they were voluntary “bearers of secrets,” either in order to assure quiet and prevent panic, as in Dr. Kastner’s case, or out of “humane” considerations, such as that “living in the expectation of death by gassing would only be the harder,” as in the case of Dr. Leo Baeck, former Chief Rabbi of Berlin. During the Eichmann trial, one witness pointed out the unfortunate consequences of this kind of “humanity”—people volunteered for deportation from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz and denounced those who tried to tell them the truth as being “not sane.”
