Answering Auschwitz: Primo Levi's Science and Humanism after the Fall

Chapter 1: ‘‘Warum?’’

c h a p t e r 1 ‘‘Warum?’’ Joram Warmund During his initiation into what one survivor labeled the ‘‘Holocaust Kingdom ’’1 and others would describe as the ‘‘Anus Mundi,’’2 the young and naı̈ve Auschwitz prisoner Primo Levi reached outside a window for an icicle to quench his thirst. A guard patrolling outside rudely slapped it away, prompting Primo to ask, ‘‘Warum?’’ Why? The reply was, ‘‘Hier ist kein warum.’’ Here there is no why. In Levi’s words: ‘‘The explanation is repugnant but simple: in this place everything is forbidden, not for hidden reasons, but because the camp has been created for that purpose.’’3 Indeed, more than sixty years later, the ‘‘Warums’’ have not been answered but have only been multiplied: Why the killings? Why the brutality connected with the killings? Yes, we know the racial rationalizations, and, yes, we also know that the demolition of human beings—their humiliation and debasement—went part and parcel with the killings within and outside the Lagers. The ‘‘process,’’ particularly at the execution sites and in the extermination camps, was almost mechanical and impersonal, as in a factory conveyor belt system; yet we also know that the perpetrators were more than robotic executioners. Many of them made sport of their jobs, humiliating and debasing men, women and children, and performing incredible acts of cruelty. We also know that the hands-on killers came from all walks of life and were transformed into enthusiastic murderers. 17 18 Joram Warmund They very often carried out their duties in sadistic ways that challenge human comprehension. Two of the still unanswered whys remain: How was it possible to transform everyday people into rabid murderers? Why did apparently normal people become avid killers? These are some of the most essential questions driving the continuing explosion of Holocaust publications. Addressing these questions requires a synopsis of the current status of contemporary approaches to Holocaust studies. The Holocaust is most often presented chronologically, in book form or in classroom curricula, in order to provide a developmental context and to facilitate explanatory analyses. The literature has varied widely, but can be reduced to two major approaches: top-down, from the perspective of the perpetrators, and bottom-up, from the point of view of the victims. Within these approaches, some studies explain the Holocaust as a primarily German historical event; others broaden the scope to include the non-German initiatives. These four broad perceptual combinations provide useful insights into the studies of the Holocaust; they also create large gaps between them. This essay begins to bridge some of those gaps. Using primarily historiographic , not archival, material, it delineates the diverse roles of the perpetrators , then narrows its focus to those who perceived themselves as victims of forces beyond their control, and to those who participated in acts of brutality and mass murder but still appeared and acted as ordinary people. A larger work, now in progress, will eventually expand the scope to include the victims and bystanders. What is needed is some functional framework that will weave together the various human components. One very useful construct that avoids the organizational pitfalls of most Holocaust literature is introduced in Raul Hilberg’s Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe, 1933– 1945.4 It provides a workable model that can be applied across nations while also greatly—but not entirely—resolving the top-down/bottom-up perceptual limitations of most other works. However, Hilberg’s approach loses the sense of chronological development and, by placing individuals and groups in rigid categories, it tends to harden their distinctions at the expense of recognizing their commonalities. The dynamics and fluidity of human behavior within and across these categorizations is thereby submerged or lost. It was the radically contradictory behavior demonstrated by people in the ‘‘Victims’’ category that led Primo Levi to describe a phenomenon he labeled the ‘‘Gray Zone.’’5 Similarly, in explaining the behavior of a 19 ‘‘Warum?’’ subcategory of perpetrators, Robert Jay Lifton suggested that the Auschwitz doctors exhibited a psychological phenomenon of ‘‘doubling.’’6 Neither the perpetrators nor the victims were monolithic groups. There were differences between and among them reflecting internal distinctions; but the existence of extreme paradoxical behavior within the categories of perpetrators and victims suggests that a behavioral dualism operated on both sides of the demarcation. The combining of Lifton’s ‘‘doubling’’ and Levi’s ‘‘Gray Zone’’ into one concept of behavioral dualism...