The Nazis victims did not choose to be victims, and they could not choose to stop being victims. Beyond that, there is the sense that "each one of us (but this time I say 'us' in a . While it is certainly possible to disagree with Melson's use of the concept of the gray zone, it is worth considering. Using Kant's criteria, it seems clear that the actions of the special squads were immoral. After you claim a section youll have 24 hours to send in a draft. Read the Study Guide for The Drowned and the Saved The Drowned and the Saved essays are academic essays for citation. Clearly, Jews and members of other groups chosen for extermination (e.g., Roma) must be included. 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. But those choices still counted for something. The first subject Levi brooches is the problem with memory; chiefly, it is fallible and it is also subjective. Levi emphasizes that the tendency to think in binary terms--good/evil, right/wrong--overlooks important characteristics of human behavior, and dangerously oversimplifies: " . 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 ). 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. Despite this concession, Rubinstein rejects Levi's characterization of Rumkowski as a resident of the gray zone. "Coming out of the darkness, one suffered because of the reacquired consciousness of having been diminished . Instead of the teleological and the intersubjective, one can speak of the world of things and the world of persons, object and subject relations, cosmos and anthropos, I and thou, and so forth.42 Having alluded to Martin Buber, Todorov makes clear that he prefers the profound joy of the intersubjective action that expresses, he believes, both the rational and the caring aspects of our fundamental human nature: The accounts I have read of life in the camps convince me that the moral action is always one that the individual takes on himself (the moral action is in this sense subjective) and [is] directed towards one or more individuals (it is personal, for when I act morally I treat the other as a person, which is to say he becomes the end of my action).
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