The fact that the mass murder of the Jews
was implemented in the midst 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 analysing Jewish reactions,
when did millions of European citizens understand the full
meaning of the final solution?
Well, actually in history, though questions
might be similar, answers are much more diverse.
The question of knowledge regarding
the local European population is important and, 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 prewar 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 than the one 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 very implicit death threats.
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-Jews regarding their Jewish neighbours.
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 the fact
that the removal of the Jews from the public life,
by ghettoes or segregation, improved
the life of many Europeans.
And when the Jews were taken permanently, meaning murdered,
the benefits only grew.
More houses, more jobs, more property
which could be bought for pennies.
A Polish journalist who lived near Ponary
and saw the mass shooting of the Jews wrote in his diary,
"For the Germans 300 Jews are 300 enemies of humanity.
For 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 murders, 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, a nation condemned whoever betrayed
local resistance members but kept silent when a Jew--
a child or a grownup--
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.
And Slovakia actually paid Nazi Germany
for the removal of its Jews 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 organisations
participated 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 organisations
enabled Jews to escape death.
Many did it for money or other means of profit.
And 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.
And still, within this dark picture,
some true righteous among the nations acted.
Teachers, nurse maids, farmers, or diplomats,
educated people as well as illiterate, communists, 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 sympathised,
who extended a helping hand.
No, they are people who were willing to pay
a price for that deed.
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 rescuers' 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.
Two or three minutes, you pull him out from the fire,
and you get a medal for that.
Big hero, right?
Here, they risked 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.
So 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.
And 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 conditions of occupation,
an impressive and unique organisation was established,
Zegota, the Polish Council to Aid Jews.
Though it emerged from local initiatives--
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 its efforts were 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 in other places, Jews and their helpers
were under a constant threat of blackmail, 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 a 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 in 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]
Professor Havi Dreifuss, PhDProfessor
Dr Na'ama Bela Shik, PhDDirector, Educational Technology Department, The International School for Holocaust Studies, Yad Vashem
