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Between Two Wars Janina and Zygmunt Bauman’S Analyses of the Contemporary Human Condition

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Between Two Wars Janina and Zygmunt Bauman’S Analyses of the Contemporary Human Condition EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE, FLORENCE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY AND CIVILIZATION EUI Working Paper HEC No. 2003/4 Between Two Wars Janina and Zygmunt Bauman’s Analyses of the Contemporary Human Condition Edited by PETER WAGNER and BO STRÅTH BADIA FIESOLANA, SAN DOMENICO (FI) All rights reserved. No part of this paper may be reproduced in any form without permission of the author(s). © 2003 Peter Wagner, Bo Stråth and individual authors Printed in Italy in October 2003 European University Institute Badia Fiesolana I – 50016 San Domenico (FI) Italy Between Two Wars Janina and Zygmunt Bauman’s Analyses of the Contemporary Human Condition Edited by Peter Wagner and Bo Stråth 1 The analyses by Janina and Zygmunt Bauman were presented on 9 and 10 October 2002 in seminars at the European University Institute within the framework of the research programme ‘The Modernity of Europe – towards a comparative–historical and politico–philosophical re–assessment’, directed by Bo Stråth and Peter Wagner. Further to Arfon Rees’ comment on Janina Bauman, we add a short paper by Peter Wagner that also addresses the contemporary condition of modernity and was presented at the conference ‘Rethinking Modernity. Turning Points of History and World Order’, organized by the Russian Parliament and Moscow State University in Moscow on 25–28 October 2002. In many respects, this paper can be read as a comment on Zygmunt Bauman’s analysis. 2 Table of Contents Moral Choices in the Age of Gas Chambers Janina Bauman with an introduction by Arfon Rees .............................. 5 Between Two Wars Peter Wagner .......................................................................................... 23 The Fate of Humanity in the Post-Trinitarian World Zygmunt Bauman .................................................................................... 25 Rethinking Modernity Peter Wagner .......................................................................................... 39 3 4 Moral Choices in the Age of Gas Chambers Janina Bauman (With an Introduction by Arfon Rees) Introduction Arfon Rees In the summer of 1942 about 300,000 Jews were deported from Warsaw to Treblinka. When reports of mass murder at the concentration camp leaked back to the Warsaw ghetto a group of mostly young people formed the Jewish Fighting Organisation (Zydowska Organizaja Bojowa or ZOB). It was led by Mordecai Anielewicz, then 23 years of age. It issued a proclamation calling on the Jewish people to resist going to the railway cars. In January 1943 Warsaw ghetto fighters, using weapons smuggled into the ghetto, fired upon German troops as they tried to round up other inhabitants for deportation. After a few days the troops retreated. On 19 April 1943 the Warsaw ghetto uprising began after German troops and police entered the ghetto to deport its surviving inhabitants. Seven hundred and fifty fighters fought the heavily armed and well-trained Germans. The ghetto fighters held out until 16 May 1943 when the revolt ended. Of the more than 56,000 Jews captured about 7,000 were shot and the remainder were deported. The ethical question of whether it is right to take up arms in this case seems clear cut. The right of a community to defend itself in such circumstances must be absolute. Faced with the likelihood of annihilation the resort to arms seems not only tactically justified but is driven by a moral imperative to act. The ultimate failure of the rising does not compromise that moral justification for revolt. But alongside the heroic example provided by Mordecai Anielewicz and other ghetto fighters there were other representatives of the Jewish ghetto, appointed by the Nazi authorities, who were in a much more ambivalent and compromised position. The study of the actions of two of those leaders, Adam Czerniakow and Chaim Rumkovski, respectively the leaders of the Jewish councils (Judenrat) in the Warsaw and Lódź ghettos, is the subject of Janina Bauman’s paper. The experience of the Jewish ghettos was somewhat different to that of other genocides. The Jewish community was not deprived of its leaders, it was not socially decapitated. Rather the leaders of the community were co-opted by the Nazi authorities as intermediaries. The position of the ghettos was also suspended in a certain ambiguity. Its leaders and its members could not foresee what was to transpire. There was no one irrevocable decision to exterminate the ghetto’s inhabitants. Rather it was a series of decisions, salami style, whereby the evacuation of the ghetto’s inhabitants to the camps was authorised. In this situation a tactic of negotiating and accommodation with the Nazi authorities was 5 not entirely unreasonable. At each stage, until the very end when it was too late, there was always something to be negotiated. The policy of “ethnic cleansing” or ethnic isolation was then transformed into a policy of genocide. Czerniakow and Rumkowski both calculated that open resistance and defiance were either impossible or futile, and would bring retaliatory action that would bring large loss of life and would hasten the liquidation of the ghettos and the mass transfer of people to the camps. The circumstances, which confronted the leaders and members of the ghetto allowed of only a limited number of possible strategies. Firstly, the hope that the oppressor could be persuaded to relent, that it would be possible to find some common ground of humanity; some appeal to compassion, that might bring some alleviation of the situation. Secondly, the belief that it was possible to engage in bargaining and negotiations, to seek concessions on the way policy was administered and thus to delay its implementation. Thirdly, the hope that it was possible to appeal to the oppressor’s own sense of self- interest to preserve the ghetto, in the case of Lódź through the economic efficiency of the ghetto’s worshops. Failing these three possibilities was the hope of outside intervention. In part hope was vested in the advancing Red Army. But this was a two edged sword; how would the Soviets treat those who had collaborated with the Nazis? In the end the halting of the Soviet advance before Lódź demonstrated that this was in any event a forlorn hope. The plight of the Jews highlights in an extreme form a human dilemma, of what alternatives are available where resistance to the oppressor is impossible or threatens even grater dangers. The intentions of the oppressor can never be entirely comprehended, and they may change unpredictably. The outcome of the situation cannot be foreseen. In such circumstances the hope of the victim revolves around certain possibilities; that the oppressor can be persuaded, by some reason, to relent, that some outside force will intervene to save the situation, and lastly the hope of some miraculous transformation of the situation, that allows the victim to escape. The absence of the basis for collective action forces the individual to act alone, either pursuing egotistical objective of survival, if necessary at all costs, or in the abnegation of the self, and self sacrifice in alleviating the suffering of others or sharing their sufferings. Czerniakow himself turned down the miraculous possibility of an escape to Palestine out of a sense of duty to his community. This may also have a wider logic that points to a more general aspect of the human predicament in general. Consciousness imbues us with an understanding of our own mortality. We strive tenaciously to avoid our own extinction. We may reflect philosophically on death, but for the most it is difficult to come to terms 6 with the reality of our own demise. We understand that it is inevitable, but not here, not now; preferably in private, peacefully, without pain and with dignity. The difficulty of imagining one’s extinction is a great strength of mankind but it is also a weakness. In extreme situations, such as that described in the paper, individuals clutch on to hope. The inhabitants of the ghettos clutched on to hope when faced with the awful prospect that threatened: “meaningless”, “senseless” undignified death, death in great numbers, anonymous death by social categories, death shared with one’s kin and neighbours, where the only crime was to have been born into the wrong ethnic or religious community. One can image this fate befalling others, it is almost impossible, because too terrible and too great an affront to one’s sense of self, to imagine it befalling oneself. It is the shock of having our most basic illusions about ourselves, about our society and about our notions of civilization challenged or destroyed. The ghetto brutalized and dehumanized the oppressors and the oppressed. The oppressed were also corrupted by the experience, they were drawn into collusion with their oppressors, and they were turned against their fellows in their search for survival. In the Warsaw ghetto Czerniakow reflects how the Jewish council was taken over increasingly by amoral, opportunistic elements. In his diary he confided that this might be a good thing, that they might be able to find a common language with the oppressor, that they could engage in the kind of deals and negotiations, that would preserve as many of the ghetto inhabitants for as long as possible, albeit with the recognition that some would have to be sacrificed. This in many ways is a shocking view. Whether Czerniakow really believed in this is, or took some solace from the situation is unclear. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that this reflected a major turning point, a break down of any common moral bonds linking the community leadership and the ghetto population. With that break down went the possibility of any collective action. Both the leaders here examined made decisions on the most “utilitarian” of calculations, stripped on any other moral imperatives, securing the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers, even if this meant that a large unknown proportion was sacrificed.
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