Reactions of non Jews to the Holocaust

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Do curso por Tel Aviv University

The Holocaust - An Introduction (II): The Final Solution

240 classificações

Tel Aviv University

The Holocaust - An Introduction (II): The Final Solution

240 classificações

The Holocaust was an inconceivable historical event, which forever robbed Western culture of its innocence. As civilized human beings, we fail to understand how events of such horror could have taken place, and how an idea so inhumanly warped could have spread like wildfire through an entire continent, instigating the systematic annihilation of millions of Jews. This free online course was produced jointly by Tel Aviv University and Yad Vashem – the World Holocaust Remembrance Center. This course is the second of the two courses and covers three themes in its three weeks: Week 1: The Final Solution We’ll look at the cultural and mental processes that paved the way to the comprehensive and systematic mass murder of Jews in Europe – that is, the Final Solution. As part of this hard lesson we will discuss the various characteristics of the murder sites and death camps, and reveal selected aspects of the horror that occurred in them. Week 2: Jewish and Non-Jewish Responses to the Holocaust We will try to explore questions regarding knowledge about the application of the Final Solution, as well as a variety of responses and annihilation of victims, local populations and perpetrators. Week 3: The End of the War We will dedicate this lesson to the events that occurred in the last years of the Holocaust, as well as questions of memory, commemoration and future research. We strongly recommend that you register for "The Holocaust - An Introduction (I): Nazi Germany: Ideology, The Jews and the World" as well. Taking both parts of the course would enable you to obtain a fuller and more comprehensive knowledge about The Holocaust. This online course is offered in an innovative, multi-level format, comprising: Comprehensive lectures by leading researchers from Tel Aviv University and Yad Vashem. A wealth of voices and viewpoints presented by guest lecturers Numerous documents, photos, testimonies and works of art from the time of the Holocaust. Novel learning experience: Crowdsourcing – involving the learners themselves in the act of collecting and shaping information, via unique, exciting online assignments.

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Jewish and Non-Jewish Responses to the Holocaust

We will look at a broad spectrum of questions, including: "As Lambs to the Slaughter"? Choiceless choices? Did the world remain silent? Why were Auschwitz and Birkenau not bombed? And more. Discussion of the various issues and frameworks will challenge the existing definitions regarding resistance and rescue, and examine patterns of cooperation with persecutors alongside rebellious acts by Jews and non-Jews alike. As part of this important discussion, we will return to our previous examination of the Jewish leadership and re-evaluate the responses of various Jewish leaders to the annihilation campaign, while pointing out the complexities of the subject matter.

Reactions of non Jews to the Holocaust11:59

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Professor Havi Dreifuss, PhD
Professor
Havi Dreifuss is a historian of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe; senior lecturer in the Department of Jewish History at TAU; heads the Center for Research of Holocaust History in Poland, Yad Vashem.
Dr Na'ama Bela Shik, PhD
Director, Educational Technology Department, The International School for Holocaust Studies, Yad Vashem
The International School for Holocaust Studies, Yad Vashem

[MUSIC]

The fact that the mass murder of the Jews was implemented in the middle of modern

Europe, and before the eyes of millions of non-Jewish people, raised many fundamental

questions regarding local reactions to the Final Solution.

In the past, the third component of the three categories, perpetrators, victims,

bystanders was divided into collaboration, indifference, assistance.

Yet today, we know things were much more complicated than this simplistic view.

Weren't some of the bystanders also victims or perpetrators?

Could someone assist the Germans in a specific context and

help Jews in a different one?

When speaking about human beings, everything could, and

actually, all did happen.

Among the many different human reactions during The Holocaust,

one can find the most despicable and the most glorious.

Yet first, shouldn't we try and

understand, just as when analyzing Jewish reactions, when did millions of European

citizens understand the full meaning of The Final Solution?

Actually, in history,

though questions might be similar, answers are much more diverse.

The question of knowledge regarding the local European population is important.

As before, great differences will be apparent between the east and

western part of the continent due to the difference in the implementation

of Nazi racial policy, as well as the nature of the Jewish and

non-Jewish communities and their prior world connections.

At this stage of the course,

I hope that those understandings are quite trivial for you.

Yet this question of knowledge, regarding the many European non-Jewish societies,

is in some ways different when they weren't asked about Jews.

As presented for Jews, establishing a death awareness served as a trigger for

a desire for action,

usually suppressed until then by a very implicit death threat.

But did European societies really have to wait

until the murder was imposed on Jews in order to react?

In other words, how could so many anti-Jewish measures, which deprived

Jews from so many civil and human rights, be implemented throughout the continent,

raising very small and limited protests?

Naturally, many factors contributed to the limited action

of non-Jewish regarding their Jewish neighbors.

Alongside the fear of revenge and punishment, the existing thought

of Europe with no Jews, mentioned before, contributed to this inaction.

Yet, the most important factor in the East and the West was that most communities

were very much occupied with their suffering, and not with that of the Jews.

Some were concerned since sons, husbands, and friends were arrested or captured.

Others were worried about the small food rations, or

the general shortage which existed all over Europe.

Moreover, in the eastern countries where Nazi Germany treated the locals

as untermenschen, the severe oppressing regime, which claimed the freedom and

lives of many, was all many could think of.

Yet, not less important was a fact that the removal of the Jews from the public

life, by ghettos or segregation, improved the life of many Europeans.

And when the Jews were taken permanently, many murdered, the benefits only grew,

more houses, more jobs, more property, which could be bought for pennies.

A Polish journalist who lived near Ponar and saw the mass shooting of Jews wrote in

his diary, for the Germans, 300 Jews are 300 enemies of humanity.

For the the Lithuanians, 300 Jews are 300 pairs of shoes, trousers, and clothes.

The abandoned Jewish property served Nazi Germany in enlisting wide local support,

directly or indirectly, of the mass murderers or,

at least, to see their advantages.

Thus, the key question regarding non-Jewish societies and their reaction to

the Holocaust, is not the extremes of the society, for better or for worse.

Those who did everything possible to help Jews or

those who went out of their way to harm them.

Both to be dealt soon.

The most troubling question refers to the established norms of various 20th

century European societies facing mass murder of their Jewish citizens.

Or as Kurt Tucholsky, a Jewish German journalist said,

a country is not just what it does, it is also what it tolerates.

Only seldom a notion was established that the persecution of the Jews, and

even their actual murder, is not an appropriate act.

In most cases, nation condemns whoever betrayed local resistant members but

kept silence when a Jew, a child or a grown up was taken to his death.

What about those recognized margins for good or for

bad, rescuers or collaborators?

First, their proportion and

their characteristic different from one society to another.

Not only German and Austrian governmental agencies

took an active part in the persecution of the Jews.

The Dutch bureaucracy, the French police, as well as local Hungarian and

Romanian bodies were very much involved in the roundup of the Jews.

Slovakia actually paid Nazi Germany for the removal of each Jew to murder sites.

In other places, Nazi occupation or influence urged many of the local

population to harm Jews, such as in the Baltic countries and Ukraine.

In some places, local population and state organizations participate,

directly or indirectly, in the mass murders.

In others, they just supported its existence.

This way or the other,

too many European societies served Nazi genocidal goals in too many means.

Nevertheless, at the same places and at the same time, some individuals as well

as some local statewide organizations enabled Jews to escape this.

Many did it for money or other means of profit.

As Jan Grabowski, one of the leading scholars of the Holocaust in Poland

showed among other very important things in his most recommended book Hunt for

the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German Occupied Poland.

People who helped Jews for money, too many times,

found out that money could be received also by their murder.

Still, within this dark picture, some true righteous among the nations acted.

Teachers, nursemaids, farmers, or

diplomats, educated people, as well as illiterate, communist,

clergy, and even anti-Semites risked their lives and saved Jews.

>> The Righteous is an honorific title which is bestowed on

non-Jews who saved Jews during the Holocaust at great personal risk.

This means that the Righteous are not merely people who helped, who sympathized,

who extended a helping hand.

No, they are people who are willing to pay a price for

their deeds and this is what makes the difference.

Most of the Righteous saved Jews or tried to save Jews, not all attempts succeeded,

by hiding them in their homes, something which was extremely dangerous.

We have, for example, to take one of the many examples, Jan and

Anna Puchalski, they hid five Jews in their

home in a small cellar in a small crowded, dark space.

Among these people was Felix Zandman,

who later described his rescuer's heroism, and he said, she,

meaning Anna Puchalski, did something that was absolutely out of the ordinary.

You speak about heroism, heroism in a battle.

Somebody gets wounded, you jump in, 2-3 minutes,

you pull him out from the fire and you get a medal for that.

Big hero, right?

Here, they risk not only their lives, but the lives of their children.

And it's not for 5 minutes, it was for 17 months, 24 hours a day, and they did it.

So, this shows us that the choice to save Jews was not one choice.

It was a choice with terrible repercussions, and

it had to be taken every day, again and again, to keep doing it.

Why did they do it?

In many cases, it's a spontaneous act.

The Jew knocks on the rescuer's door and the rescuer decides to open it.

He sees a person in need and

he decides this person is a part of his universe of obligation.

In other cases, it was an ideological decision, something that was thought for

a long time, something that was planned.

But what they all have in common is that there was one moment where they said

enough is enough and they were not willing anymore to be witnesses.

They decided to take the very hard step and to move from

the position of a bystander to the position of a rescuer, which meant

being in danger and perhaps, even sharing the fate of the persecuted Jews.

>> Those acts, if exposed, would have been severely punished by the Germans.

In Western parts, many non-Jews who helped Jews were sent to concentration camps,

from which, not all returned.

In the East, much worse collective punishments were imposed,

claiming the lives of entire families.

Generally speaking, assisting Jews was most dangerous, while handing them to

the Germans could be worth a price or at least be praised by the local population.

In Poland, despite the difficult condition of occupation, an impressive and

unique organization was established, Zegota, the Polish consul to aid Jews.

Though it emerged from local initiative,

some of its founders were even anti-Semites.

It was supported by the Polish government in exile seated in London and

contained also some central Jewish activists.

Zegota acted in many different forms, providing false papers,

sheltering some hundreds of children and financially supporting Jews in hiding.

Yet, much of his effort was concentrated on concealing those acts not only from

the German eyes but also and maybe mainly, from the Polish ones.

In Poland, as well as any in other places, Jews and their helpers was

under a constant threat of blackmails, informers, and denunciations.

They were fighting daily with the existing public norm.

In wartime Europe, a Jew knocking on the door of a non-Jewish friend or

complete stranger would forever change the life of both,

whether the door will be opened or shut tightly.

What was for the Jews a question of life and death became a burden of witnessing,

whether it ended in action or inaction.

And what about the active participation of Germans, and

many other European citizens in the murder of the Jews?

This will be discussed next.

>> [MUSIC]

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