From: wheeler@super.org (Ferrell S. Wheeler)
Subject: Edgar Kupfer Essay: "Animals, My Brethren"
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: University of Missouri
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1992 19:37:25 GMT

[I recently received the course outline for the home study course
 in "Peace Studies" developed by the Center for Teaching Peace,
 which is an organization formed by Colman McCarthy to teach
 nonviolent conflict resolution.  The course is basically a reading
 and discussion (via essays) course where the reading list is original
 essays from a myriad of peace activists.  In the last unit of the
 course, to my surprise, is the essay "Animals, My Brethren" by
 Edgar Kupfer, author of the Dachau Diaries.  I was surprised because
 this essay has never been published (to my knowledge) and is not
 very well known.  I was in the process of getting it publish in some
 form.  Anyway, here are a few excerpts that I thought others might
 be interested in.  Take care, Ferrell Wheeler -- wheeler@super.org]

  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 a few 
excerpts from this essay.


                    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



 

Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive