Witnessing Moral Compromise: ‘Privilege’, Judgement and Holocaust Testimony

This article examines the complex intersection(s) of representation and moral judgement in the context of Holocaust testimony. The untold traumas and ethical dilemmas confronting Jews in extremis remain a difficult subject to engage with in any medium, and the recollections of those who themselves held ‘privileged’ positions in the ghettos and concentration camps pose specific and important challenges. Drawing on the influential writing of Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi and taking Benjamin Jacobs's memoir The Dentist of Auschwitz (2001) as a central case study, I position judgement as a key feature that needs to be explicitly and self-consciously exposed within an ethical framework of reading and understanding.