48
PARTISAN REVIEW
been charged - what secret unquiet lies within this fraying conscience?
What is odder still is that a statement of retroactive indifference is repre–
sented as a commitment to present compassion . As for present compas–
sion, does anyone doubt that there is enough contemporary suffering to
merit one's full notice? Besides, a current indifference to "these old
events" seems harmless enough now; the chimneys of Dachau and Birke–
nau and Belsen have been cold for the last forty-five years. But does this
distinguished figure - a voice of liberalism as well as noteworthy elo–
quence - suppose that indifference to "old events" frees one for attention
to new ones? In fact, indifference to past suffering is a sure sign that there
will be indifference to present suffering. Jaded feelings have little to do
with the staleness of any event. To be "jaded" is to decline to feel at all.
And that is perhaps the central point about indifference, whether
retroactive or current. Indifference is not so much a gesture of looking
away - of choosing to be passive - as it is an active disinclination to feel.
Indifference shuts down the humane, and does it deliberately, with all the
strength deliberateness demands. Indifference is as determined - and as
forcefully muscular - as any blow. For the victims on their way to the
chimneys, there is scarcely anything to choose between a thug with an
uplifted truncheon and the decent citizen who will not lift up his eyes.
II.
We have spoken of three categories: criminal, victim, bystander.
There is a fourth category - so minuscule that statistically it vanishes.
Fortunately it is not a category that can be measured by number - its
measure is metaphysical and belongs to the sublime . "Whoever saves a
single life," says the Talmud, "is as one who has saved an entire world."
This is the category of those astounding souls who refused to stand by as
their neighbors were being hauled away to the killing sites. They were
willing to see, to judge, to decide. Not only did they not avert their
eyes - they set out to rescue. They are the heroes of Nazified Europe.
They are Polish, Italian, Romanian, Russian, Hungarian, French, Yu–
goslavian, Swiss, Swedish, Dutch, Spanish, German . They are Catholic
and Protestant. They are urban and rural; educated and uneducated; so–
phisticated and simple; they include nuns and socialists. And whatever
they did, they did at the risk of their lives.
It is typical of all of them
to
deny any heroism. "It was only de–
cent," they say. But no: most people are decent; the bystanders were de–
cent. The rescuers are somehow raised above the merely decent. When
the rescuers declare that heroism is beside the point, it is hard
to
agree
with them.
There is, however, another view, one that takes the side of the res–
cuers. Under the steady Jerusalem sun stands a low and sOITlber building
