Justice as Transfiguration of Trauma

-- By CharlesSucher - 29 May 2017

“But can the musician by his art make men unmusical? . . .

And can the just by justice make men unjust, or speaking in general can the good by virtue make them bad?"

The Republic, by Plato.

Historical Trauma: The Raw Materials

Jews are no stranger to trauma. It pervades our history. I am, myself, a product of this historical trauma. I exist because my grandfather's original family—his first wife and child—were chosen for the gas chamber at Auschwitz. My grandfather and his later wife (my grandmother) were only spared because they were useful as workers. Mercy was granted to them as tools in a grand machine of injustice. This legacy of trauma has burdened me and other spawns of the Holocaust with an intractable question: What justice can we cultivate as products of pure, unbridled injustice? And, as applied to my case, is there a role for an aspiring lawyer in producing such justice?

My family, like many others, still struggles to find an answer. We’ve fought plenty of battles against disassociation and righteous resentment towards those we perceive as wronging us in our own time—often leaving professional bridges burned and intra-familial animosity. Perhaps, as descendants of those subjected to grave injustice, we suffer from the interminable tendency to calculate our justice from the standpoint of use and abuse. The Nazis therefore represent our trauma, but they are merely a metonym for a broader cycle of injustice. I am convinced that our wounds cannot heal by inflicting further pain, just as good cannot emerge from more bad.

Through luxurious separation from this trauma, I have the privilege—bordering on comfortable vanity—of seeking a just answer. I've read history: remembered the names of each concentration camp, learned of their death toll, and studied the conditions that gave rise to the Nazis. And I've read philosophy, where thinkers like Plato struggled with similar abstract questions. These endeavors helped, but they were never enough. I’ve dissected the ugliness of injustice—but I hope to become a lawyer that makes it beautiful; it’s my sin as a pathetic romantic.

Mellifluous Empathy as Social Action

Along with their trauma, I inherited my family's love of music. My grandfather reportedly saw Fiddler on the Roof over twenty-five times. It helped heal his wounds—as musical theater has helped to heal mine. However, I prefer Cabaret to Fiddler as a more universal tale of trauma. I’ve always been drawn to one particular song: Tomorrow Belongs to Me.

It's jarring for a progeny of Holocaust survivors to experience a thrill from a triumphant Nazi anthem, sung by depictions of those who slaughtered my family. The song presents a dramatic epiphany about the conditions that led to injustice in Germany. Depicted are the ordinary folks who allowed this injustice to arise, drinking away their weary destitution and disassociation in the Weimar Republic—rising triumphantly in unison as they sing a redolent yet defiant tune of natural destiny: the form of justice the Nazis offered those traumatized souls.

It’s no surprise that neo-Nazi rock bands appropriated Tomorrow Belongs to Me for their own use. The song transfigures an ugly history in a stirring melody, beautiful aesthetic, and a hopeful message. When I first saw Cabaret, I understood what was most attractive about Nazi ideology. I touched the emotional populist stirrings roused by this moving anthem.

Ironic, because Tomorrow Belongs to Me was written by two gay, American Jews. It’s stunning how John Kander and Fred Ebb captured the phenomenology of being a Nazi as well as any Nazi. But there are some arts injustice cannot master: it can't tell an empathetic tale. The genius of Kander and Ebb's music lies in how it mercifully bestows empathy to undeserving subjects. And this is the essence of my theory of social action.

The Beauty of Justice

Music showed me that justice means teaching others how to break cycles of injustice. As Plato recognized, inflicting "justice" with injustice is no justice. Instead, through understanding and experiencing other lives—even when such treatment is undeserved—we learn to muster the strength to show unconditional mercy. This process transfigures trauma through empathy—and allows circles of injustices to be broken. I demonstrate this as I listen to Wagner while writing about justice. Instead of fixating on the injustices his music embodies and inspired as the soundtrack of the death camps, I allow my appreciation for its rich beauty to redeem him. I only wish I could compose music as well as him.

So, I instead endeavor to produce beautiful justice as a lawyer. I’m certainly drawn to the ugliest of legal work: criminal defense, civil rights, and death penalty abolitionism. My mother—a civil rights lawyer quite familiar with the injustices of our time—once told me that a legal document can’t serve justice by merely stating the law; it must instead tell a story. To this end, I’m willing to put aside my moral calculator and accept the challenge of advocating for these ugly cases to my peers. Like Kander and Ebb's empathetic music, my palette for justice will be telling the stories of clients who society desires to reject as useless.

In doing so, I simply hope to live up to my Hebrew name, "Paz"—meaning "Pure Gold"—which honors my grandfather. He understood justice all too well as he traveled with his Soviet liberators, fresh from Auschwitz. The party discovered a young S.S. soldier in hiding, and my grandfather was presented with a gun and an opportunity to do "justice." Carrying the fate of someone who inflicted unspeakable injustice on him, he transfigured injustice into a beautiful tale—and declined to do unto them as they did to him. That is where the justice of Tikkun Olam (repair of the world) sanctifies Schiller's beautiful declaration that, "Alle Menschen Werden Brüder, Wo Dein Sanfter Flügel Weilt" (all men become brothers, where your gentle wing rests.)

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