"Monsters exist, but they are too few in numbers to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are … the functionaries ready to believe and act without asking questions."
Levi is one of the most respected and eminent of all survivors and chroniclers of the Holocaust. His comment suggests that some of the most devastating evil is enacted, not by great monsters, but by people who lack the intellectual and moral curiosity to ask what is going on, to think clearly about what they are asked to do and why. The Holocaust required hundreds of thousands of functionaries to implement: train drivers, guards, accountants, engineers, mechanics, chemists, carpenters, clerks -- even doctors. It was the collective willingness of these nameless functionaries that made possible the elimination of European Jews. Everyone rationalized that they were doing their job, carrying out what they were "supposed to do." No single person made possible the great horror, but a hive of individuals, each doing their own tiny tasks that, gathered together, led to an unprecedented atrocity that forever changed humans' conception of the evil that humans can effect on each other. This example of unquestioning obedience, of reflexive compliance, of a monumental failure to pay attention to the world, should be the most powerful argument of all in favor of a shared understanding of humane literacy. Critical and independent thinking, combined with a cultivation of the moral imagination, can create a people immune from the machinations of monsters who require the complacency of the many to implement their catastrophes.
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