"Facing the Extreme"

Even though I should have been focused on my readings for this week, I jumped ahead in my course syllabus to a reading I simply couldn't wait to begin:  Tzvetan Todorov's Facing the Extreme:  Moral Life in the Concentration Camps. 

Why was I so eager to begin such grim reading?  I was interested in Todorov's thesis, that there is "continuity" between moral life in and out of the camps. Because life inside the camps was so extreme, it "projects, magnifies and renders eloquent what can easily escape notice in the humdrum of our daily lives."

And while most of its content was pitiless, I finished the reading somewhat heartened, strengthened in my belief that while human goodness does not always "reign supreme," it sometimes reveals itself in even the darkest circumstances.   

"Haven't we learned only too well the sad and simple truth the camps revealed, namely, that in extreme situations all traces of moral life evaporate as men become beasts locked in a merciless struggle for survival?" Todorov asks.  There are just too many survivor testimonies that point to the jungle-law to which human beings succumb when their own survival is at stake.  For example, Auschwitz survivior, Primo Levi (who committed suicide in 1987) wrote that to survive, it was necessary "to throttle all dignity and kill all conscience to climb down into the arena as a beast against other beasts...It was a Hobbesian life...a continuous war of everyone against everyone."   Varlam Shalamov, a prisoner of the Soviet gulag Kolyma, wrote, "All human emotions--of love, friendship, envy, concern for one's fellowman, compassion, a longing for fame, honesty--had left us with the flesh that had melted from our bodies during our long fasts."


But Todorov argues that even within these very bleak survivor accounts, there are exceptions.  There were many moments of compassion and cooperation--too many to discount.  For example, Shalamov also wrote of himself, "I couldn't denounce a fellow convict, no matter what he did.  And I refused to seek the job of foreman, which provided a chance to stay alive..."  Buchenwald survivor Rovert Antelme describes "the hungry old man who'd steal in front of his son, so the son could eat.  Father and son...hungry together, offering their bread to each other with loving eyes..." 
 
As I write these things, I think back to a barbecue I attended several years ago.  There, I met a man who, upon learning that I taught theology, questioned me, almost angrily:  "How can you believe in a loving God when there is so much cruelty in the world?"  Great conversation for a barbecue, huh?  I can't say that I responded in the way that I would have liked.  At the time, I felt embarassed and a bit stupid that I didn't have a quick answer for him. 
 
I no longer worry about not having "quick answers" about these things--it actually feels better and more right to "hold back."  Sometimes, I find that the only appropriate response is to remain silent.  But after my reading tonight, I think I might have said, "Do I believe in a loving God?  All I can say is this:  love is my God.  And I will continue to look for its presence in even the darkest and cruelest of places."