EXPLAINING EVIL

We usually associate the extremity that is the concentration camp not with acts of virtue but rather with the outbreak of evil unprecedented in magnitude. I have tried to go beyond this conventional picture, but there is no escaping the fact that, in the literature of the concentration camp, evil is the main character. As a project, interpreting evil appeals less to me than does understanding goodness, yet I feel I cannot avoid this task, inasmuch as the evil we are concerned with here is not only extreme but also, it would seem, particularly resistant to explanation. Or perhaps I should say, the traditional explanations that come so readily to mind when we face evil in its usual guises are of little help to us here.

First of all, we cannot understand the evils of the concentration camps by interpreting them in terms of abnormality unless we define abnormality— tautologically—as the behavior in question: nothing about the personalities or actions of the authors of evil, apart from this behavior, allows us to classify them as pathological beings—in other words, as monsters, whatever our definition of the terms pathological and normal. It is for this reason no doubt that studies of concentration camps by psychoanalysts or psychiatrists are somewhat disappointing, even when their authors write from firsthand experience; almost without exception, these studies use the language of pathology when discussing either the inmates or the guards (or both). Clearly such characterizations are inadequate. This is not an a priori judgment on my part but the nearly unanimous opinion of the survivors themselves.

Camp survivors seem to agree on the following point: only a small minority of guards, on the order of five or ten percent, could legitimately be called sadists (and thus abnormal). This type of individual, moreover, was not appreciated by those in the higher echelons. Writing of his experiences as a prisoner in Auschwitz, Benedikt Kautsky says, “Nothing would be more mistaken than to see the SS as a sadistic horde driven to abuse and torture thousands of human beings by instinct, passion, or some thirst for pleasure. Those who acted in this way were a small minority” (Langbein 274).