Polish-Jewish Relations: 1,300 Keyword-Phrase-Indexed Book Reviews (by Jan Peczkis)

The Portable Hannah Arendt, by Hannah Arendt, Peter Baehr (Editor). 2003

Hannah Arendt–“Only a Philosopher” Owing to Her Unwelcome Findings on Jewish-Nazi Collaboration, Shows a Clearly Sophisticated Understanding of It, Putting Her Critics in Their Place

Evidently, for some, whenever you dislike the message, go after the messenger. In response, Hannah Arendt had the following rebuttal to the criticisms of Gershom Scholem:

JEWISH-NAZI COLLABORATION IS A REAL ISSUE, AND MUST BE FACED

Arendt wrote, “This issue came up during the [Eichmann] trial and it was of course my duty to report it. This constitutes our part of the so-called ‘unmastered past,’ and although you may be right that it is too early for a ‘balanced judgment’ (though I doubt this), I do believe that we shall only come to terms with this past if we begin to judge and to be frank about it. I have made my own position plain, and yet it is obvious that you did not understand it. I said that there was no possibility of resistance, but there existed the possibility of doing nothing. And in order to do nothing, one did not need to be a saint, one needed only to say: “I am just a simple Jew, and I have no desire to play any other role.” Whether these people or some of them, as you indicate, deserved to be hanged is an altogether different question. What needs to be discussed are not the people so much as the arguments with which they justified themselves in their own eyes and in those of others. Concerning these arguments we are entitled to pass judgment.” (p. 394).

ARENDT: DO NOT LUMP ALL JEWISH EXPERIENCES UNDER THE NAZIS AS THE SAME. NOT ALL JEWISH CHOICES WERE “CHOICELESS CHOICES”. NOR WERE JEWS UNILATERALLY OR CONSISTENTLY POWERLESS UNDER THE NAZIS

Hannah Arendt warns against, for example, confusing the die-now (disobedience) or die-later (obedience) choiceless choice facing the Jewish body-cremating Auschwitz SONDERKOMMANDO, and that of the much freer Jewish ghetto policeman.

With reference to the later, she perceptively notes the following, “Moreover, we should not forget that we are dealing here with conditions which were terrible and desperate enough, but which were not the conditions of concentration camps. These decisions were made in an atmosphere of terror but not under the immediate pressure and impact of terror. These are important differences in degree, which every student of totalitarianism must know and take into account. These people had still a certain, limited freedom of decision and of action. Just as the SS murderers also possessed, as we now know, a limited choice of alternatives.” (p. 394).