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| ESSAY: GUILT AND RESPONSIBILITY | |
 May 22, 2001 
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ROGER ROSENBLATT: Recently the New York Times published a remarkable article by Adam Michnik, a polish dissident and historian, who is also the editor of Poland's largest daily newspaper. The subject of his article was the slaughter, on July 10, 1941, of 1600 Jews-- nearly the entire population of the polish village of Jedwabne. The Jews were killed not by the Nazis, as was long claimed, but by their Polish neighbors, who hunted them down and murdered them with clubs, axes and knives, or herded them into a barn, where they were burned alive. All this was revealed in a book by Jan T. Gross, an NYU historian. The book set off a national upheaval of denial, fury, confession and contrition. Michnik deals with all that in his piece, but with something far more interesting as well-- the difference between guilt and responsibility. It is a complicated subject, one that ranges from such incidents as the recent killing by two dogs in San Francisco of a woman, and the arrest of the dogs' owners, who were seen as responsible; to the teachers at Columbine High school. Were they guilty or responsible for the student killings because they did not watch closely enough, or teach the right things? As a modern Pole, Michnik does not feel guilty for the village murders, but he does feel responsible for the lies told after the fact, and-- most tellingly-- for a future in which Poles and Jews might be reconciled. Michnik suggests that one bears responsibility for every moral crime - not as a matter of collective guilt but of individual conscience. In this sense, in the sense of the soul's turmoil and the mind's best use of the past everyone is responsible. The Catholic Church's recent apology for anti-Semitism was an expression of guilt. Of the two responses, guilt is the easier, because it acknowledges a wrong-- however sincerely, however grievous-- and does nothing more than that. Responsibility, on the other hand uses the past to look forward. A modern American may not feel guilty for slavery or for the lynchings of African-Americans in the South, but one may still feel responsible for such acts, for the simple reason that being an American implies a continuum. As for the future, that's where the responsibility of race relations lies most heavily. The recent ad in college newspapers that caused such an uproar, the one that declared no responsibility for reparations for slavery, misses the point. Reparations in dollars seems a silly idea. But reparations in terms of present and future conduct, in terms of the eventual reconciliation of black and white America, suggests a heavier and much more significant responsibility. In the past ten years or so, whole nations have apologized for former crimes: France for its involvement in sending Jews to extermination camps; America for the internment of Japanese during World War II. No apologies as yet from Cambodia for the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge (because many Khmer Rouge are still in power), or from Rwanda's Hutus for their mass murder of the Tutsis. None from Bosnia or Sudan, either, but they, too, may come over time. Yet apologies as statements of guilt have no necessary bearing on behavior. If a nation's categorical hatreds are reduced at the same time, however-- toward Jews, blacks, Asians, Latino, toward anyone representing the other--that is another matter. "I do not feel guilty for those murdered," wrote Michnik of the Polish Jews, "but I do feel responsible." Michnik suggests that one bears responsibility for every moral crime, not as a matter of collective guilt, but of individual conscience. In this sense, in the sense of the soul's turmoil and the mind's best use of the past, everyone is responsible; responsible for every tribal murder, every genocide, every bigoted thought, every lapse of right action or negligence, every moral carelessness-- forever. I'm Roger Rosenblatt. |
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