61340 Vorabseiten_e - Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz

informed will see more options, set different priorities, and may feel obliged by
an exceptional situation to deviate from «business as usual», take special precautionary
measures, or desist from certain actions. Secondly, the question of
knowledge is linked to that of accountability. A person who is informed about
an injustice committed and about crime taking place is confronted with an
existential moral problem in a different way than someone who does not, or
cannot, know anything. The acceptance or rejection of refugees, transactions
involving confiscated and looted gold, trade in looted assets (securities, works
of art, jewellery, postage stamps, cash assets), the payment of insurance claims
to the tax authorities in the Third Reich at the policyholder’s expense, the
transfer of bank deposits to the German government, the acquisition of
company assets expropriated by force or traded at too low a price as part of the
«Aryanisation process»: these actions have to be assessed differently depending
on the state of knowledge. What could one have known, what should one have
known, what must one have known?
The acquisition of knowledge is a dynamic process which is dependent on the
political culture of a country and associated with prevailing attitudes in a
specific social and moral environment. Knowledge is not a fixed quantity but
the result of caring about other people and a willingness to dare, i.e., the product
of a moral endeavour. People who are sensitive to injustice will gain access to
key information and translate this into actions faster than people who do not
allow themselves to be troubled by moral issues in their daily lives. In this way,
knowledge is created in constant recourse to action – and, conversely, ignorance
is connected with a mental disposition that wants to avoid any involvement.
This raises the question of what to do with this knowledge. When a report of a
terrible event is received, there are people who believe it because they assume
that the regime from which the news comes is capable of this kind of thing. On
the basis of different experience, other people tend to regard the same information
as atrocity-propaganda spread as part of psychological warfare. Another
aspect is the anticipation of knowledge. When it becomes clear in retrospect
what the upshot of the events unfolding really was, people will say: «I always
knew» (or at least surmised). This uncertainty in turn brings to the fore the
question of when the knowledge was acquired: since when was information
actually available, what channels were used to disseminate it, and to what extent
had it been censored? In 1933 and 1938 what could «anyone» know about the
persecution of Jews and other «racially inferior» or unwelcome groups? What
information was circulating at what time and among what groups about the
systematic looting and the extermination camps? Are decision-makers who
knew nothing (because they did not want to know) to be treated the same as
those who were informed and acted against their better judgement?
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