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The Banality of Altruism
| Article
# : |
14207 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1988 |
2,500 Words |
| Author
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Amitai Etzioni
Amitai Etzioni is the author of The Moral Dimension (Free
Press, 1988), editor of The Responsive Community, and
University Professor at George Washington University. |
You are working in your garden in a country occupied by Nazis, during World War II. A young man who looks very Jewish sneaks over. He needs a place to hide. You know the danger involved: death or worse for you, your spouse, and children. You have never met the young man before, nor are you a "Jew-lover," a particular admirer of the group. Would you risk all to help him? If so, why? What is your motivation? And can it be instilled in others?
Samuel and Pearl Oliner set out to study this seemingly rare form of behavior. They are more than qualified. He is a well-established sociologist and his wife is a professor of education at Humboldt University. Samuel has experienced firsthand what he studies. At age twelve he survived the extermination of the Jews in a Polish ghetto and he survived the war, hidden by a Polish peasant. My niece, as a small child, was saved by Catholic nuns in Holland, my aunt and uncle by Dutch farmers. I myself was taken out of Germany in 1936 by a non-Jewish relative.
A Sample of Rescuers
The Oliners (and a small band of others studying those who saved lives under Nazi occupation) use strict criteria for selecting whom to study. It is not enough for someone to come forward and state they took the risk, or even for one who was saved to attest to another's heroism. The rescuers are carefully screened and their pasts authenticated. Survivors can nominate a person to be considered a rescuer; the rescuer is then listed with the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, Yad Vashem. However, before they are declared bona fide rescuers, their deeds must be substantiated by documents and/or by several witnesses. Moreover, the Oliners chose to study only those who helped exclusively out of humanitarian motives, without any kind of material rewards. And they studied only those who helped a "marginal," "outside" group--in particular, the Jews. They excluded, for the purpose of their study, those who helped their own kind.
If one turns to this volume, seeking insight into a unique form of super-heroism--into sainthood--one is likely to be somewhat disappointed. The sociological methodology used by the Oliners is poorly suited to delve deeply into the human soul, to capture essences. Instead, they carefully drew up samples, interviewed rescuers, compared them statistically with people with similar "attributes" (age, sex, class, etc.) who did not help Jews, and drew conclusions from percentage differences, often small percentage differences. For example, the report notes that 70 percent of rescuers and 56
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