From: abulsari@abo.fi (Abhay Bulsari VT)
Subject: Animals, my brethren - by Edgar Kupfer-Koberwitz
Organization: Abo Akademi University
Date: Sun, 13 Sep 1992 12:59:32 GMT


This comes from Michael Traub.


      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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