PARTISAN REVIEW
The horror of the
concent~ation
and extermination camps can
never be fully embraced by the imagination for the very reason that
it stands outside of life and death. The inmates are more effectively
cut off from the world of the living than if they were dead, because
terror compels oblivion among those who know them or love them.
"What extraordinary women you are here," exclaimed the Soviet
police when Polish women insisted on knowing the whereabouts of
their husbands who had disappeared. "In our country, when the hus–
band is arrested, the wife sues for divorce and looks for another man"
(The Dark Side of the Moon).
Murder in the camps is as impersonal
as the squashing of a gnat, a mere technique of management, as when
a camp
is
overcrowded and is liquidated--or an accidental by-pro–
duct, as when a prisoner succumbs to torture. Systematic torture and
systematic starvation create an atmosphere of permanent dying, in
which death as well as life is effectively obstructed.
The fear of the absolute Evil which permits of no escape knows
that this
is
the end of dialectical evolutions and developments.
It
knows that modern politics revolves around a question which, strictly
speaking, should never enter into politics, the question of all or
nothing: of all, that is, a human society rich with infinite possibilities;
or exactly nothing, that is, the end of mankind.
II
There are no parallels to the life of the concentration camps.
All seeming parallels create confusion and distract attention from
what is essential. Forced labor in prisons and penal colonies, banish–
ment, slavery, all seem for a moment to offer helpful comparisons,
but on closer examination lead nowhere.
Forced labor as a punishment is limited as to time and intensity.
The convict retains his rights over
his
body; he is not absolutely
tortured and he is not absolutely dominated. Banishment banishes
only from one part of the world to another part of the world, also
inhabited by human beings; it does not exclude from the human
world altogether. Throughout history slavery has been an institution
within a social order; slaves were not, like concentration camp in–
mates, withdrawn from the sight and hence the protection of their
fellow men; as instruments of labor they had a definite price and as
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