More on Convent at Death Camp

While Deena Metzger is to be commended for her sensitive efforts to try to come to grips with the Holocaust (“Pilgrimage to Auschwitz,” Op-Ed, Aug. 19), I find it difficult for anyone to find any justification of the mass murder in the “redemptive qualities” of this genocide. How does one answer the mind-boggling question of what caused Germany, a modern state, to systematically round up millions of Jewish men, women and children from all over Europe and ship them by train to death factories?

There is a penetrating line in “The Deputy,” by Rolf Hochhuth, a German author (Grove Press, 1964, Richard and Clara Winston translation), which Metzger might consider before going farther down the path of extolling the glory of the redemption of being murdered in a German death camp. The doctor in “The Deputy” is patterned after Dr. Josef Mengele, who specialized in torturing and performing medical experiments on Jewish twins at Auschwitz. The doctor confronts Ricardo, a young Catholic priest, who had tried unsuccessfully to convince Pope Pius XII and the church hierarchy to intervene on behalf of the Jews. The doctor speaks of noble spirits, martyrdom and redemption from suffering to taunt Ricardo. Ricardo’s response cuts through the rationalization of redemptive quality and glories of martyrdom.

DOCTOR: “Afraid of what? Why should a man so close to God as you be afraid?. . . This may well be the beginning of a great new era, a redemption from suffering. . . .”

RICARDO: (Attempts mockery, but shouts in order to keep himself from weeping.) “People are being burned here. . . . The smell of burning flesh and hair. . . .

“Redemption from suffering! A lecture on humanism from a homicidal maniac! Save someone!--Save just a single child!”

NORTON J. LEHMAN, Santa Monica