Christopher Hitchens (Books, 19 May) quotes Gandhi's suggestion of 1940 that the British people should surrender to the Nazis and allow themselves to be slaughtered rather than partake in the "same work of destruction as the Germans". The Mahatma had similar words for the Jews in his correspondence with Martin Buber, arguing that "voluntary suffering" at the hands of the Nazis would "bear witness" to the injustice being perpetrated, and would thus turn the hearts of the perpetrators and the world. Buber's response is worth recalling.
"An effective stand in the form of non-violence may be taken against unfeeling human beings in the hope of gradually bringing them to their senses," he wrote to Gandhi in 1939, "but a diabolic universal steamroller cannot thus be withstood . . . The word satyagraha signifies testimony. Testimony without acknowledgement, ineffective, unobserved martyrdom, a martyrdom cast to the winds - that is the fate of innumerable Jews in Germany. God alone accepts their testimony . . . Such martyrdom is a deed - but who would venture to demand it?"
Simon Kovar
London N3
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