ABSTRACT
Recent philosophical discussion of when it is permissible to harm some in order to help others and when it is permissible to collaborate with evil may help to morally evaluate the behavior of some who collaborated with the Nazis. Consider the hypothetical case of someone who stayed in Germany when he, as a non-Jewish German, was free to leave, and undertook the construction of death camps. He did this only because he thought that he would cause fewer deaths than his substitute. The fact that moral responsibility for the lesser number of deaths lies with the evil persons has at least two implications: the evil persons get moral responsibility for unjust deaths, not just moral responsibility for creating circumstances where others face the choice of having to kill to save a greater number. Often, when one does what is overall the right act, negative aspects of the act, which are overridden by the positive characteristics, nevertheless remain.
