Imagination and the Holocaust

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Imagination and the Holocaust

The great secret of morals is love; or a going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own. A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own.

-- Percy Bysshe Shelley, "A Defense of Poetry"

I believe that truly humane learning can't help but expand the constricted boundaries of human sympathy, of social tolerance. Maybe the truest thing to be said about racism is that it represents a profound failure of imagination.

-- Henry Louis Gates, Jr. "Integrating the American Mind"

The imagination and the ability to empathize with others is the key to living a wider life, a key to escaping the prison of a limited self. But, imagination and identification are also menacing. As we read and listen to the words of survivors, as we study the Holocaust from all points of view, our imaginations threaten us. As I pick up Elie Wiesel's novel Night, I take the Holocaust in my hands, and I hear children's' voices in the dark. I am afraid for them and for myself. First, I am afraid my imagination will fail me, and I will be overwhelmed. The terror and humiliation of the Holocaust may so numb me that I will go into "shock." I will isolate myself, deny everything -- suffering, empathy, mercy, family, God. I will experience what Wiesel experienced when his father was struck and he did nothing (36-37), or, in the end, I will abandon my father. Wiesel says to me, "I awoke on January 29 at dawn. In my father's place lay another invalid. They must have taken him away before dawn an...

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...elling and the Journey to Wholeness. New York: Bantam, 1992.

Pagis, Dan. "Written in Pencil in the Sealed Railway-Car." Truth and Lamentation: Stories and Poems on the Holocaust. Eds. Milton Teichman and Sharon Leder. Urbana and Chicago: U of Illinois P, 1994. 491.

Roder, Thomas, Voller Kubillus and Anthony Burwell. Psychiatrists -- the Men Behind Hitler. Los Angeles: Freedom Publishing, 1995.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe. "A Defense of Poetry." In English Romantic Writers. Ed. David Perkins. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1967. 1072-087.

Weinberg, Jeshajahu and Rina Elieli. The Holocaust Museum in Washington. New York: Rizzoli, 1995.

Wiesel, Elie. Night. Trans. Stella Rodway. New York: Bantam Books, 1960.

- - -. "Why I Write: Making 'No' Become 'Yes.'" The Essay Connection. 4th ed. Ed. Lynn Z. Bloom. Lexington, Massachusetts: D. C. Heath, 1995. 40-47.

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