ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I apply a sociological concept of ‘trajectory” coined by Gerhard Riemann and Fritz Schuütze into scholarly analysis of the behaviour of Shoah victims. I will also demonstrate how this concept can respond to some of the issues regarding soliciting, cooperation and resistance of the Holocaust victims that Zygmunt Bauman had raised in Modernity and the Holocaust.
The powerlessness of the victims in the face of Nazi terror is a complicated subject. For various ethical and political reasons, scholars who recently have been investigating the life of Jews during the war have focused on their agency rather than helplessness. The growing interest in hiding and survival strategies, as well as the concept of amidah - a spiritual and everyday resistance to the Nazi occupation - are some good examples of such an approach.
This chapter investigates the intellectual consequences of focusing on the suffering of individuals and groups who no longer have full control of their lives. The notion of trajectory allows acknowledging the fact that powerful ‘outer forces’ influence lives and fates of individuals who no longer understand the world they live in, without believing them to be ‘indifferent’, ‘passive’ on one hand, nor ‘complicit’ on the other. The concept of ‘trajectory’ allows to redefine our understanding of power, agency and resistance during the Holocaust while enabling additional interpretations to those proposed by Bauman in that respect.
