The Centre for Jewish Studies
University of Manchester
Extra-Mural Lectures 1998-99
For the full list of lectures, click here
Nov 23 Norman Geras: Thinking about the Holocaust
Abstract:
Professor Geras dealt with four questions:
1. Is the Holocaust unique? The Holocaust was unprecedented, not in
virtue of any single feature, but because of a combination of characteristics:
(a) Total intent: the intention to destroy the whole people; (b) Modernity:
the use of modern industrial methods and bureaucratic organisation; (c)
Spiritual murder: depriving the victims of their humanity, making them show
disrespect to what they held dear, using their remains as disposable material;
(d) An end in itself: not e.g. to gain territory or other possessions; (e)
Metaphysical justification: the Jews were the incarnation of evil. The Holocaust
made death into a social system of a potentially long-lasting kind.
It was not however unique in the sense that nothing like it could ever
happen again, nor because of the scale of suffering. It remains a ghastly
possibility. It did happen and therefore it can happen. In principle it
could be done to anybody.
2. Is the Holocaust comprehensible? (a) Some say that silence is the
only appropriate response, but this plays into the hands of those who deny
that it happened or would prefer to forget it. (b) Others say that it is
wrong to try to understand, because of the danger of making it seem normal.
(c) There is a limited truth in these responses: in face of suffering of
such magnitude, a reverential silence is sometimes called for. It is however
important to try and achieve whatever understandings we can, otherwise we
would have learned nothing.
3. How can human beings bring themselves to commit such crimes? (i)
One response is to say that the perpetrators must have been monsters. It
may be true that they became monsters morally, but psychologically they
were relatively normal. (ii) Studies have shown how ordinary people can
be persuaded to do terrible things: (a) If they believe they have authorisation
(Stanley Milgram). (b) Peer pressure to conform, even if they are given
the chance to opt out (see the study by Christopher Browning). (c) Social
distance can make people morally indifferent even to near neighbours geographically.
(d) People may believe they are not responsible for things done in their
professional capacity. (e) Routine (e.g. in running trains during the Nazi
period) can accustom people to horror and it shields them from the realities
of what they are involved in. (f) Finally, antisemitism - an age-old example
of diminishing of the other - was undoubtedly a major factor, but it was
not the only one.
Explanation of course does not excuse, but it is better that we should
know rather than not know what many - though not all - people are capable
of doing.
4. What is the responsibility of the bystanders? (a) Why did the Pope
remain silent? (b)Why didn't the Allies bomb Auschwitz and the railway lines
running to Auschwitz? (c) How could ordinary Germans and other Europeans
allow this calamity to spread across a continent? (d) Why didn't more Germans
try to obstruct the process, if only in small ways, e.g. losing files? (e)
Why were so many countries closed to refugees?
The general question is: How much do we owe to others under threat or
in dire distress? The problem is very much still with us. 'The righteous
among the nations', those who went to the rescue of Jews in danger, showed
how it is possible to live by a different code.
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Norman Geras is Professor of Government at the University of Manchester./
He is engaged in research in the holocaust, modern political thought, and
Marxism. Hs major Publications include: The Legacy of Rosa Luxemburg
(1976); Marx and Human Nature (1983); Literature of Revolution
(1986); Discourses of Extremity (1990); Solidarity in the Conversation
of Humankind: The Ungroundable Liberalism of Richard Rorty (1995); and
The Contract
of Mutual Indifference: Political Philosophy after the Holocaust (1998)
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