One-eyed men in this context are those who look the other way when a horrific crime is taking place. They are not direct participants in the crime. They do not operate the gas chambers, they do not procure underage girls to be raped. They supervise slave labor in a chemical lab adjacent to Auschwitz, they socialize with Jeffrey Epstein. They pretend not to know what’s going on. They are enablers.
My purpose is not to compare the Holocaust with Jeffrey Epstein’s monstrosity. Such comparisons are neither valid nor useful. The common element I wish to point out is that both crimes involved people who facilitated evil by engaging in willful ignorance.
Primo Levi’s German “Colleague”
Primo Levi was an Italian survivor of Auschwitz who wrote a series of brilliant books about his life. Primo was a chemist, and in The Periodic Table, he writes about a dispute in the 1960s between Primo’s paint firm and a German supplier of resin. This postwar dispute leads to a chance encounter with a German chemist named Muller who during the war supervised Primo in Auschwitz.
Primo has long wished for such an encounter with a German who actually knew him in the Camp. The possibility has haunted his dreams. Through an exchange of letters, the two chemists confirm identity and recognition. Primo then sends Muller his book, Survival in Auschwitz along with some questions.
Muller’s reply letter attempts to distort his relationship with Primo in Auschwitz. As Primo puts it, “…to construct for himself a comfortable past.” Muller recognizes the scope and severity of the atrocities committed, but claims to have not known about them.
Moreover, Muller fabricates a series of collegial and intellectual conversations he and Primo allegedly had about chemistry and life. Muller describes the two of them as having “relations of almost friendship between equals.” This is a complete and absurd fiction. This absurdity is consistent with Primo’s memory of the first thing that Muller said to him when he saw Primo as a slave chemist in the rubber works.
Muller asks slave laborer Primo a question that lives in the borderlands between the humorous and the horrific.
“Why do you look so troubled?”
Primo prepares a letter of response. Primo’s verdict is that Muller is a “one-eyed man,” i.e., only half-bad. And if the world were peopled only with one-eyed men, that would be fine. But it isn’t. There are thoroughly bad men, and the half-bad men “smooth the way for them.”
Before Primo can send his letter, Muller calls and they arrange to meet. Primo puts his letter aside. Soon thereafter, Primo is told by Muller’s wife that Muller has died. The meeting never takes place.
Jeffrey Epstein’s “Friends”
Bill Gates started to socialize with Jeffrey Epstein in 2011 after Epstein had pled guilty to and was sentenced for procuring a child for prostitution in 2008. After first meeting with Epstein, Gates wrote the email below to colleagues: 1
“[Epstein’s] lifestyle is very different and kind of intriguing although it would not work for me.”
Leon Black, the billionaire founder of the private equity firm Apollo, paid Epstein at least fifty million dollars for various advisory services after Epstein’s 2008 conviction. According to the New York Times, the “two men often socialized and dined together” in the period after 2008. 2
There were plenty of other rich and powerful people who stayed in Epstein’s orbit after his 2008 conviction. These people were able to use the outrageously lenient plea deal negotiated on Epstein’s behalf to give themselves plausible deniability that he was a pedophile monster.
Julie K. Brown, the Miami Herald reporter whose investigative journalism forced the government to arrest Epstein in 2019 had this to say in a recent interview:
“Well, once [Epstein] gets out of jail, he hired all these P.R. people to remake his image... The Jeffrey Epstein Foundation put out press release after press release after press release...he was giving money here. He was giving money there. So as time went on, he started being able to once again resume the life that he had built before this happened, and he was able to do this in part because of the plea deal.” 3
In the post-2008 timeframe, Epstein continued to have a steady stream of young girls coming in and out of his residences. People like Gates and Black had the resources and the connections to easily and thoroughly vet who they associated with. So, I don’t think deniability of Epstein’s ongoing crimes was at all plausible. I think it was willful ignorance.
I think these powerful people knew what Epstein was. And for a decade after his plea deal, they were the one-eyed men who smoothed his way to earn money and to keep status in order to fuel his rape habit.
Bystanders vs. Enablers
In the United States, a bystander does not have any legal duty to intervene when they see a crime taking place. Of course, a legal duty is different than a moral duty. 4
The same is true for indirect enablers such as Gates, Black, and others. It is not a crime to socialize with an active pedophile. It is not a crime to support the lifestyle of an active pedophile by paying him outlandish fees for various advisory services.
But shouldn’t indirect enablers like Gates and Black be shunned by whatever is left of what used to be called “polite society?” Gates apologized and Black said he was “appalled” by the public revelations of Epstein’s ongoing crimes. Is that close to sufficient?
I never met Epstein, but if I had met him and if he had invited me to a dinner party that included Bill Gates, what would I have done? Would I have Googled him and, after a second, when the history of his plea deal showed up, would I have declined the invitation? Or would I have taken a shortcut and thought that if Bill Gates was there, then Epstein must somehow be okay?
I’d like to think I’d have done the Google search.
Question for the comments: Have you ever cut off a friendship because of moral disgust and, if so, what was the moral disgust?
She Exposed Epstein and Shares MAGA’s Anger. This is an excellent interview.
In the last episode of Seinfeld, the gang is arrested for failing to intervene as someone is being carjacked in Massachusetts for violating a supposed Duty to Intervene law. No such law exists.
“Constructing for himself a comfortable past” I believe that that mental exercise is far worse than the actions of the past. It’s actually degrading to the victim. I have experienced this but of course the evil done to me doesn’t compare to a Nazi death camp but I get it. You know what’s worse? “Finding Jesus “ and believing your past is now forgiven.
Good piece. Made me mad but I still liked it!
In the late 1980's,in America, I quit the highest tipping waiting tables job I had yet had. The restaurant was owned by an older couple their daughter and son in law and a young male chef from Italy. The chef was a wild man,out and about with all sorts of people. He was young unattached,charasmatic and respectful of those not wanting to join in. The son in law ate a lavish dinner each night with his wife and her parents. During her first pregnacy the wife would leave the restaurant early,heading home to rest. The son in law would then spend hours at the bar flirting, mutually groping women and making future dates. Talking to him about the danger his behavior posed to his family did no good. I quit and told him why. I did not tell the wife.