Judging “Privileged” Jews: Holocaust Ethics, Representation, and the “Grey Zone,” by Adam Brown (review)

In a 1960 letter to the translator of the German edition of Survival in Auschwitz, Primo Levi writes that thanks to him, he “can speak to the German people, remind them of what they have done, and say to them” that he wishes “to understand [them] in order to judge” them. Notwithstanding its brevity, Levi’s statement embraces the dilemma Holocaust studies has faced from the start: although the facts of the Holocaust (the what) and their interrelatedness (the how) can be known, even an incomplete understanding of its reasons (the why) eludes us. Levi’s letter is reprinted in The Drowned and the Saved, where he develops his concept of the “Grey Zone.” Here he addresses the question of judgment and argues that judgment on those in the Grey Zone should be suspended altogether: “no one is authorized to judge the network of human relationships inside the Lagers, not those who lived through the experience . . . and even less those who did not.”

Adam Brown appears to challenge Levi’s dictum by judging precisely those against whom Levi had urged judgment be suspended. Brown surveys others’ judgments in the areas of philosophical thought, historiographical investigation, and documentary and feature film. He evaluates these judgments for coherence and soundness. His efforts command admiration, not least for the sheer magnitude of his scholarship (he incorporates some 400 works into his analysis). Brown aims for a conclusive contribution to scholarship on “Holocaust ethics” and the “Grey Zone” in general; and in fact his work seems likely to stimulate a future focus on the subthemes in these two areas.

As a consequence of his work, Brown is also able to offer a new departure on the subject of “the privileged Jews,” providing, as the dust-jacket comment of John K. Roth suggests, “a sustained and detailed analysis of their victimhood, and bringing their presence to center stage.” Brown “adopts a very specific definition of ‘privilege’ in order to concentrate on the extreme ethical dilemmas that many victims faced,” namely “those . . . who held positions that gave them access to material and other benefits beyond those available to other Jews”—members of Sonderkommandos, members of Judenräte, Kapos (p. 6).

Brown describes his method of analysis as “meta-ethical” (p. 3) and defines it, borrowing from John Roth’s definition, “as an attempt to . . . understand more fully how those judgments work as well as what limits they face and problems they entail” (p. 3). The focus of his book, Brown continues, rests on “how judgments of ‘privileged’ Jews are constructed” (pp. 3–4); the equally important question of why, Brown ranks as “secondary” (p. 4). Brown assures the reader of his scholarly detachment, stating that—because of his choice not to examine the why—he would avoid “judging the judges” (p. 5) and instead concentrate on “how moral judgments of ‘privileged’ Jews are conveyed in representations of the Holocaust” (p. 3).

Brown’s choice to avoid the fundamental question of why, i.e., his decision not to complete the epistemological approach of his meta-ethical inquiry with a discussion of the much-needed metaphysical approach, without which the discussion of a metaethical inquiry must remain wanting, leaves the author, arguably, with an approach more descriptive than substantive. So does Brown’s self-limitation to representations of the Holocaust—sidelining the ethics promised in the sub-title. Meta-ethics—as Brown should know—is the study of goodness and of right action; it is interested both in the outcome of one’s actions and, no less, in the ethical principles of and for action. As action oscillates between foundation and result, between observable properties and metaphysical ones, any study that accentuates just one of the two and disregards the other does itself a disservice. Epistemology is the study of the nature of knowledge and its justification—it answers the questions what and how; metaphysics is the study of...