The alarmed vision: social suffering and Holocaust atrocity.

Abstract

Until we find a way of toppling the barrier that sequesters mass in other regions of the world from the comfort and safety we enjoy far from its ravages, little will be done to rouse the attention of our political or professional leaders, to say nothing of our own. Domestic calm encourages distancing from foreign pain. Past episodes of catastrophe have taught us how difficult it is for the distress of others to disrupt the tranquil rhythms of our daily lives. We may be horror-struck by the chaos that starvation and civil strife inflict on victims in for eign places like Somalia or Sarajevo, but to be horror-struck is a frugal form of charity. We need a new kind of discourse to disturb our collective consciousness and stir it into practical action that moves beyond mere pity. We will get nowhere with this problem until we admit that the familiar verbal modes for approaching it have been exhausted by centuries of repetition. Even a word like suffering does little to help us imagine the modern disasters we are challenged to con front. In fact, by calling the murder of European Jewry an example of mass suffering, we risk limiting its scope by merging it with prior models that are meager measures of the event. Job endured loss, but gained divine acknowledgment and a limited spiritual insight after refusing to let physical trial curtail his moral strength. Nothing could be further from the ordeal of the Holocaust victim than this prototype of unprovoked suffering, which is deemed redemptive only by those who misread Job's protest. The Gospel

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