Is Something Missing?

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

"A non-Jewish doctor, Ella Lingens-Reinert…was sent to Auschwitz for harboring a Jew in her home in Vienna. As a non-Jewish prisoner, she had a privileged position and was respected even by the SS women. One day she was standing with an SS woman whose husband also worked at Auschwitz, watching a long line of children, women and old or incapacitated men waiting in front of a gas chamber. She asked the SS woman, “Do you like working here?” “No, Frau Doktor,” answered the woman, “I don’t really like it.”

“But then why do you do it? You could be transferred if you wanted.”

“Yes, but you see, it’s like this. My husband and I both come from very simple families, we are hard-working people, and for many years we have been hoping to live in a better area. We want to have pleasant and respectable neighbors and friends. It is only now that we have been able to buy a house in a nice suburb. It is almost ready, but the kitchen is still far from finished. If we work here for only six more months we can have it finished…Then we will stop working here.” George Klein, Pieta

Does something appear to be missing in the SS woman’s answer to Dr. Lingens-Reinert? If so, what do you think it is?

Michael

2

Is this a riddle of sorts? The only thing that comes to mind is - respect for human life?

3

I was going to opt for perspective, but Daybreak’s answer was suitable as well. Possibly more so.

She was either disingenuous, or daft, seems to be the short of the situation.

4

That In six more months, all the jews will be dead. Then she can return to her neighbourhood, and have “respectable neighbors and friends”.

[EDIT] I think I won the prize [/EDIT]

5

Having read logs at Concentration camps, I’ll go with any sense of humanity what-so-ever.

Horrible, horrible acts were recorded and discussed with as much aplomb as brushing one’s teeth or any other mundane activity. It was, to many, just a job, like any other. Wake up, go gas some people (actually, it was mostly strangulation at the Concentration Camp were I read the most logs), grab lunch, grumble about how damned heavy corpses are (possibly make a joke at this point about how they are feeding the prisoners too much), put corpses in over, take a much needed cigarette break – possibly have a beer while the prisoners are being converted to ash. Clean ovens, bury any skeletal remains, go home to wife and kids. Complain about how the Oberstfuehrer says that efficiency is falling behind other camps and is discussing a paycut/layoffs because of it, but it’s really the war’s fault. All the mechanics are away so there is no possibility to build a gas chamber – besides, the ovens are already running at full capacity. Sigh, play game with kid. Go to bed. Repeat.

The dehumanization was complete and shocking. It was no more disturbing than working at a slaughterhouse for cattle – sure it can be messy, smelly work, but it’s a paycheck, right?

6

There is perhaps a little more to it than that. Obviously, the woman had problems, but there is every possibility that her first several exposures was more than her heart/mind could absorb, and she simply disconnected. Every good chance the doctor wasn’t talking to whomever this woman had been, but a persona as brutalized as those brutally murdered.

7

Good point.

8

Coming from a literary source, focusing on a distinctive and singular event, the paragraph that Polemarchus presents acquires a symbolic aspect, this making it all the more scandalous. Xunzian does nothing more than statistically confirm what Polemarchus had hinted at.

Of course, for us it comes through as shocking. Daybreak said that the woman/her response lacked respect for human life. While this is largely true, it can be noted that she isn’t in the whole devoid of any reverence vis a vis the human factor and, indeed, a certain feeling of kinship. Tentative implied that her job had brutified her, but I don’t think this is something that transforms her beyond recognition. She has not grown into that aloofness that is common to pathological murderers, but maintains a rather unscathed and devoted demeanor. Despite her job she has not lost her humanity, and I believe this is what truly comes across as most scary and paradoxical. The people she damns are stripped of their own humanity, therefore the entire show is disgusting only through the lense of its unhygienic procedure. She witnesses and promotes institutionalised death and is still able to celebrate life by caring for her family’s future. She contributes to the abjection and vilification of countless people, but does not lose her own dignity in front of those alike.

In this sense, I guess perspective, as Mastriani put it, is what she lacks most. It is known that Nazi Germany encouraged a politics where Jews had less use than cattle. They were considered inferior, despicable and vile and due to a hysterical mass innoculation they were chastised wherever an opportunity arose. This relation is obvious : Dr. Lingens-Reinert, although a convict herself, is respected; Jews are treated as disposable furniture. It’s abonimable, yes, but it’s also part of our recent history.

9

Compassion is a human trait that we all possess to some degree or another, save some sociopaths. Obviously art, such as photography, can often awaken this latent compassion in us.

It’s not necessary to know a person to feel compassion for them. We even feel compassion for animals; if a squirrel or dog runs out in from of you most of you will instinctively try to avoid hitting it. It seems logical that if compassion is the seeing of ourselves in another, circumstances can easily draw than similarity out for you to see.

10

“what is missing?”

I tend to think, “what is pressent?” and that is dehumanization to a very very extreme degree, which has already been mentioned.

My mother has a friend who escaped a consentration camp, when she was a little girl. She escaped in the middle of the night, and had to crawl about 2 miles over dead corpses. I can’t remember what camp she was in.

Anyway, If anyone denies that the holocaust happened, I will punch them in the face, and I won’t appologize . . . I will make them appologize.

If our world wants to prevent these things from happening, we have to teach what “dehumanization” is in our public schools. (not just college)

These historical events trip me out. I have I hard time believing they happened in my living parents life time. Yuk!!

11

Holocaust denial is a sad example of the dark side of the freedom & ease under which we exist. Alergies are said to be caused by the the body turning on it’s own cells due to the lack of germs to fight. Our own ignorance seems to be us striving to create darkness and evil in lives that are too soft and comfortable.

12

Hi Phaedrus,

Thank you for your response. Yes, Schopenhauer similarly noted how human compassion so often extends to non-human living creatures.

And yes, seeing ourselves in another often stirs our sense of compassion for them. But if it were only a matter of seeing yourself in another, then you might be motivated to help that person, but surely not to lay down your own life for that person. If what we value in other people is only a perceived image of ourselves, why would anyone give up their own life (the original thing of value) in order to protect a secondary reflection of it? Bear in mind what I wrote about families across Europe that risked literally everything in order to protect a Jewish child.

Herr Braun: “Herr Schmidt, we were wondering if you might consider hiding a Jewish child.”

Herr Schmidt: “Are you crazy? Don’t you know what would happen to me if I were found?”

[** three year-old boy steps out from behind Herr Braun…‘Hallo, mein Name ist Rudie’ **]

ein,

zwei,

drei

Herr Schmidt: “Come along then, Rudie, or we’ll be late for our dinner.”

Relief organizations have long understood this. Their generic plea to help the millions of children starving in Africa is generally greeted with a collective yawn. Whereas, if they broadcast the image of a single starving child, checkbooks promptly snap open.

“In the last resort it is our love for people wich counts for more than our love for principles.” William Gass, The Case of the Obliging Stranger

I very much doubt that I would lay down my life for a girl like Kazimiera. But I’m fairly certain that had the situation warranted it, I would have given my life for Kazimiera. This was the context in which Carl Jung wrote

“Nichts ist unwirksamer als intellecktuelle Ideen.”
“Nothing influences our conduct less than do intellectual ideas.”

It has long been commented, that this single picture turned more Americans against the Vietnam war than any intellectual argument they had heard up to that point. Words can be fought with words, but how would a Presidential spokesperson combat this image? William Gass will only say

“Decent men remark it and are moved to tears.”

Regards,
Michael

13

A strange word, “dehumanize”. I always wonder what it means. To confer animality upon someone perhaps…?

Why do you say these people, who fail to give anything other than very practical answers to the various ‘why’ questions involved, are somehow anything less than a bog-standard model human…?

Why is it somehow ‘dehumanized’ to kill people for something so mundane as a new kitchen…? Why it is not ‘dehumanized’ to kill someone for king and country or any other reason…? At least a new kitchen is useful, many happy times around the table will be had: smiley, rosy, apple-cheeked aryan children will whoop and lick the syrup off their lips there.

Our happiness is always bought at the cost of another’s… Somewhere, is it not…? In wartime, that somewhere is just a whole lot closer.

Imagine that everytime you went shopping in the supermarket, that instead of shelves, there were African children, with big bursting bellies, clutching the packets of food and produce. You still have to eat… Right…?

Imagine that everytime you opened the door to your house, a piece of wire attached to the handle pulled the trigger of a snub-nosed revolver strapped to the forehead of a homeless person, out in the cold…? You still gotta live somewhere… Don’t you…?

For a year and a half I worked in the vivisection labs, testing new chemicals on animals, for your benefit. We talked about TV and music while we cut the heads off dogs and weighed their intestines out in aluminium pans. We joked about the size of Noreen’s bum whilst killing 14 feotuses at a time on cold plates, and popping them like peanuts.

It’s a job. People do what is in front of them, in order to get what they want, or what they are told that they need by their peers. There is no ‘human’ or ‘inhuman’ involved.

Just Folk. Folk like you, folk like me.

Good people.

14

It still occurs. Dafer, Bosnia, Cambodia, Rwanda, and many more.

With regards,

aspacia :cry:

15

I know :frowning:

Why isn’t larger countries with miletary power doing something litterally to curb the situation? . . . no money in those areas.

The U.S. knew about the holocaust but did NOTHING until they were forced into the war. more Yuk!!!

16

Not always. People can live in a way that does not hurt each other, not perfectly, but at least they can try to avoid murdering each other b/c of propaganda.

What if? questions does not justify murder where it was unneccessary at the holocaust. It was not neccessary for anyone to die for germans to open their doors or go shopping.

yes, I understand that. But I am assuming that the reason that it was ok to do the job for you is because they were not human. Also because you assumed that it was good for humanity in general.

I am assuming that you would not do the same job on live, screaming, kicking humans . . . unless you were led to believe that they were less than humans, a plague (dehumanization) and that getting rid of them would save humanity. If people are led to believe this kind of a paradigm about a group of people, then people are “less human” to us, and justification for doing them harm occurs.

There is no human or inhuman involved you say. I think there is. You can argue from a biological point that human and inhuman are irrelevant. But I think that putting people in gas ovens for a new kitchen is very inhuman . . . or not the kind of human that most of us want to emulate.

17

No Shit! This is another huge stain on US history. We would not allow those fleeing the Holocaust to set foot on our land, and demanded planks be put down so the survivors could embark to Canada, but not one Jewish refugee foot was to be set on American soil. Then there is the UK who refused to allow Jews fleeing Europe to enter the “Holy” Land. Uris’ book Exodus disucsses this. How about Vichy France that sent several thousand Jews to the camps.

Currently, Israelis are not allowed entry into many Middle-Eastern countries. At the moment they are being hassled in Figi because of the Palestinians. Never mind the rockets and other attacks.

Don’t worry, I won’t go there folks.

With regards,

aspacia :sunglasses:

18

I have but one thing to say cause it looks like all of you have said it all.

Should Be!

Thank you, I now feel better.

19

Chuckle,

Glad you feel better TheCDF, in spite of the ad hom attack against all U.S. citizens who did not want to invade Iraq.

With regards,

aspacia

20

I am from “that” place and did not want to either.