an international and interdisciplinary journal of postmodern cultural sound, text and image
Volume 12, January - April 2015,
ISSN 1552-5112
Nazism and
Young Toerless
One question often asked regarding the Holocaust is to
what extent it was “fuelled” by certain unpleasant elements in human psychology
which were given a particularly free rein in the Nazi period, and for which the
Jews were a natural target, given the long tradition of European anti-Semitism,
but not the only possible one. A related question is whether there were
features of German and Austrian society in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries which particularly encouraged these psychological traits.
In this connection, Robert Musil’s novel Young
Toerless (the English title often given to Die Verwirrungen des Zoeglings Toerless, though not to a new
translation due to appear shortly) is worth some attention, even though it does
not deal with anti-Semitism itself. Post-Holocaust, it is impossible to read
this story of bullying and torture in an Austrian military academy, which has
been called “the most terrifying ‘school story’ ever written” (Seymour-Smith
(1976), p.254), without asking a) whether it was prophetic in some sense of
Nazism, and b) whether it throws any light on the phenomenon of politically
organised persecution.
It is worth noting that Musil himself in the 1930s,
thirty years after he had written the book, and when Hitler had only recently
come to power, wrote in his journal regarding the novel’s “villains”, “Reiting,
Beineberg. Today’s dictators in nucleo. Also the concept of ‘the mass’ as an
entity to be subjugated” (Musil (1995), quoted on p.ix). Nevertheless,
objections may be raised to reading Young
Toerless from this political perspective. First, it could be objected that
bullying in schools, especially in boarding schools, has always been a
widespread, though mercifully not universal, phenomenon, whereas the Holocaust
was unique. The Holocaust was indeed a
unique event, (although other events may well have been equally wicked).
Nevertheless, a) persecution of one sort or another has been very widespread,
and b) the bullying described is exceptionally vicious—Musil, moreover, hinted
that things equally bad or worse had really happened at the school he attended,
though he was not personally involved.
Secondly, it might be held that it is morally
inappropriate to compare systematic political persecution, even when it falls
short of mass murder and torture, with something as relatively trivial as
school bullying. Two replies may be made to this. First, the terror, and even
the pain, undergone by the victim of bullying, though they fall short of death
or permanent injury (in the novel Basini’s tormentors only aim to half-kill
him!), are still quite horrible enough. Secondly, to compare the evil of
persecution with the evil of school bullying is a way of demonstrating that,
despite its even more terrible consequences for the victims, persecution does
resemble bullying in being sordid and squalid, a cowardly attack on those
weaker than oneself.
Thirdly, there is the objection that what happens in a
small closed community, like a school or a single class within a school, is not
really comparable to what happens on the political level. In particular it may
be objected that the all-male nature of the school in question means that it
cannot be seen as a microcosm of any society or political system. Clearly there
are many differences between small enclosed communities and states; but whether
there are also resemblances, and whether these throw light on the political
situation, can be answered only after careful examination, and not in the
abstract.
As regards the all-male nature of the society in
Musil’s novel, one might reply, first, by pointing out the fact that until very
recently men have been politically dominant in nearly all societies. Secondly,
though physical brutality is a largely male phenomenon, a) it is not
exclusively male; b) it has often been encouraged by girls and women, even if
carried out by men, and c) psychological bullying and humiliation is by no means
uncommon among females. There is again no a
priori reason for rejecting a political reading of the novel; only after
making such a reading can one decide whether it was fruitful.
So, let us start the political analysis of the novel,
and see where it leads. The events in the novel with which we are concerned are
as follows. The time is the very end of the nineteenth century and the place is
a very prestigious boarding school for boys, a military academy (though not all
the boys go on into the army) in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, situated in what
is now
Three individuals or groups need to be considered: the
victim, Basini; the persecutors and instigators of persecution, Reiting and
Beineberg; and the class as a whole. The bystander, Toerless, also needs to be
considered briefly. We may begin with the victim.
Three characteristics of Basini are important. First,
he is vulnerable. He is not of particularly “good” family; and no one in the
class knows his parents or has received hospitality from them. In character he
is in all probability, gay, though his actual activity is bisexual. This in a
boarding school community may not be really against him; but, though many other
boys are bisexual, and indeed Reiting, Beineberg and Toerless all have sex with
him, it may be that we should see the attitude of the boys as combining an
acceptance of bisexuality with a contempt for homosexuals and a willingness to
persecute them. (Indeed, that combination of attitudes seems to have existed
later on in parts of the Nazi party itself).Perhaps more importantly, Basini is
physically weak and somewhat effeminate in manner, poor at games and physical
activities, and unlikely to hit back when attacked. Moreover, he combines
weakness with being unable to see the consequences of his actions and
boastfulness. The effect of this, despite his pleasant manner and ability to
make himself agreeable, is to make people see his vulnerability as contemptible
rather than as deserving of sympathy, and to encourage those already inclined
to target the vulnerable, such as Reiting and Beineberg. One can already make a
political comparison—despite the idea that people sympathise with the
“underdog”, joining in persecution of the vulnerable has been nothing uncommon.
But what puts Basini into the power of Reiting and
Beineberg is that they find out that he has been committing a really grave
crime, that of stealing money from his classmates. Either he submits to them,
even when they beat him, torture him or demand sexual favours; or they report
him to the teachers, so that he is expelled (as finally happens, when he gives
himself up), or to the class, who, as said above, are ready to treat him even
worse. For stealing, in many schools, is an offence condemned as much by pupils
as by teachers: Basini is available for beating and humiliation in a way that
others are not.
Here the political parallel is complex, because there
are many reasons for persecution. Its aims may be to keep a particular group in
subordination so that their labour can be exploited, to avoid a threat (real or
imaginary), or to remove a group, ethnic or economic, that is politically or
economically “in the way” or believed to be so. But one reason can be the wish
to punish or avenge a crime or (very often) a supposed crime, though usually
one committed, if at all, by other members of the group than the ones being
killed or beaten. The difficult question (to which we will return) is how far
the wish to avenge or punish is genuinely the motivation, and how far, as in
the novel, the crime is merely a pretext for indulging sadism: Reiting and
Beineberg, unlike Toerless, are not morally disturbed or shocked by Basini’s
stealing, but only glad to have Basini in their power.
Thirdly, Basini cooperates with his tormentors. His
whole policy, in so far as someone who thinks so little ahead has a policy, is
to show friendliness and subordination, and to do everything they tell him, in
the hope of thereby being treated more mildly: even after a severe beating, his
face remains “just as it had been the first time, with the same fixed, sweet,
cloying smile” (Musil, 1995, p.82). The policy works, up to a point, in the
short term, mainly because it suits Reiting and Beineberg not to be too brutal
at this stage; but it fails very badly in the long term. The political parallel
is once again complex. Certainly it has often been argued that cooperation
makes things worse, and resistance is the only option for those persecuted; and
it is not accidental that “Uncle Tom” is a term of abuse. But there can still
be many problematic issues. In particular, whether what is happening to a
person or a group amounts to persecution can be contentious. One party in a
dispute may claim that they are being subjected to persecution, which they can
resist only through violence, while the other party may claim that there is no
persecution, but a conflict of interests which could be settled by negotiation;
and there may be evidence for both interpretations of the situation.
Even if it is clear that there is persecution, two
problems remain: what constitutes cooperation, and when, if ever, does it work?
Thus Arendt (1977) strongly attacked many leaders of Jewish communities for
cooperating with the Nazis and thereby making it easier for the Nazis to put
the Holocaust into operation and harder for anyone to escape. In reply, Ezorsky
(1963) pointed out that there were Jewish leaders who resisted; that in some
cases cooperation was the only possible option; and, in particular, that some
leaders genuinely believed, with some grounds, that fewer people would die if
they cooperated. The truth would seem to be that sometimes, though rarely if
ever under the Nazis, collaboration or cooperation has helped the victims; and
at other times it has made things still worse. One should read the account of
the bullying of Basini as a terrible political and personal warning of what can
happen to a victim who chooses the wrong time to cooperate with their
persecutors. One should also recognise that to decide when cooperation is right
and when it is wrong is far from easy.
It is to the persecutors, Reiting and Beineberg, the
“dictators in nucleo”, (see above), that we should now turn. Regarding them,
there are four points of importance. First, they are, though “gifted and…of
good family”, “the boys who counted as the worst of [Toerless’s] year” (Musil,
1995, p.9). They are described as “at times…wild and reckless to the point of
brutality” (ibid.). They have a strong desire to succeed and make their mark,
but, though they have performed adequately, have not been distinguished at
either lessons or sport, or respected for their qualities of character by
either their classmates or the masters. This parallels at least some accounts
of the kind of person likely to become a leader or early member of a party such
as the Nazi, with aggressive and destructive aims. In particular, it is a
milder version of the situation of Hitler just before the first World War, as
described by Eric Fromm (1977, pp.522-3): “Here is a man of extraordinary
vitality, a burning passion for greatness and power, with the firm belief that
he would become a great painter or architect…He had completely failed in this
aim; he had become a small businessman; his power consisted in impressing a
small group of loners whom he constantly harangued, without even finding followers
among them.”
Secondly, what these boys are now seeking, whether or
not because success of other kinds has eluded them, is simple power, especially
power over other people. Reiting “knew no greater pleasure than to set people
against each other,…revelling in favours and flatteries obtained by
extortion…<H>e had daydreams of…high politics” (1995, p.43). Beineberg
has developed a half-baked and twisted version of his father’s interest in
Indian philosophy, which has turned into “the firm belief that he could achieve
dominion over people by means of more than ordinary spiritual powers”(1995,
p.19). There are many accounts, psychological and political, of this
power-seeking type of personality; but the first, by Plato, is still one of the
best, and still surprisingly relevant. In the Republic, Book 9, he describes the tyrannical character as one
dominated by the desire to gain and retain power over others. In politics,
there are presumably some tyrants and dictators, or would-be tyrants and
dictators, who go into politics already, consciously or unconsciously, having
this aim, and others who begin as idealists and are seduced by the desire for
power. Reiting and Beineberg are already, “in nucleo”, members of the first
group.
Together with the desire for power goes a perception
of people as essentially there to be manipulated, either for one’s own
advantage, or, as with Reiting, also for the sheer pleasure of manipulation.
The manipulation is done mainly through a mixture of charm and fear, charm
predominating when one is weak, fear when one is strong. On the political, as
well as the personal level, systematic manipulation, like power-seeking, has
been with us for a long time. Once
again, it was Plato who first described and condemned it, especially in the Gorgias and the Republic. In the Gorgias
(464-6 in particular) Socrates rejects the idea that oratory, i.e. persuasion
through rhetoric, is a skill that can be used for either good or bad purposes,
and argues that it is an inherently corrupt activity. Something similar is
argued in Republic 493: the
argument in both dialogues (not put
quite in these words) is essentially that, as long as one is engaged only in
working out what words or actions will
get people to do what one wants, one will be totally indifferent to what
would be really good for them and fulfil their real needs; indeed, one will
have no idea what their real needs are—the comparison at one point (Gorgias 464) is with a cook who
concentrates entirely on producing pleasant tastes, and is not concerned
whether or not the meal is wholesome. One might object to what Plato says
here--Plato himself took a more positive view of rhetoric in the Phaedrus 277-8--and replies that oratory
can also be used to persuade people to do what is good for them. But Reiting
and Beineberg manipulate others in precisely the way described in the Republic and Gorgias. Indeed their
attitude to their classmates in general and to Basini in particular is much
worse than indifferent. “[H]e’s no loss in any case”, says Beineberg, “It makes
no difference whether we go and report him, or give him a beating, or even if
we torture him to death, just for the fun of it.” (Musil, 1995, p.63).
But the boys are not just examples of the kind of
power-seeking and manipulation described by Plato and many after him. A reading
of Musil adds something to Plato’s account. In his description of Republic 562-571, of how a tyrant comes
to power, Plato sees tyranny as typically arising in a democracy: the people,
fearing a takeover by oligarchs, look to a powerful man to protect them, grant
him special powers, even a private army, and find too late that he has enslaved
them. But in Young Toerless we see
the impulse to tyranny appearing in members of the ruling class in an
oligarchy: indeed, Plato might have seen the Austro-Hungarian Empire as what in Republic 545-550 he called a
“timarchy”, a society in which the ruling class is motivated by the desire for
honour rather than, as in an oligarchy, the desire to make money. (For Plato
and Aristotle the crucial feature of oligarchy is not that the few rule but
that the rich rule). Winning power is no doubt done differently in a state with
a small entrenched ruling class from the way it is done in a democracy. But the
principle is the same: a mixture of obtaining support from key individuals and
groups by telling them what they want to hear and ruthlessly eliminating rivals
and opponents (sometimes by destroying them politically, sometimes by actual
murder). A fine fictional example, which may or may not be historically
accurate, is Richard III in Shakespeare’s play. Hence, Musil was right to see
his characters as embryo dictators, both in their aims and in their methods.
Finally, Reiting, though not Beineberg, resembles many
dictators in his possession of considerable “charm and winning ways”. (Musil,
1995, p.44; cf. p.77). This may seem surprising, because the charm is often
abandoned, or used politically much less, once the dictator is in power, and
also because it is used alongside ruthlessness and deceit. It is very much in
evidence in Shakespeare’s Richard. He, of course, may be in effect a fictional
character, though based on a historical one. But Hitler seems to have had a
remarkable ability to win over people from very different backgrounds and
political positions; the German people, the German ruling class, the Austrian
people, Chamberlain and Stalin - were all for a time deceived by him, and this
must have involved the use of charm of a kind. And if Sebag Montefiore (2003)
is to be believed, the same was true of Stalin. Chapter 3 of his biography of
Stalin is actually called “The Charmer”, and he says (p.49): “The foundation of
Stalin’s power in the Party was not fear: it was charm”. So, to the picture of
the victim, as an admitted legal offender, weak and vulnerable, and ready to
cooperate with his tormentors, we add a picture of the persecutors, as
power-seeking, manipulative, charming, and so far not very successful in their
careers. Politically, we might say, this is a picture almost of an “ideal type”
of persecutor and victim: actual persecutors and actual victims will very often
have some of these features, but not so often all of them.
We must now turn to considering the class as a whole,
and what happens when Reiting and Beineberg, after several weeks in which their
treatment of Basini becomes more and more brutal, decide to hand him over to
the class, “because he’s beginning to be difficult” (Musil, 1995, p.155). We
have to consider how the class is worked upon by Reiting and Beineberg, what
they then do to Basini, and what happens when Basini gives himself up and the
Headmaster discovers what has been happening. As regards the rousing of the
class, what is striking is how quickly the hunt against Basini is stirred up:
it takes Reiting and Beineberg no more than half a day to get it going. Also
striking is the excitement that is generated by the prospect of humiliating and
beating Basini: the classroom “grew dense with a silence that was charged with
tension, with dark, hot, sinister urges” (p.160). There is, moreover, unanimity
among the members of the class: only Toerless finds what is happening
repulsive, and he does not dare to oppose the class openly, being convinced
they would serve him the same way, but instead warns Basini in a note to
confess to the Headmaster (p.159). Indeed, the note comes too late to save
Basini from beating and humiliation; but he confesses in time to save himself
from an even worse beating, planned for the following night.
When the class start to deal with Basini, the decent
options are not even considered. They do not order Basini to report himself,
which is what the School would expect. They do not give him a chance to reform,
by warning him what will happen if he repeats the offence: the action suggested
earlier, after careful thought, by Toerless’s parents, when he writes to them
about Basini (pp.57-8). They do not even take the option of giving him a severe
beating (better than expulsion) and then regarding the incident as closed,
unless the offence is repeated. Instead, they proceed immediately to
humiliation and brutality. Basini is stripped naked; a letter from his mother
is read out, to an accompaniment of “ribald laughter and lewd jokes”; and then,
after two or three boys start giving him pushes, he is suddenly being “bounced
around the room like a ball, to the accompaniment of laughter, cat-calls and
blows” until he collapses, bleeding and terrified, and lies still (p.161).
Toerless shudders, but he is the only one to feel that way. Mercifully, as said
above, Basini gives himself up that evening.
We have to try to distinguish what is specifically
adolescent in all this, and what might apply equally to persecution carried out
by adults. First, we have to make some allowance for the fact that almost anything
that breaks the monotony of school life and offers some prospect of excitement
will be welcomed by the pupils. Then we have to consider Musil’s view of
adolescent male sexuality, and the form it takes in all-male boarding schools.
It is very much bisexuality. Heterosexuality is regarded by everyone as the
norm; and Beineberg, Toerless and even Basini all pay periodic visits to the
local prostitute Bozena (pp.27-38). But homosexuality is common and largely
accepted: as mentioned above, Reiting, Beineberg and Toerless all have sex with
Basini. For Reiting and Beineberg, this emphasises their power over him, while
allowing him for a time to feel he is their friend (p.122); with Toerless it is
initiated by Basini (who is probably genuinely gay), but also very much desired
by Toerless (pp117-130). It is also a sexuality very infused with sadism, and
not only in Reiting and Beineberg. Toerless never beats Basini himself, but
listening to Reiting and Beineberg whipping Basini and to Basini pleading,
whimpering and moaning produces in him a strong desire to join in, followed by
sexual excitement; and after the whipping he is the one who thinks of making
Basini say “I’m a thief”. Only after all this was he “sickened” (pp.79-83).
So it is not surprising that the class, especially if
skilfully worked on by Reiting and Beineberg, seize the opportunity to relieve
monotony and at the same time, partly unconsciously, to indulge their sadism.
There is also nothing unusual in a group of children or teenagers, even if nearly
adult, turning on one person. But is this also adult behaviour?
There is certainly evidence that it can be, if the
group is worked upon by a few ringleaders. Goldhagen (1996) drew attention to
the fact (already known) that in the course of the Holocaust the number of
people prepared to take an active part not only in murder but also in
humiliation and torture was unexpectedly and disturbingly large. He attributed
this to the supposedly uniquely “eliminativist” nature of traditional German
anti-Semitism. But in his later book (2010), he treats “eliminationism” as
something that has happened in many places. “Eliminationism” is the attempt to
get rid of a particular group, or to make it powerless, whether by actual
murder, or by expulsion, destruction of its culture (“transformation”),
repression or prevention of reproduction (2010, pp.14-19). The reasons for this
vary; the result is cruelty on a massive scale. Goldhagen (pp.440-7)
distinguishes five kinds of cruelty: cruelty with political aims, cruelty to
keep people controlled and subjugated, cruelty for revenge, cruelty for
punishment, and cruelty for enjoyment, whether sexual or general. He says also
that the last three are more common than the first two, and provide “moral and
psychic satisfaction to the perpetrators” (p.447).
If we apply this to Young Toerless, the first point to be made is that all these can
arise without “elimination” being an aim: it is sufficient for a group, or as
here an individual, to be seen as one who may, or should, be treated without
reference to “normal” moral restraints, whether simply because of who they are,
or because of what they are supposed to have done. As to the exact reasons for
the cruelty, Reiting and Beineberg act for political reasons and in order to
control Basini, and also for sadism. The class officially are administering
punishment; but in fact are acting primarily out of sadism.
Hence, if we now try to apply what happens in Musil’s
novel to the adult world, we might say the following. A great many people start
out with a degree of sadism in their nature and particularly in their
adolescent sexuality; a minority, but a larger minority than one would like to
admit, carry this into adulthood, often partly unconsciously. If these people
are then in effect given encouragement, or simply permission, to unleash their
sadism against an already stigmatised group, they will take the opportunity.
So for Musil the root cause of persecution is sadism,
and the exploitation of sadism by power-seeking manipulators, who may also be
themselves sadists: the supposed, or even, as in Basini’s case, the actual
crimes of the persecuted group are essentially a pretext.
Granted that this is more likely to happen among adolescents,
particularly a small, largely enclosed group of adolescents, such as a class in
a boarding school, nevertheless, if the conditions are “right” and the minority
of sadists is “let off the leash”, it will happen in a much worse way among
adults. We should note that even if this minority is a small percentage of the
total population, it can still comprise a large number of people.
There is support for this not only from Goldhagen, but
from another recent book (Neitzel and Welzel, 2012). Unlike Goldhagen’s second
book, which discusses not only the Holocaust, but also “eliminationism” in
Rwanda, Cambodia, Armenia and many other countries, this book is based on
conversations between German prisoners of war, from both the SS and from all
three armed services, dating from 1940 to 1945. All secretly recorded by
British intelligence at a detention centre in north
To return to the novel. Once Basini has given himself
up, the Headmaster announces that there will be a very strict investigation,
but does not call the boys up for questioning until the next day,. This gives
Reiting and Beineberg time to get to work again. The whole class follow their
lead and tell the same story: they did not report Basini, as they should have
done, because they were sorry for him and wanted to give him a chance to
reform. But Basini responded by repeating his offences, and as a result there
was a “spontaneous outbreak” against him, but no other ill-treatment. Basini
himself, still “paralysed with terror” as a result of the class’s violence,
mindful of the threats of Reiting and Beineberg if he implicated them, finding
solitary confinement a “tremendous relief”, and just wishing to get the whole
thing over, “preserved a stupefied silence, no matter what was said” (p.166).
“It was a well-rehearsed farce, brilliantly stage-managed by Reiting” (ibid.).
We may note also the parallel with Goldhagen’s examples (see above) of the
difference between what people say among themselves and what they say under
official interrogation.
It is less easy to make this blaming of the victim
work in an adult context, but it has been done. It has perhaps not so often
worked with the authorities, who have to be guided by the law; unless, of
course, they are encouraging the persecution anyway, or are carrying it out
themselves. But certainly it has not been unusual for people connected with the
persecutors to see their actions, sometimes even if they go as far as murder,
as being a natural response to the behaviour, or supposed behaviour, of the
victims, or of people belonging to the same group as the victims; and sometimes
matters have as a result been hushed up, or very mild penalties imposed, even
if there is no official approval.
We may now sum up the content of the novel from the
political standpoint, remembering that it is a novel, and not an allegory. Two
boys, highly ambitious but no better than adequate at lessons and games, eager
to obtain power over other people, and (in one case), notably charming and
skilled in psychological manipulation, discover that a classmate, a weak and
vulnerable boy, has been stealing money from the boys’ lockers. They use the
threat of reporting him to make him do everything they tell him; this involves,
after a time, submitting to sexual demands and then to increasingly brutal
beatings and humiliations; despite this, his policy is total cooperation. Then
they hand him over to the class, who, under their influence, begin to treat him
even more brutally; but, thanks to a warning from the only member of the class
disgusted by the brutality, he gives himself up and is expelled. The class
escape punishment or even censure by portraying themselves as having tried to
get him to mend his ways and having been finally provoked into violence by his
refusal to do so.
I suggest that that, as I said above about the victim
and ringleaders, this represents, in sociological terms, a microcosm of an
“ideal type” of politically organised persecution, such as the Holocaust. By
“ideal type”, it is meant that though these are not the only key features, and
though they are not all found in every instance of persecution, they are, with
one important exception, all common features of the motives and behaviour of
both persecutors and victims: the exception is that Basini is actually guilty
of a crime, whereas persecuted groups are usually innocent of the crimes of
which they are accused. It is true that Young
Toerless was not written with the knowledge of what would happen in
Two issues remain, to be considered as a kind of
appendix. The first is whether there is anything here which is peculiar to the
culture of
Secondly, and finally, there is the behaviour, and the
thoughts and feelings, of Toerless himself, the “bystander” as we would now
say. For many weeks he knows about and sometimes witnesses the bullying: he barely
takes part, but he does nothing to prevent it. This, one should note, parallels
the behaviour of a great many individuals and a great many governments, as a
response to persecution, which they take no part in but do know about (for
example, see Goldhagen, 2010, pp.244-261). But finally he is sickened by the
violence and genuinely horrified by what is going to happen, and he warns
Basini to give himself up.
What gets him to do the right thing is the decency and
good sense of his parents, and their advice by letter “to get Basini to give
himself up and thus put an end to the undignified and dangerous state of
subservience he was in” (p.158). What has held him back is his excessive
concern with what is going on inside him instead of what is happening around
him. Indeed, we are told (p.135) that he grew into an intelligent and sensitive
young man, but, though behaving “with magnificent external correctitude”, was
one of those who are only really interested in “the growth of their own soul,
or personality”. The question is whether we should see this as making Toerless
a bystander for reasons peculiar to himself, or whether there is something here
true of many bystanders, though not necessarily all. Tentatively, one might
suggest that it shows the limitations of a purely intellectual response to how
other people are treated—only when his feeling of horror at the cruelty and his
appreciation of his parents’ decency come into play does Toerless take action.
So, the novel has something to say about persecutors,
about victims and about bystanders. It has most to say about persecutors, and
about the influence of sadism and of the desire for power: as a practical
point, it brings out the way in which these can be combined in many people with
personal charm, and the political dangers of being seduced by charm. The work
of Goldhagen and of Neitzel and Welzer supports the view that the release of
sadism (whether specifically sexual or as a general enjoyment of violence) in
many (though by no means all) ordinary people was a factor in the Holocaust
that has been insufficiently recognised: Young
Toerless has something to say about how this is activated, which can be
applied to adults as a well as adolescents.
About victims, what is most strongly brought out is
the danger of collaborating with one’s persecutors. With regard to the
Holocaust, there is still a dispute about how far this took place, and how far
(when it did ), it was a rational response, given the extent to which it had
worked in the past, even though it was still the wrong response. But the point
remains as an important practical one for the future.
Finally, there are the bystanders, who in the
Holocaust were very numerous. It perhaps is now generally agreed that what is
needed to reduce the number of potential bystanders is moral education. This
novel, in the treatment of Toerless himself, shows, I suggest, that moral
education cannot be a purely intellectual exercise but must involve the
education of the emotions. How this is to be done is a complicated question.
But something that certainly contributes to it is reading Young Toerless!
an international and interdisciplinary journal of postmodern cultural sound, text and image
Volume 12, January - April 2015,
ISSN 1552-5112
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