Beyond Good and Evil

Auschwitz and Katyn, Belsen and Vorkuta are the true architectural expressions of our modern world. Another period might have constructed a counting-house or a cathedral, a castle or a palazzo, but our own architectural form is a jerry- built barracks surrounded by an electrified barbed-wire barricade. Nothing so clearly reveals the novelty of our “post-Christian era” as this dark night of the soul for which there is no tomorrow. We can at last see clearly into the moral chaos which is at the heart of our age and we feel ourselves threatened, not simply because we are frail flesh as these countless victims were. Suffering and death are not the inspired invention of the present age. We are threatened not in our bodies but in our souls; for the concentration camp strikes at man’s spiritual integrity and becomes the visible sign of an inner lack of grace.

The historical reality of genocide and the mass relocation of populations seems ordinary enough. R. K. F. D. V., German Resettlement and Policy 1939-1945 (Harvard, $6.50), by Robert L. Koehl, assistant professor of history at the University of Kansas, depicts its ordinary side in the dull and passionless tones of the historical monograph. Professor Koehl’s history is competent, his industry has been prodigious, and his style is chaste. He is a well-mannered historian who is above kicking a beast, even though that beast be Heinrich Himmler. If he raises his editorial voice by way of a footnote it is only to call attention to his own very considerable erudition.

ST

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Stephen J. Tonsor

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Auschwitz and Katyn, Belsen and Vorkuta are the true architectural expressions of our modern world. Another period might have constructed a counting-house or a cathedral, a castle or a palazzo, but our own architectural form is a jerry- built barracks surrounded by an electrified barbed-wire barricade. Nothing so clearly reveals the novelty of our “post-Christian era” as this dark night of the soul for which there is no tomorrow. We can at last see clearly into the moral chaos which is at the heart of our age and we feel ourselves threatened, not simply because we are frail flesh as these countless victims were. Suffering and death are not the inspired invention of the present age. We are threatened not in our bodies but in our souls; for the concentration camp strikes at man’s spiritual integrity and becomes the visible sign of an inner lack of grace.

The historical reality of genocide and the mass relocation of populations seems ordinary enough. R. K. F. D. V., German Resettlement and Policy 1939-1945 (Harvard, $6.50), by Robert L. Koehl, assistant professor of history at the University of Kansas, depicts its ordinary side in the dull and passionless tones of the historical monograph. Professor Koehl’s history is competent, his industry has been prodigious, and his style is chaste. He is a well-mannered historian who is above kicking a beast, even though that beast be Heinrich Himmler. If he raises his editorial voice by way of a footnote it is only to call attention to his own very considerable erudition.