Responsibilty and its Modifiers

At the end of my last post I promised to look at the functions served by the camp at Theresienstadt. However, I intend here to write a bit more about responsibility and guilt. Some years ago I spent time considering Thomistic-Aristotilian ethics. One concept particularly struck and stayed with me. This was the discussion of what was termed “modifiers of responsibility.” I believe that there were four or five but I can now only recall three of them: force, fear, and ignorance. Absolute responsibility for a human act is not feasible in Aristotle’s schema if we examine the lived reality. “Evil,” is of its essence embodied in deliberate human agency, in a decision made to act or fail to act in some manner that will lead to the harm of another being or group of beings. I don’t believe it possible for any of us to determine with precision to what degree we are “responsible” for our actions. Generally, I think that we either over- or under-estimate this degree. The problem is that so many factors are involved in our decision-making, many of which are by no means fully conscious to us.

The Judenrats of various towns, cities, and later of ghettos or camps, would have been prompted by many motivations when making the decision to co-operate with Nazi officials. Clearly fear, force, and ignorance would have entered into all of them. From the earliest days of Nazi power strictures were imposed upon the Jewish populations in Germany, then Czechoslovakia, and Austria – even before the outbreak of the war. Laws were passed disenfranchising Jews in every sense: students and teachers were ejected from schools and universities; professionals disbarred from their professions; Aryans forbidden buying from Jewish merchants; Jews forbidden access to public entertainments such as movies; enforced residence in less desirable parts of the city; marriages and even liaisons forbidden; and so on. Jews were subject to beatings and to humiliations of every kind when confronted by ardent pro-Nazis; homes and businesses were attacked and destroyed. Civil rights as well as the protection of their bodies, lives, and properties were systematically stripped away. Within such an arc of destruction local councils might easily have viewed approaches by officials to organize the community co-operatively a hopeful sign.

It was in the best interest of the Nazis when transporting Jews to areas in the east to solicit the co-operation of the one clear organizing agent within that population. Approaches were not made by brusque SS officers seeking to overtly intimidate, but rather by official like Eichmann. One polite and educated official would confer with another: we plan to transport the Jews of this region to settlements being prepared for them in the east. We would like to work with you to ensure that this process is conducted calmly and with a minimum of disturbance and harm to your people. We will give you full authority over certain areas (like listing all in your community, their ages, addresses, properties, and so on; and, using your own organs of public order – the Jewish police – to maintain that order during the transportations.) We will assist you and give you full co-operation in effecting a well-managed transfer of your people.

Approached in this manner the councils would see clearly that like other decisions made by the Nazi government, the decree of transportation would occur with or without their co-operation. Working with the government at that point would appear to be the best option for ensuring safe outcomes for their people. At this early juncture few even among the approaching Nazi officials would envision the deadly directions that “transportations” would ultimately take. Were there other motivations at work within the individual elders as they made their decisions? Undoubtedly there were. We can be sure that there are always multiple motivations for most things that we do, some of which might be antagonistic to others. It’s within that swirl of pros and cons that we come up with or defer decisions. As individuals in their increasingly unpredictable landscape the council members would be fearful for themselves, their families, and their communities. They would be conscious on some level of unspoken threats from the officials approaching them – chaos for all if the transportations were violently imposed; and, possibly the dissolution in some manner of the councils themselves, with others more reliably connected to the government replacing them. Did some feel flattered by the invitation given by the reigning powers to work together as “equals?” Did some enjoy the new scope of their powers within the community? Did some see advantages of favour for some and trouble for others within the new arrangement? Possibly. It is possibly true as Arendt states that had Jews at every level refused co-operation with the Nazis more lives would have been saved, but this is an understanding born of hindsight. In the lived experience elders undoubtedly followed what appeared to them the best of bad choices.


In my next post I will return to Arendt’s commentary about the morality of saving notables and about the camp at Theresienstsdt..