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4 ——— Rescue and the Origin of Responsibility Questions The action of saving a life in a situation of mass slaughter is not called for in the normal functioning of society. Such functioning is, in fact, set up so that we are not faced with a situation of “playing God” in the sense of deciding if the person knocking at our door should live. The context, however, that demanded rescue of Jews during the Second World War was not that of normal life. Such life had been hijacked by the Nazis. “Public” morality, the morality that is expressed in the judiciary system and the other institutions of the state, regarded rescue as a criminal act, one punishable by the death of the rescuer. The organs of public opinion—assemblies, newspapers, the radio, and so on—daily confirmed this. The institutions that did not openly support the actions of the occupiers kept a prudent silence. No public condemnation of the roundup, isolation, and deportation of the Jews came from the leading academic or religious authorities. The pope, for example, raised no public protest when the Jews of his diocese were sent to Auschwitz (Cornwell 1999, 305–6). In such a climate, not many rescued. Most people kept quiet and tried to get along. Those who did rescue Jews thus found themselves largely on their own. Particularly in the East, they acted in isolation. They did not seek them out; the Jews came to them. Often at the very moment of encounter, face-to-face with the potential victim, they had to make a decision.1 Why did they decide to rescue? What informed their conscience? The question can be put in terms of a position that grows out of Mill’s 97 98 Ethics and Selfhood belief that the ultimate basis of ethics is the “social feelings of mankind.” Given that society shapes such feelings according to its norms and that such feelings, when violated, occasion the sting of conscience, the way seems open to reducing ethics to a consideration of how society determines us. In this reductionist view, ethics is understood as a collection of social norms. Those who act ethically express these norms in their conduct . Acting ethically, they “follow the rules.” They do not lie or steal or commit those other acts that undo the social bond. They act as everyone does who is a “good” member of society. “Good,” here, does not have a sense independent of society. The ethics that expresses its sense is strictly relative to the social community that frames its members. As such, ethics cannot express a standpoint that could call society into question. The same point can be put by noting that when we do follow its rules, the determiner of our agency is, on this account, society itself. Because of this, ethics, reduced to such rules, cannot guard us against the moral collapse of society. It cannot, therefore, account for those who rescued the Jews. Yet the existence of these individuals cannot be denied. We have, as a matter of public record, extensive and well-documented cases of individual goodness in the face of societal evil.2 If those who did rescue did not express societal norms, what was the framework that gave sense to their actions? This question receives its special focus when we recall the character of the crime they resisted. The perpetrators of the “crime against humanity ” attacked humanity itself. In self-consciously deciding who should be excluded from the human community—i.e., which ethnic groups should be exterminated and which preserved—the Nazis took up a position outside of humanity. As such, their stance exceeded the human perspective. In terms of this perspective, it was senseless: no human reason can be given for humanity’s impoverishment or partial elimination. Contemplating the Nazi genocide, our attempts at evaluation and judgment thus suffer a certain setback. In Emil Fackenheim’s words, “the evil [of the Holocaust] systematically eludes . . . thought” (Fackenheim 1988, 69). When the senselessness of this self-mutilation was incorporated into the legal and social codes of occupied Europe, the codes themselves become part of the crime against humanity. The public framework that would allow humanity to recognize and react against its own impoverishment became its victim. Yet, in spite of this, some people did act. Where did they find the resources for their actions? How did they, in their encounters with the Jews, escape the senselessness the Nazis sought to enforce? Common Elements To answer these questions...

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