Altruism In The Myth Of Rescue

At the center of this “myth of rescue” is altruism: the claim that the government or individuals representing the nation “altruistically” saved the Jews, purely out of humanistic concern and without expecting practical rewards. Taking altruism as an overdetermined term, my paper aims at unfolding the multiple layers of the usage of altruism in the myth of rescue:
Firstly, while other factors—e.g., religion and political affiliation—had been privileged in the 1960s, they either faded or being affiliated as secondary factors that contributed to altruism. Why did altruism successfully occupy the center in the myth of rescue at the turn of this century? The instrumentalization of altruism was already embedded in the discourse on Holocaust rescue