At what cost survival? The problem of the prisoner-functionary

Many Holocaust memoirs seem to emphasize an essentially Socratic idea: that there are things worse than death, things that can ruin one's soul while one is still alive. Fear of death impedes our ability to be moral. In their Holocaust memoirs, former prisoners of the Nazi camps attest to the willingness of so many prisoners to betray their values in order to stay alive. These prisoner-functionaries are guilty of abandoning the moral law