The Individual Confronts the Horror

This part of the study diverges from its two predecessors. Before we dealt with newspapers that presented information about the European Holocaust to readers in the free countries, hoping to influence them and encourage them to take action for the rescue of their fellow Jews. Here, in contrast, the discussion traces the actions of individual intellectuals who understood or wanted to understand the events in a way that was not always identical to the outlook that the press wished to give to the public. The paths that they took were noted for different trends of thought and assessment, starting from the statesmen and intellectuals Yitzhak Gruenbaum and Nahum Goldmann, via the historians Salo Baron and Cecil Roth, to the political thinker Hannah Arendt – from the middle of the war to its end, and up to our contemporary, Philip Roth, the most significant representative of the Jewish angst that has extended from the Holocaust to our times.