206 Afterthought: Rationality and Shame

prisoners long after the prison had been dismantled.

Year by year the Holocaust shrinks to the size of a historical episode which, in addition, is fast receding into the past. The significance of its memory consists less and less in the need to punish the criminals, or to setrlq still-open accounts. The criminals who escaped trial are now old men well advanced in their senility; so are, or they soon will be, most of" those who survived their crimes. Even if another murderer is discovered, pulled out of his hiding ancf brought to belated justice, it will be increasingly difficult to match the enormity of his crime with the sanctity of;dignity of the legal process. (Witness the embarassing . experience of Demianiuk's and barbie's court cases.) There are also fewer and fewer people left who, in the times of gas chambers, were old enough to decide whether to open, or. to dose the door to the strangers seeking shelter. If repayment of cfimes and account-settling exhausted the historical significance of the Holocaust, one could well let this horrifying episode stay where it ostensibly belongs - in the past - and leave it to the care of professional historians. The truth is, however, that the settling of accounts is just one reason to remember the Holocaust forever. And a minor reason at that - at no time has it yet been so evident as it is now, when that reason rapidly loses whatever remained of its practical importance. ■ [ '

•Today, more than at any other time, the Holocaust is nor a private _r property, (if.it ever was one); not of its perpetrators, t<? be punished for; nqt of its direct victims, .to -ask for special sympathy, favours or indulgence on account of past sufferings; and not of its-witnesses, taseek redemption or certificates of innocence. The present-day significance of the Holocaust is the lesson it contains for the whole of humanity.

The lesson of the Holocaust is the facility with which most people,

put into a situation that does not contain a good choice, or renders such a

good choke very costly, argue thenjiselves away from qhe issue of moral

duty (or fail to argue themselves towards it), adopting instead the

precepts of rational interest and self-preservation. In a system where

- rationality and ethics point in opposite directions, humanity is the main

-loser. Evil can do its dirty work, hoping -that most people most of the

4time will.refrain from doing rash, reckless things - and resisting evil is

rash and reckless. Evil needs neither enthusiastic followers nor an

applauding audience - the instinct of self-preservation will do,

encouraged by the comforting thought that it is not my turn yet, thank

God: by lying low, I can still escape.

And there is another lesson of the Holocaust, of no lessee importance.

Afterthought: Rationality and Shame 207

If the first lesson contained a warning, the second offers hope; it is the second lesson that makes the first worth repeating.

The second lesson tells us that putting self-preservation above moral duty is in no way predetermined, inevitable and inescapable. One can be pressed to do it, but one cannot be forced to do it, and thus one cannot really shift the responsibility for doing it on to those who exerted the pressure. It does not matter how many people chose moral duty over the rationality of self-preservation - what does matter is that some did. Evil is not all-powerful. It can be resisted. The testimony of the few who did resist shatters the authority of the logic of self-preservation. It shows it for what it is in the end - a choice. One wonders how many people must defy that logic for evil to be incapacitated. Is there a magic threshold of defiance beyond which the technology of evil grinds to a halt?