Journal of Philosophy, Inc.

The Holocaust and Philosophy Author(s): Emil L. Fackenheim Reviewed work(s): Source: The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 82, No. 10, Eighty-Second Annual Meeting American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division (Oct., 1985), pp. 505-514 Published by: Journal of Philosophy, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2026356 . Accessed: 30/10/2011 04:50
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THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

VOLUME LXXXII, NO. 10, OCTOBER

1985

~~~~*0.

THE HOLOCAUST

AND PHILOSOPHY*

HILOSOPHERS have all but ignoredthe Holocaust. Why? (1) Attunedto universals,theyhave littleuse forparticulars, and less forthe unique. The Holocaust thus becomes at most one case of genocide among others.However, philosophers have attended to the momentouslyunique. Hegel and Marx have treatedthe FrenchRevolution,not revolutions-in-general. (2) Philosophers seldom considerthingsJewish.As regardsJudaism, the term'Judeo-Christian'rarelysignifiesmore than token recognition.As regardsJews, theyare one "ethnic" or "religious group" among others,just as antisemitismis reducedto a "prejudice." Rare is a work such as Jean Paul Sartre'sAntisemiteand Jew,' and even this treats'antisemite'more adequately than 'Jew'. However, the Third Reich, not merelyits Holocaust component, was "the only German regime-the only regimeever anywherewhich had no otherclear principle than murderoushatredof Jews, for 'Aryan' had no clear meaning other than 'non-Jewish'."2 (The Japanesewerehonorary "Aryans,"and the "Semitic" Muftiof Jerusalem was a welcome guest in Nazi Berlin.) (3) The French Revolution, though momentous, is a positive event.The Holocaust is devastatingly negative.Qua humans,philosophers are temptedto flee fromthis into some such platitude as "man's-inhumanity-to-man-especially-in-wartime." (Arnold Toyn*To be presentedin an APA symposiumon the Holocaust, December 30, 1985. Berel Lang will comment;see this JOURNAL, this issue, 514/5. On the subject of this article,see also my "The Holocaust," in A Handbook of Jewish Theology, forthcoming with Scribners, and, especially and at much greater length,my To Mend the World(New York:SchockenBooks, 1982),citedhereafter as MW. In this essay I have borroweda fewsentencesfromboth theseworks. I New York: Schocken Books, 1948. 2Leo Strauss,Prefaceto the English edition of Spinoza's Critique of Religion, reprinted in Judah Goldin, ed., The Jewish Expression (New York: Bantam Books, 1970), p. 347. 0022-362X/85/8210/0505$01.00 ? 1985 The Journalof Philosophy, Inc.

505

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bee:3 "What the Nazis did is not peculiar.") Qua philosophers,having always had problems with evil, theyhave a new problem now. aporiae, not evade or ignore However, philosophers must confront them. not This paper will treattheHolocaust as unique; as anti-Jewish of accidentallybut essentially;and as a novum in the history evil. mostcloselytheWorld The WorldWar II Jewishgenocideresembles a to War I Armeniangenocide.Both were(i) attempts murder whole people; (ii) carriedout under coverof war; (iii) with maximum secrecy; (iv) after the deportation of the victims, with deliberate to places; (v) all thisprovokingfewcountermeasures cruelty, remote or even verbalprotests thepart of thecivilizedworld. Doubtless on the Nazis both learned fromand wereencouragedby theArmenian precedent. however,are the difThese are strikingsimilarities.As striking, ferences. The Armenian deportationsfromIstanbul were stopped aftersome time,whether because of political problemsor thelogisposed by so large a city."Combed" forJews were tical difficulties Teutonic effiWarsaw. In this,greater Berlin,Vienna, Amsterdam, ciency was secondary;primarywas a Weltanschauung.Indian resin ervationsexist in America.Jewishreservations a victoriousNazi alreadyplanned insteadweremuseumsfor empireare inconceivable: an "extinctrace." For, unlike the Turks, the Nazis sought a "final solution" of a "problem"-final only if, minimally,Europe and, maximally,theworldwould be judenrein.In German thisword has slavenrein.In other no counterpart such as polenrein, russenrein, languages it does not exist at all; for whereas Jordan and Saudi Arabia are in fact without Jews, missing is the Weltanschauung. The Holocaust, then,is but one case of the class "genocide." As a case of the class: "intended,planned, and largelysuccessfulextermination," it is without precedentand, thus farat least, without sequel. It is unique. Equally unique are the means necessaryto this end. These included (i) a scholasticallyprecise definitionof the victims;(ii) ju(iii) a technical ridical procedures procuring their rightlessness; apparatus culminating in murder trains and gas chambers; and and armyof murderers also direct a (iv), mostimportantly, veritable and indirect accomplices: clerks, newspapermen, lawyers, bank and an managers, doctors, soldiers, railwaymen, entrepreneurs, endless list of others.
3In a debate with Yaacov Herzog. See Herzog, A People thatDwells Alone (Lon& don: Weidenfeld Nicholson, 1975), p. 31.
I. THE UNIQUENESS OF THE HOLOCAUST

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The relationbetweendirectand indirect accomplices is as importantas thedistinction. The GermanhistorianKarl DietrichBracher4 understandsNazi Germanyas a dual system. innerpart was the Its "S.S. state"; its outer, the traditionalestablishment-civil service, army,schools,universities, churches.This latter system was allowed separate existenceto the end, but was also increasingly penetrated, manipulated, perverted. And since it resistedthe process only sporadicallyand neverradically,it enabled the S.S. state to do what it could neverhave done simply on its own. Had therailwaymenengaged in strikesor sabotage or simply vanished therewould have been no Auschwitz. Had the German army acted likewise there would have been neitherAuschwitznor World War II. U.S. PresidentRonald Reagan should not have gone to Bitburgeven ifno S.S. men had been buried there. Such was the armyrequired forthe "how" of the Holocaust. Its "why" required an armyof historians,philosophers,theologians. The historians rewrote history. The philosophersdemonstrated that mankindis "Aryan"or "non-Aryan"before is human. The theolit ogians were divided into Christians who made Jesus into an itselfas "non"Aryan" and neo-pagans who rejectedChristianity were slight compared to their shared Aryan"; their differences commitments. These were directaccomplices. But here too therewas need for indirectaccomplices as well. Without the prestigeof philosophers like MartinHeideggerand theologianslike Emanuel Hirsch,could the National-SozialistischeWeltanschauunghave gained its power and respectability? Could it have won out at all? The ScottishCatholic historianMalcolm Hay asks why what happened in Germanydid not happen in Franceforty yearsearlier,during theDreyfusaffair.He replies thatin France therewerefifty righteousmen.5 What was the "why" of the Holocaust? Astoundingly,significantly,even the archpractitioners rarelyfacedit. 'Archpractitioner' indisputablyfitsTreblinka KommandantFranz Stangl. (Treblinka had the fewest survivors.) a postwarinterview In Stangl was asked: "What did you thinkat the timewas the reason fortheextermination of the Jews?" Stangl replied-as if Jews had not long been robbed naked!-"they wanted theirmoney."6Did Stangl reallynot know? Yet, though Treblinka itselfwas secret, raison d'etrehad its always been public. In theNazi Weltanschauung Jewswerevermin, and one does not execute vermin,murderit, spare its young or its
4The German Dictatorship(New York: Praeger,1969),esp. ch. viII.

'The Foot of Pride (Boston: Beacon Press, 1950), p. 211. 6Gitta Sereny,Into thatDarkness (London: AndreDeutsch, 1974); p. 101.

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withoutfeelvermin coldly,systematically, old: one exterminates ing or a second thought. Is 'vermin' (or 'virus' or 'parasite') a "mere metaphor"? In a 1942 "table-talk,"rightafterthe Wannsee conference thatfinalizedthe "Final Solution," Hitler said: The discovery theJewish of virus oneofthegreatest is revolutions ... in theworld. The struggle arewaging ofthesamekindas that we is of Pasteur Kochin thelastcentury. and How many diseases be traced can backto theJewish virus! shallregain health We our onlywhenweexterminate Jewws.7 the For racism, "inferior races" are still human; even for Nazi racism thereare merelytoo many Slavs. For Nazi antisemitismJews are not human; theymust not exist at all. first Stangl failed with his interviewer's question. He failedwith her second as well. "If theywere going to kill themanyway," he was asked, "what was thepoint of all the humiliation, whyall the cruelty?" He replied: "To condition those who actually had to carryout thepolicies. To make it possible forthemto do what they did." The interviewer had doubted Stangl's firstanswer, but accepted his second as both honest and true. Honest it may have been; trueit was not. The "cruelty"included horrendousmedical nonexperiments women, children,babies. The "humiliation" on included making pious Jewsspit on Torah scrollsand, when they ran out of spittle,supplying themwith more by spittinginto their mouths. Was all this easier on the operatorsthen pulling triggers and pushing buttons? Treblinka-the Holocaust-had two ultimate purposes: extermination and also maximum prior humiliation and torture. This too-can Stangl have been unaware of it? had been part of the public Weltanschauungall along. In 1936 declared that "who fightsthe Jew fightsthe devil, Julius Streicher and that "who mastersthe devil conquers heaven" (MW 188). And this basest,mostpornographicNazi only echoed what themostauthoritative(and equally pornographic) Nazi had writtenmany yearsearlier: Withsatanicjoy in his face,theblack-haired lurksin Jewish youth waitfortheunsuspecting whomhe defiles withhis blood... girl Bydefending myself I of against Jew, am fighting thework the the for
Lord.8

To "punish" the "Jewishdevil" throughhumiliation and torture, then,was part of "Aryan" salvation. Perhaps it was all of it.
7Cited by Joachim C. Fest,Hitler (New York: Vintage, 1975),p. 212. 1943),pp. Hitler,Mein Kampf, Ralph Manheim, tr.(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 325, 365.
8

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"Jewish devil" and Jewish "vermin" (or "bacillus," "parasite", "virus") existed side by side in the Nazi theory.For example, this single Hitler-passageof 1923: Theycannot are a race, they nothuman. but are The Jews undoubtedly The be humanin thesenseofbeingin theimageofGod,theEternal. of meanstheracialtuberculosis are Jews theimageofthedevil.Jewry op. (cited Fest, cit.). by thenations "devil" and "vermin" were synthesized Side by side in the theory, in the Auschwitzpraxis, and this was a novum withoutprecedent in the realm of either the real or the possible. Even in the worst state,punishmentis metedout fora doing-a factexplaining Hegdefensibleonce but no more, thatany stateis better el's statement, than none. And, even in thehell of poetic and theologicalimagination, the innocent cannot be touched. The Auschwitzpraxis was based on a new principle:forone portion of mankind,existenceitand death. And self is a crime,punishable by humiliation, torture, the new world produced by this praxis included two kinds of inhabitants,those who were given the "punishment" and those who it. administered Few have yetgrasped the newness of that new world. Survivors have grasped it all along. Hence theyreferto all the "punished" victimsas k'doshim ("holy ones"); foreven criminalsamong them were innocent of the "crime" for which they were "punished." as to Hence, too, theyrefer thenew world createdby thevictimizers a "universe" otherthan ours, or a "planet" otherthan the one we inhabit. What historians and philosophers must face is that Auschwitzwas a kingdomnot of this world. But the Holocaust took place in our world. The historianmustexon plain it, and the philosopher must reflect the historian'swork. Raul Hilberg9has studiedcloselythe "how" of theHolocaust. In answer to the "why" he has said: "They did it because theywanted to do it."10This stresses roles of Nazi Weladmirablythe respective tanschauung and Nazi decision-making.But how accept such a Weltanschauung? How make decisions such as these? As if in answer to thesefurther questions, Bracher(op. cit.) writes: of The extermination theJews] insanity out grew ofthebiologistic [of of Nazi ideology, forthatreasonis completely unliketheterrors and and revolutions warsof thepast(430).
9See his magisterial The Destruction of the European Jews (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1961). with this writer. 10In privateconversation
IL. THE HOLOCAUST AND THE HISTORIAN

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Again further questionsarise. What or who was insane, theideology or those creating,believing, implementingit? If the latter,who? Justtheone? Or theone and thedirectaccomplices?Or theindirect accomplices as well? And, climactically,is "insanity" itselfan explanation, or merelya way of saying thatattemptsto explain have come to an end? Historianswill resistthisconclusion. Has not the"Jewishdevil" a long tradition, harkingback to theNew Testament? (See especially John 8:44.) As forthe "Jewish vermin" (or "virus" or "parasite"), Hitler got it fromantisemitictrashharking back decades. Doubtless without these factorsthe Holocaust would have been impossible,a factin itself sufficient markofftheeventfrom to othergenocides. But do these(and other)factors to suffice make theHolocaust possible? To explain an eventis to show how it was possible; but the mind accepts the possibilityof theHolocaust, in the last analysis, only because it was actual. Explanation, in short-so it seemsmoves in circles. In his unremitting searchforexplanations the historianmustrespond to this challenge by focusingever more sharplyon what is unique in the Holocaust. The philosopher must ponder Hans Jonas's paradoxical Holocaust-dictum:"Much more is real than is possible" (MW 233). Minimally, what became real at Auschwitz was always possible, but is now known to be so. Maximally, Auschwitzhas made possible what previouslywas impossible; for it is a precedent.In eithercase, philosophers must face a novum within a question as old as Socrates: what does it mean to be human? Allan Bullock stresses thatHitler's orginality not in ideas but in lay "the terrifying literalway in which he . . . translate[d] into fantasy reality,and his unequalled grasp of the means by which to do this."" One original productof this"translation"was theso-called Muselmann. If in the Gulag the dissidentsuffers torture-throughon psychiatry, the theorythat in the workers'paradise such as he must be mad, then the Auschwitzpraxis reduces the "non-Aryan" to a walking corpse coveredwith his own filth,on the theory that he must reveal himselfas the disgustingcreaturethathe has been, if disguisedly,since birth.To be sure, the Muselmannerincluded countless"Aryans"also. But,just as "the Nazis wereracistsbecause theywere antisemites"is truerthan the reverse, it is truerthat so
" Cited by Herbert ed., in The Commentary Luethy,"Der Fuehrer,"N. Podhoretz, Reader (New York: Atheneum,1966),p. 64.
III. THE MUSELMANN

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HOLOCAUST

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non-Jewish than thatJewish Muselmanner wereJews-by-association Muselmdnner were a sub-speciesof "enemies of the Reich." The process was focusedon Jews in particular.Its implications, however,concernthe whole human condition,and, therefore, philosophers. Among these few would deny that to die one's own death is part of one's freedom;in Martin Heidegger's Being and Time this freedomis foundational. Yet, of the AuschwitzMuselmann, Primo Levi'2 writes: Theirlifeis short, their but number endless; is they, Muselminner, the thedrowned, form backbone thecamp,an anonymous of the mass, and who continually renewed always of and identical, non-men march laborin silence, divine the spark deadwithin them, already empty too really suffer. hesitates call them to One to living; hesitates call one to their deathdeath. To die one's own death has always been a freedom subjectto loss by accident. On Planet Auschwitz,however,theloss of it was made essential,and its survivalaccidental.Hence Theodor Adorno'3writes: Withtheadministrative murder millions of deathhas become somethingthatnever before to be feared thisway.Deathno longer was in enters into theexperienced of theindividual, somehow life as harmonizing withitscourse. was no longer individual diedin It the that
the camps, but the specimen. This mustaffect also the dyingof those who escaped theprocedure(355; my translation; italics added).

Philosophersare facedwitha new aporia. It arisesfromthenecessity to listen to the silence of the Muselmann. From one new way of being human-that of the victims-we turn to the other, that of the victimizers. Since Socrates,philosophers have known of evil as ignorance; but the Auschwitzoperatorsincluded Ph.D.s. Since Kant philosophers have known of evil as weakness, as yielding to inclination; but Eichmann in Jerusalem invoked,not entirely the incorrectly, categoricalimperative.'4 From psychiatry philosophy learns of evil as sickness;but the "SD intellectuals" who so efficiently engineeredthe "Final Solution" abominated Streicher-type sadists, "wanted to be regardedas decent," and had as "theirsole object . .. to solve theso-calledJewishprob'2Survival in Auschwitz, S. Woolf, tr. (New York: Orion, 1959), p. 82, italics added. Suhrkamp, 1975). 3Negative Dialektik (Frankfurt: 14 Referred in Hannah Arendt,Eichmann in Jerusalem(New York: Penguin, to 1977),pp. 135 ff.;analyzed in MW 270 ff.
IV. "BANAL" EVIL AND PLANET AUSCHWITZ

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lem in a cold, rational manner."'5 Philosophy has even had a glimpse of what the theologians call "radical" or "demonical" evil-the diabolical grandeurthatsays to evil "be thou my good!" However, just as people the world over experiencedhuman shock when theywatched newsreelsof the big Nazis at the Nuremberg trials,so Hannah Arendt-a belated owl of Minerva-experienced philosophical shock when, more than a dozen yearslater,she observedEichmann at his Jerusalemtrial. Of grandeur,therewas in them all not a trace.The characteristic Nazi criminal was rathera nay, dime-a-dozenindividual, who, having once been an ordinary, respected citizen,committed Auschwitzcrimesof a kind and on a at scale hithertounimaginable,only to become, when it was over,an sleepless nights. ordinarycitizen again, withoutsigns of suffering Eichmann was only one such person. Others are still being dishow theytook coveredin nice suburbs,and theirneighborstestify care of theirgardensand werekind to theirdogs. Himmlerhimself, had he escaped detectionand the need forsuicide, mightwell have returned his chickenfarm. to The philosopherin Arendtlooked for some depth in such as these, and found none."6 It was "banal" crime people who committed what mayjustlybe called thegreatest in history; and it was the system thatmade themdo what theydid. The concept "banal evil," however,is only half a philosophical if thought. Who created and maintained the system, not such as Himmler and Eichmann, Stangl, and the unknown soldier who was an S.S. murderer? reply,manywould doubtlesspoint to one In not yet mentioned by us among the banal ones. And, it is true, Adolf Hitler did have an "unequaled grasp of themeans" by which the to "translate fantasyinto reality." To go further, whole Nazi Reich, and hence Planet Auschwitz,would doubtless have disintegrated had some saintly hero succeeded in assassinatingjust this evil one individual. Even so, it is impossible to tracethemonstrous perpetrated all the banal ones to some monstrousgreatnessin by the Fuehrerof themall. For if it is a "superstition. . . thata man who greatlyaffected destinyof nations musthimselfbe great," the then Hitler is the clearest illustration of this truth. His ideas, are so, though blown up into a pretentiousWeltanschauung, trite; forall theposturingintendedto disguise thefact,is theman. Other than a low cunning, his one distinguishingmark is a devouring
"5H. Hoehne, The Order of the Death's Head (London: Pan, 1972), pp. 301 ff. and also in my The JewishReturninto Analyzedin To Mend the World,pp. 211 ff. History(New York: Schocken Books, 1978), pp. 69 ff. 16 See especially Eichmann in Jerusalem, passim,and R. Feldman,ed., The Jewas Pariah (New York: Grove Press, 1978),p. 251. ' Luethy, op. cit., p. 65. Luethy's brilliant essay is worth more than many a whole Hitler biography.

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passion, and even thatis mostlyfedby a need,as petty it is limitas less, to show them-whom?-that the nobody is somebody.Were even the beliefsof this "true believer" trulyheld? Did he everdare to examine them?Certainly-all his biographersare struckby the fact-he neverre-examinedthem.As likely,theytoo werepart of a Wagner-style posturing,rightup to his theatrical death. Such historicalconsiderations aside, we mustfacea philosophical problem. If we accept and philosophically radicalize Eichmann's plea to have been a mere"cog in thewheel," we end up attributing to the few-even to just one?-a power to mesmerize, manipulate, dominate,terrorize thatis beyondall humanityand, to themany,a mesmerizability, manipulability,and craven cowardice that is beneath all humanity.Yet, whereasAuschwitzwas a kingdomnot of this world, its creatorsand operatorswere neithersuper- nor subhuman but rather-a terrifying thought!-human like ourselves. Hence, in howevervaryingdegrees,the mesmerized and manipulated allowed themselvesto be so treated, and the dominated and terrorized gave in to craven cowardice. Not only Eichmann but everyonewas more than a cog in the wheel. The operatorsof the wereall its unbanal creators even as theywereits Auschwitzsystem banal creatures. A moment of truthrelevant to this occurred during the 1964 Auschwitztrialheld in Frankfurt, A Germany. survivor had testified that,thanksto a certainS.S. officer Flacke, one Auschwitzsubcamp had been an "island of peace." The judge sat up, electrified: "Do you wish to say thateveryone could decide forhimselfto be either good or evil at Auschwitz?,"he asked. "That is exactlywhat I wish to say," the witnessreplied (MW 242). Then why were such as S.S. officer Flacke exceptionsso rare as barely to touch and not at all to shake the smooth functioningof the machineryof humiliation, torture,and murder?And how could thosewho were therule, banal ones all, place into our world a "kingdom" evil without precedent,far removed frombanality and fated to haunt mankind forever? cannot answer the first We question. Gripped by the aporia of the second, the philosopher is unlikely to do betterthan fall back on a familiardictum: Auschwitz-like theReich as a whole, especiallyas revealedin theendless, emptySieg Heils of the NurembergParteitage 8-was a whole that was more than the sum of its parts.
18I have triedto grasp and to capture the idolatrouscompact betweenVolk and Fuehrer,manifested most clearlyin the endless yetemptySieg Heils of the NurembergParteitage,in "Idolatryas a Modern Possibility,"Encountersbetween Judaism and Modern Philosophy (New York: Schocken Books, 1980), pp. 171-198,esp. pp. 192-195.

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Philosophers have applied this dictum without hesitation to a animal organisms.To human realities-a society, state,a civilization, a "world"-they have applied it with hesitation,and only if the whole enhanced the humanity of all beyond what would be possible forthe parts,separatelyor jointly,alone. It is in contrast to this thatthe novum of the Holocaust-whole is revealedin all its starkhorror.It did not enhance the humanityof its inhabitants. of it geared to thedestruction On the contrary, was singlemindedly lives) of the victims;and in pursuing the humanity(as well as the even as they theirown humanity, destroyed thisgoal, thevictimizers Pursuing his own age-old goal, the yielded to its being destroyed. Socratic quest, "What is Man?", the philosopher, now as then,is filledwith wonder. But theancient wonderis now mingled with a new horror.
EMIL L. FACKENHEIM

Jerusalem Hebrew University,

UNIQUENESS

AND EXPLANATION*

Professor Fackenheim'sopening claim that "philosophershave all but ignored the Holocaust" seems to me accurate; this neglect is especially notable when measured by the recentattentiveness of philosophers to other topics of "applied ethics" (as in the discussions of medical ethicsor animal rights).The omission also bears, more generally,on certain systematic questions in the historiography of philosophy and the sociology of knowledge-what relation thereis (or should be) between specifichistoricaleventsand the work of philosophy,and what factors, inside or outside philosophy, determine which (and when) philosophical issues gain currency. In relatingthe former thesetwo questions to theeventsof the of Holocaust, Fackenheimstresses "uniqueness" of theHolocaust the as an unavoidable "given" forany understanding it. This emof phasis, it seems to me, requires qualification-since, forany such claim, it is the nature and importance of the respectsin which uniqueness is asserted,not the factof uniqueness itself,that most concern us. (The significanceof the Holocaust would hardly be
* Abstract a paper to be presented an APA symposiumon the Holocaust, Deof in cember30, 1985,commentingon Emil L. Fackenheim,"The Holocaust and Philosophy," this JOURNAL, this issue, 505-514.

0022-362X/85/8210/0514$00.50

?) 1985 The Journalof Philosophy,Inc.