Facing The Extreme

Moral Life In The Concentration Camps

This book focuses on the Nazi concentration camps and the Soviet gulag to examine our capacity for moral behaviour. Drawing widely on the testimonies of eyewitnesses and survivors, Todorov creates a vivid portrait of the conduct of those who ran the camps and those who suffered their outrages. Challenging the widespread view that moral life was extinguished in such extreme circumstances, he uncovers instead a rich universe composed not of grand acts of heroism but of innumerable ordinary gestures of dignity and care, compassion and solidarity. These "everyday" virtues allowed inmates to survive morally intact in the most immoral and inhuman conditions.