The Muselmann At The Water Coooler

ASurvivor Of Concentration Camps And The Death March, Eli Pfefferkorn Looks Back On His Holocaust And Postholocaust Experiences To Compare Patterns Of Human Behavior In Extremis With Those Of Ordinary LifeWhat He Finds Is That The Concentration Camp Muselmann, Who Has Lost His Hunger For Life And Is Thus Shunned By His Fellow Inmates On The Soup Line, Bears An Eerie Resemblance To An Office Employee Who Has Fallen From Grace And Whose Coworkers Avoid Spending Time With Him At The Water CoolerThough The Circumstances Are Unfathomably Far Apart, The Human Response To Their Situations Is Triggered By Selfpreservation Rather Than By Calculated EvilBy Juxtaposing These Two Separate Worlds, Pfefferkorn Demonstrates That Ultimately The Human Condition Has Not Changed Signifi Cantly Since Cain Slew Abel And The Athenians Sentenced Socrates.
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