Spiritual isolation precedes and enables physical removal of a targeted group

Evidence

In a speech delivered in April 1935, Rabbi Joachim Prinz of Berlin summed up the experience of the ‘sealed-off’ category: ‘The ghetto is the “world”. Outside is the ghetto. On the marketplace, in the street, in the public tavern, everywhere is ghetto. And it has a sign. That sign is; neighbourless. Perhaps this has never before happened in the world, and no one knows how long it can be borne; life without a neighbour…’ By 1935, the future victims of the Holocaust already knew that they were alone. They could not count on the solidarity of others. The suffering they were living through was theirs alone. People physically so close were spiritually infinitely remote: they did not share in their experience. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 352

Categorization

• XREF: ‘Neighbourlessness’ as a precondition of exclusion maps directly onto how targeted groups are psychologically isolated before state action in later readings. — connects to: Ritual separation practices functioned as social integration rather than mere exclusion — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 127; Psychological isolation rather than physical locks is the main method of coercion; The victim’s isolation is produced by the tormentors’ shared action, not physical distance — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 445 (+1 more)
• ADDENDUM: The ‘spiritual isolation first’ ordering parallels the logic of social death elaborated in the sacrifice reading.

Related

• The victim’s isolation is produced by the tormentors’ shared action, not physical distance (similarity 0.85)
• Physical segregation severs communication needed for moral recognition (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• The victim’s isolation is produced by the tormentors’ shared action, not physical distance #corroborates (0.85) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 445
• Psychological isolation rather than physical locks is the main method of coercion #corroborates (0.82)
• Moral inhibition is neutralized by making victims remote and invisible #expands (0.78) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 550