AESTHETICS OF EVIL
213
Here is the testimony of the anti-partisan chief and top SS
and police leader for Russia, Von dem Bach, who, as Hilberg notes,
observed the Jews and killed them until the end: " ... the appalling
fact was that they (the Jews in Russia) had no organization what–
soever. The mass of Jewish people were taken completely by sur–
prise. They did not know at all what to do; they had no directives
or slogans as to how they should act ... they had no organization of
their own at all, not even an information service."
I wondered when I read Miss Arendt's book why she had not
dealt with the killing of Jews in Russia, since she did take up, and
in much detail, the manner in which the Jews of so many other
European countries were killed. Raul Hilberg's book-which does
not neglect to treat it-suggests one answer: Had Miss Arendt dealt
with the killing of the Jews in Russia, she would have had to
abandon her whole thesis that so much of the responsibility for the
deaths of so many Jews rests finally with their own leadership. .
But it is Miss Arendt's desire to maximize the role of the Jewish
leaders in the destruction of European Jewry. Any facts which would
tend to make their role 'merely relative, she is inclined to ignore, or
to play down.
What is the truth of the matter? Why did the Nazis set up
the Jewish Councils? And why did representative Jews become
members of these Councils? Now certainly the Nazis set up the
Jewish Councils in order to serve their own purposes. This goes
without saying. On the other hand, organizations of Jews set up
by the Nazis may very well have thought it was possible to make use
of their privileged position to save not only themselves and their
families but other Jews also. Miss Marie Syrkin has given, I think,
a very good explanation of how the members of these Jewish
Councils justified themselves: "In most cases the Councils viewed
themselves honestly as a buffer between German savagery · and the;
helpless ghetto. Someone had to be responsible for the distribution
of rations, such as they were; some type of organization had to exist
among the thousands-500,OOO in Warsaw-immured within the
ghetto walls if chaos were not to be complete and immediate; and
grimmest of
all,
any disobedience of a Nazi directive meant .the
entrance of storm-troopers shooting and seizing indiscriminately.". I
am persuaded of the human truth of this explanation.
