Spent Tisha B’av afternoon watching a 5-hour documentary on Auschwitz. What struck me most was the motivation for the SS innovation of gassing their victims as a replacement for firing squads. True, they sought efficiency in mass-murder. But a more immediate concern was the psychological and emotional effect upon the executioners. Incredibly, the same generals who worried that mass-execution might turn their soldiers into “either neurotics or brutes” were incapable or unwilling to entertain even the most fleeting notion that any act having such an effect upon their men had to be intrinsically evil.
This is truly the character of Amoleik, which defines good and evil not in terms of absolute morality but only in terms of pragmatic self-interest.
Torah Ideals 