Hannah Arendt's 'Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship'

Hannah Arendt, a German-born Jewish-American philosopher, lived her life fully by distinctively expressing personal beliefs and responsibility in her actions. Throughout the course of Arendt’s text “Personal Responsibility under Dictatorship,” she argues in favor of camp inmates refraining from participating in morally wrong activities. Arendt believed that participating in wrongful activities would make it hard for one to live with himself. Even though, camp inmates were ultimately powerless in their personal, moral, and physical decisions. Indicating that camp inmates did not have the option of not participating in the events of the camp. In the sense of the camp inmates, it may have been challenging but it was not unheard of to possess “the good will and good faith to face realities and not to live in illusions.” In Nazi, Germany, Jewish camp workers did not have the option of not participating in the work, punishments,

Possessing good will and good faith is a challenging aspect to living in Nazi, Germany. On average, Jewish camp workers lived an average life span of 4 to 5 months in the actual camp. During the few, short months many lived in the camps, they lost sight of the true values and core requirements of the camps. Inmates had to remain in real time and avoid the thought of memories and relationships; they acted as illusions and distractions to the Jews. Meaning that the Jews will ultimately forget about the seriousness of their current situation and lose focus of the main goal; survival. In the case of possessing this quality, Levi was a Jew who successfully faced the reality of the camps and avoided the temptations of living through the memories of his mother, who remained in Northwestern Italy. His possession of living through the reality of the camps contributed to him being one of the saved Jews at the Auschwitz concentration