Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

If tragedy was upon you, your family, and friends, what would you do? If given the chance to possibly avoid or prolong certain death, would you? Raul Hilberg's taxonomy of responses consists of four responses that come naturally to people in times of danger - compliance, evasion, resistance, and alleviation.

It is our human nature to immediately say that our response would be resistance if our family or we were threatened by someone, even the people running our country. As we continue to think things through we might then change our mind to evasion. We would just run as far away from the problem as we can get. Surely we would be safe then, but then evasion would mean leaving everything we know behind. We begin to think our choices through a little more. Compliance is out of the question. We are too proud to simply do what our enemy wants. Alleviation might not be so bad; we give a little, we get a little. We could deal with that. It's almost a compromise if you don't think about it too much.

In War & Genocide by Doris L. Bergen, Bergen tells of a group of people that had to make decisions just like the ones I just described. During the Holocaust, German officials appointed prestigious Jewish leaders, such as businessmen, teachers, or lawyers, to positions on Jewish Councils (Judenrat) to carry out German orders in the ghettos. The Jewish Councils were supposed to distribute scarce resources, organize social life, set up charities, and find ways to maintain some kind of normality in the ghettos (Bergen, 2009, p.115).

In the brief passage about the Jewish Councils, Bergen says the Jewish Councils were criticized and even blamed for forming part of the "machinery of destruction." The author of Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hanna Arendt, created controversy with the publication of her book in the early 1960s. Arendt drew attention to her belief that the Jewish leaders collaborated with the Germans to try to save themselves. Bergen disagrees with Arendt with the statement that the Jewish Council members were simply "caught between conflicting sets of demands." The Jewish Councils had to appease the Germans above them while also keeping the Jewish people happy below them (Bergen, 2009, p.115-116). It was impossible to do both of these things.

Bergen quickly switches sides and says the Jewish leaders should have warned the Jewish people. Bergen believes the leaders knew that the Germans were going to kill the Jews, no matter what, and still did nothing for the Jews. "Few withstood the temptation to try to use their positions to save themselves and those close to them" (Bergen, 2009, p.118). Even I cannot say I wouldn't so the same.

In Who Will Write Our History? by Sam Kassow, Kassow has a similar, but more detailed, view of the Jewish Councils. Kassow explains life for Jews