The ethical witness

On the one hand, there is Primo Levi, the “perfect example of the witness… the ‘proxy witness,’ a superstite who has survived and recounts his experiences in Auschwitz.”8 On the other hand is the Muselmann, the “complete witness” or the “true witness,” the one who could not survive, and is unable to recount his experience? [...] On the one hand, the proxy witness represents the pole of speech and on the other hand, the complete witness, the Muselmann, represents the pole of silence. [...] The Geneva Conventions of 1929 provide for humane treatment of the armed forces prisoners of war and the Tokyo Draft was a draft initiated by the ICRC for the protection of civilians before the outbreak of the war. [...] Andre Durand in his History of the International Committee of the Red Cross: From Sarajevo to Hiroshima provides a time line to ICRC’s response to the holocaust.34 Durand suggests that in the first phase, from the start of the war to the spring of 1940, the ICRC’s efforts were devoted to making the belligerents accept the Tokyo draft. [...] The ICRC possessed information about systematic methods of extermination in the concentration camps, “ill treatment to the point of torture, under-nourishment, gas chambers, cremation ovens, pseudo- medical experiments on deportees.” 38 During the fourth phase, from February 1945 to the end of the war, the ICRC President negotiated directly with the German authorities to give it access to the camp