by Gerald Dworkin
I recently watched the latest Claude Lanzmann documentary on the Holocaust called the Last of the Unjust. It is a four hour interview with Benjamin Murmelstein who was the last of the Judenrat in Theresienstadt. These were Jews who were selected to act as advisors to the Nazi administrators who ran the camp. Murmelstein has been the subject of much dispute in terms of the role he played. It is fascinating to listen to Murmelstein, a former rabbi in Vienna and a scholar of mythology, as he details his interactions with Eichmann, his denial that he was aware that camps such as Auschwitz and Sobibor were death camps (although he admits there were clues that he should have taken more seriously), and the many moral dilemmas that someone in his role faced. At one point, when pressed by Lanzmann, he says that people in his position should be “condemned but not judged.” I leave it to the reader as an exercise to figure out whether this can be understood in a way that makes sense.
Having watched this film I was led to reflect upon the magnificent Lanzmann documentary Shoah and the questions it raises about the ethics of lying. Kant is notorious for denying that it is ever legitimate to lie –even to the murderous man who comes to your door and demands to know whether a particular person is hiding in your house, whom the man wishes to kill. Alan Wood has recent given the most plausible attempt to defend the Kantian view by arguing that Kant distinguishes between a declaration, which only takes place when one warrants that one is telling the truth, and a falsification which takes place in a context where there is no such warrant. Wood claims that Kant’s theory should say that if our false statement is not a declaration then it is permissible because not a lie. If it is a declaration, but extorted from us, i.e. we are forced to say something as opposed to keeping silent, then that should be permissible. In effect, says Wood, Kant misunderstood his own theory.
I turn away from the thickets of Kant interpretation to the question of what exceptions to the general prohibition against lying we ought to accept, in particular how to respond to Nazis–at the door, or as we shall see, otherwise.