[277] in Vegetarian_Support_Group
Re: Animals, my brethren - by Edgar Kupfer-Koberwitz
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Andy Rothstein)
Mon Nov 28 09:15:12 1994
To: vsg@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To:
Date: Mon, 28 Nov 1994 09:13:16 EST
From: Andy Rothstein <adrothst@MIT.EDU>
Edgar Kupfer was imprisoned in Dachau concentration camp in
1940. His last 3 years in Dachau he obtained a clerical job in the
concentration camp storeroom. This position allowed him to keep a
secret diary on stolen scraps of papers and pieces of pencil. He
would bury his writings and when Dachau was liberated on April 29,
1945 he collected them again. The "Dachau Diaries" were published in
1956. From his Dachau notes he wrote an essay on vegetarianism which
was translated into "immigrant" English. A carbon copy of this 38
page essay is preserved with the original Dachau Diaries in the
Special Collection of the Library of the University of Chicago. The
following are the excerpts from this essay that were reprinted in the
postscript of the book "Radical Vegetarianism" by Mark Mathew
Braunstein (1981 Panjandrum Books, Los Angeles, CA). The book is
subtitled "A Dialectic of Diet and Ethic" and is recommended to all
vegetarians especially those interested in natural hygiene.
Animals, My Brethren
by
Edgar Kupfer-Koberwitz
The following pages were written in the Concentration Camp Dachau, in
the midst of all kinds of cruelties. They were furtively scrawled in
a hospital barrack where I stayed during my illness, in a time when
Death grasped day by day after us, when we lost twelve thousand within
four and a half months.
Dear Friend:
You asked me why I do not eat meat and you are wondering at the
reasons of my behavior. Perhaps you think I took a vow -- some kind
of penitence -- denying me all the glorious pleasures of eating meat.
You remember juicy steaks, succulent fishes, wonderfully tasted
sauces, deliciously smoked ham and thousand wonders prepared out of
meat, charming thousands of human palates; certainly you will remember
the delicacy of roasted chicken. Now, you see, I am refusing all
these pleasures and you think that only penitence, or a solemn vow, a
great sacrifice could deny me that manner of enjoying life, induce me
to endure a great resignment.
* * *
You look astonished, you ask the question: "But why and what
for?" And you are wondering that you nearly guessed the very reason.
But if I am, now, trying to explain you the very reason in one concise
sentence, you will be astonished once more how far your guessing had
been from my real motive. Listen to what I have to tell you:
I refuse to eat animals because I cannot nourish myself by the
sufferings and by the death of other creatures. I refuse to do so,
because I suffered so painfully myself that I can feel the pains of
others by recalling my own sufferings.
I feel happy, nobody persecutes me; why should I persecute
other beings or cause them to be persecuted?
I feel happy, I am no prisoner, I am free; why should I cause
other creatures to be made prisoners and thrown into jail?
I feel happy, nobody harms me; why should I harm other
creatures or have them harmed?
I feel happy, nobody wounds me; nobody kills me; why should I
wound or kill other creatures or cause them to be wounded or killed
for my pleasure and convenience?
Is it not only too natural that I do not inflict on other
creatures the same thing which, I hope and fear, will never be
inflicted on me? Would it not be most unfair to do such things for no
other purpose than for enjoying a trifling physical pleasure at the
expense of others' sufferings, others' deaths?
These creatures are smaller and more helpless than I am, but
can you imagine a reasonable man of noble feelings who would like to
base on such a difference a claim or right to abuse the weakness and
the smallness of others? Don't you think that it is just the bigger,
the stronger, the superior's duty to protect the weaker creatures
instead of persecuting them, instead of killing them? "Noblesse
oblige." I want to act in a noble way.
* * *
I recall the horrible epoch of inquisition and I am sorry to
state that the time of tribunals for heretics has not yet passed by,
that day by day, men use to cook in boiling water other creatures
which are helplessly given in the hands of their torturers. I am
horrified by the idea that such men are civilized people, no rough
barbarians, no natives. But in spite of all, they are only
primitively civilized, primitively adapted to their cultural
environment. The average European, flowing over with highbrow ideas
and beautiful speeches, commits all kinds of cruelties, smilingly, not
because he is compelled to do so, but because he wants to do so. Not
because he lacks the faculty to reflect upon and to realize all the
dreadful things they are performing. Oh no! Only because they do not
want to see the facts. Otherwise they would be troubled and worried
in their pleasures.
* * *
It is quite natural what people are telling you. How could
they do otherwise? I hear them telling about experiences, about
utilities, and I know that they consider certain acts related to
slaughtering as unavoidable. Perhaps they succeeded to win you over.
I guess that from your letter.
Still, considering the necessities only, one might, perhaps,
agree with such people. But is there really such a necessity? The
thesis may be contested. Perhaps there exists still some kind of
necessity for such persons who have not yet developed into full
conscious personalities.
I am not preaching to them. I am writing this letter to you,
to an already awakened individual who rationally controls his
impulses, who feels responsible -- internally and externally -- of his
acts, who knows that our supreme court is sitting in our conscience.
There is no appellate jurisdiction against it.
Is there any necessity by which a fully self-conscious man can
be induced to slaughter? In the affirmative, each individual may have
the courage to do it by his own hands. It is, evidently, a miserable
kind of cowardice to pay other people to perform the blood-stained
job, from which the normal man refrains in horror and dismay. Such
servants are given some farthings for their bloody work, and one buys
from them the desired parts of the killed animal -- if possible
prepared in such a way that it does not any more recall the
discomfortable circumstances, nor the animal, nor its being killed,
nor the bloodshed.
* * *
I think that men will be killed and tortured as long as
animals are killed and tortured. So long there will be wars too.
Because killing must be trained and perfected on smaller objects,
morally and technically.
I see no reason to feel outraged by what others are doing,
neither by the great nor by the smaller acts of violence and cruelty.
But, I think, it is high time to feel outraged by all the small and
great acts of violence and cruelty which we perform ourselves. And
because it is much easier to win the smaller battles than the big
ones, I think we should try to get over first our own trends towards
smaller violence and cruelty, to avoid, or better, to overcome them
once and for all. Then the day will come when it will be easy for us
to fight and to overcome even the great cruelties. But we are still
sleeping, all of us, in habitudes and inherited attitudes. They are
like a fat, juicy sauce which helps us to swallow our own cruelties
without tasting their bitterness.
I have not the intention to point out with my finger at this
and that, at definite persons and definite situations. I think it is
much more my duty to stir up my own conscience in smaller matters, to
try to understand other people better, to get better and less selfish.
Why should it be impossible then to act accordingly with regard to
more important issues?
That is the point: I want to grow up into a better world where
a higher law grants more happiness, in a new world where God's
commandment reigns:
You Shall Love Each Other
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