In “At the Mind’s Limits”, Jean Améry comments on his own Jewish beliefs which were drastically altered when he became part of Hitler’s “Final Solution.” Améry comments on two major points: his initial inability to understand his Jewish faith, and the reality of world wide anti-Semitism. This latter point illustrates that Améry’s intentions might have been to expose the world to their failure rather than to explain the horrific situations that the Jews faced during the Holocaust.
It had been unknown to me prior to reading this essay that the Nuremberg Laws, which outlined the Final Solution, were proclaimed and published in 1935, four years before the invasion of Poland. The rest of the world (outside of Germany) must have been able to recognize the potential atrocities that Hitler intended to commit. But the rest of the world just sat there, not doing anything (similarly to the actual beginning of WWII, the “Phony War”). Only at the end of the war did they “discover” the death camps. This is not a form of improper foreign policy, but rather a fault of human nature.
Humans are timid, cautious creatures. In most cases, we are careful beings who measure consequences before acting. Humans also have the belief that we know other humans. Humans think that because we know our own actions, we can anticipate the actions of others (who “should” act just like us). These human frailties are what allowed the Holocaust to occur. It was not that foreign policy did not allow the nations of the world to save the Jewish Germans or interfere with Hitler’s actions, but rather it was the assumption that Hitler would not carry out such horrific threats. Similarly, the world later felt that after appeasing Hitler he would not continue to threaten other nations. Because we know ourselves we think we know others. We disregard whatever information is right in front of us, passing it off as aimless, pointless threats.
Thus it comes to mind, what if? What if someone stood up to Hitler and a nation actually evaluated the seriousness of the Nuremberg Laws? What achievements would have come from the 5-6 millions Jews who were decimated by the Holocaust? Améry addresses this by stating that the Anti Semitism felt in Germany was actually worldwide, just not to the extremist scale that occurred in Germany. Members of all of the countries of the world felt some resentment towards the Jews, further adding to their reluctance to stop the Holocaust. This was evidenced by the Anti Semitic demonstrations after the war and the still prevalent Anti Semitism.
Another human trait examined by Améry was that of acceptance. Améry, prior to his experience at Auschwitz, never accepted his religion fully. Only after becoming classified as a Jew and being put through the horrid activities of a concentration camp did he accept his religion (Almost as if he were to say,” If I am going to be punished as a Jew, I might as well be one.”). But where Améry may have accepted his religion, the present generations of Jews are becoming more secular and divided (There are constant confrontations of secular and observant Jews at the West wall in Israel). A now common ordeal in Jewish communities is Jews marrying non-Jews and having their religion become undermined by their spouses. So where before the Jews accepted their religion as a matter of faith and suffered the consequences, now some Jews are allowing themselves to succumb to other religions through marriage, not desiring to accept the responsibility to pass down the religion through the generations (this was the feeling which came from Améry’s essay, and is not common knowledge to me, not to say I have not heard of it before).
Thus, between Améry’s essay “At the Mind’s Limits” and all I have learned about Hasidic Jews, it appears that the Jews are an isolated people, either by choice or not. They isolate themselves in the fashion of the Hasidics, whose strict rules prevent much interaction with others. There are isolated by the rest of the world, who have an either open Anti Semitism or an underlying misunderstanding towards the Jews. In either way the Jews become isolated, the effect of which reveals almost disgraceful traits of the human mind.