REFERENCES
CONCLUSION
“Thou shalt not be a victim, thou shalt not be a perpetrator, but, above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.” “Do not be a perpetrator. Do not be a bystander."
Yehuda Bauer
PRIMO LEVI'S ARGUMENT ON BYSTANDING
Primo Levi presents another obstacle to action—the idea that some people may not have wanted to acknowledge the horrible crimes that were being committed. He writes:
“In spite of the varied possibilities for information, most Germans didn’t know because they didn’t want to know. Because, indeed, they wanted not to know....In Hitler’s Germany a particular code was widespread: those who knew did not talk; those who did not know did not ask questions; those who did ask questions received no answers. In this way, the typical German citizen won and defended his ignorance, which seemed to him sufficient justification of his adherence to Nazism. Shutting his mouth, his eyes and his ears, he built for himself the illusion of not knowing, hence not being an accomplice to the things taking place in front of his very door.”
Europe
Europe confronted difficult choices as news of Nazi atrocities spread. They were asked to hide Jews or to take in Jewish children as their own; they were asked to forge documents or to shuttle Jews to safety in neutral countries such as Switzerland or Sweden. Often, these requests were denied. People had their own survival and their own families to worry about. A perfect example is that of Father John S. testimony, a Jesuit seminarian in Hungarian-occupied Czechoslovakia (More info in the video above).
America
Jewish organizations asked U.S. officials if the military could bomb the train tracks leading to Auschwitz in order to prevent the arrival of more victims to this extermination camp. Officials responded that all air power was needed to fight the war against Germany, that bombing the tracks “might provoke even more vindictive action by the Germans,” and that “the most effective relief which can be given victims of enemy persecution is to ensure speedy defeat of the Axis.”
Still, Americans dropped bombs near Auschwitz on ten different occasions. And, the British refused to allow more European Jews to emigrate to British-controlled Palestine. Golda Meir, who later became prime minister of Israel, describes how the British were worried about angering Arab leaders in Palestine and, therefore, “remained adamant” in their decision to keep Jews out of Palestine, even if it meant they would die in gas chambers in Europe.
Thus, when faced with what they saw as difficult choices, Allied nations typically chose not to actively help Jews escape Nazi persecution
Why was this the case? President Roosevelt worried that because of anti-Semitic sentiment in the United States, he would not be able to get public and congressional support to help European Jews escape the Nazis.
EXTERNAL BYSTANDING
Several evidences point that people around the world had access to information about the deportations, concentration camps, and death camps. Several evidences point that people around the world had access to information about the deportations, concentration camps, and death camps.
Several evidences point that people around the world had access to information about the deportations, concentration camps, and death camps.
By the fall of 1942, the New York Times published this headline: Slain Polish Jews Put at a Millionit was impossible for the international community to deny the fact that millions of innocent Jews and other victims were being murdered by the Nazis. The governments of the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union even made a joint statement acknowledging the mass murders for the first time. Yet, they continued to do nothing to stop or prevent more innocent deaths e.g The Évian Conference of 1938.
INTERNAL TESTIMONIES
Testimonies of soldiers and townspeople support Hilberg’s claim. Herbert Mochalski, a German soldier, shares, “It’s nonsense when a German soldier says that he never saw anything, that the soldiers didn’t know anything. It’s all simply not true.”
And villagers who lived near concentration camps recall the horrible stench of burning flesh in the air and seeing ashes, tufts of hair, and bone fragments falling onto their streets.
Additionally, news reports of the atrocities made headlines in international newspapers. As early as summer of 1941, the Chicago Tribune covered a story about hundreds of Jews being deported from Berlin on obviously trumped-up charges.
BYSTANDING ILLUSTREATIONS DURING THE SHOAH
Many bystanders to the Shoah claim that they were not aware of the horrible atrocities being committed by the Nazis. When asked about this, Holocaust survivor Primo Levi has replied with a question of his own. “How is it possible that the extermination of millions of human beings could have been carried out in the heart of Europe without anyone’s knowledge?”
“Many people...saw or heard something of the event. Those of them who lived in Adolf Hitler’s Europe would have described themselves, with few exceptions, as bystanders. They were not “involved,” not willing to hurt the victims and not wishing to be hurt by the perpetrators....The Dutch were worried about their bicycles, the French about shortages, the Ukrainians about food, the Germans about air raids. All of these people thought of themselves as victims, be it of war, or oppression, or "fate."(Hilberg 1992)
THREE CONSTRUCTS OF BYSTANDING
"Mind Your Own Business"
This construct supports that individual freedom during the time of overly tight social control, could be pushed to an extreme and absurd degree. It may lead to watch others die in the street and not care to help them out, or care about what happened to anything beyond their own property. Omer Batorv asserts the validity of this construct in his book, “Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz”, where he identifies this construct in the social dynamics of the city of Buczacz.
“The Gradual Adjustment to Human Violence”
Victimization is a process that passes gradually through certain thresholds, it is assumed to only work in one direction and becomes gradually worse, in terms of one adjustment to violence. Exposure to increasing violence clearly creates more numbness and reduces human’s sensitivity to certain extremely violent behaviors. This may, in turn, have increased people’s potential for bystanding behavior.
Ester Fiszgop’s testimony gives a perfect illustration on how abnormal behaviors became normal in Poland during the Shoah. (See the video below from 26 minutes)
“The Just World”
It is the tendency to attribute the outcome of the victimization to the victim’s character or behavior and thereby distance oneself from the feeling responsible or from the need to do something to stop the victimization process.
This can be observed in the Shoah through the prejudice Nazis used in their propaganda in other to victimize the Jews while distancing themselves for being responsible of the change in German society.
STAND SPEAK ACT
Kurt Messerschmidt (a Jewish Survivor) testimony made in June 24, 1997 in Portland, Maine USA. Born in January 02, 1915 in Germany, he gives a personal account on bystanding in the early beginning of the Shoah. Kurt describes what he observed in the aftermath of the pogrom in Berlin, Germany in November 1938.
WHAT IS BYSTANDER
Bystanders are witnesses who are in position to know (often close their eyes) what is happening and are in position to take some kind of action, yet bystanders are often passive. By continuing with their usual business, they often become complicit in the violence.
According to Staub, Internal bystanders are often members of the same society as the perpetrators, who have internalized the culture of devaluation of the victim group and the respect for authority Mean while External Bystanders are outside groups and other nation nations, which tend to remain passive, continue with business as usual, or even support the perpetrators. (Staub 2014)
The historian Paul Bookbinder distinguishes two different degree of Bystander behavior: collaborators and bystanders. Collaborators are those that were not directly involved in the round-up and murder of Holocaust victims, but who may have assisted the Nazis by providing them with information or supplies. On the other hand, he points out that bystanders neither directly cooperated with the Nazis or helped the Jews, and should therefore be judged differently than collaborators.
This presentation focuses of the latter definition of bystanders, those who neither directly cooperated with Nazis or helped the Jews.
ABSTRACT
The history of the Shoah was not only of perpetrators and victims it was that of bystanders as well. Albert Einstein once said, “The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.” This paper examines the role and consequence of individuals, groups and nations’ actions or inaction during the persecution of Jews by the Nazis, and also elaborates on why some people stand by during this injustice while others did something to stop or prevent the genocide. Based on empirical research articles, primary sources and Victims’ testimonies, bystanders reaction during the Shoah played a more crucial role in shaping the society than people realize. This paper suggest that bystanders can exert powerful influences by defining the meaning of events and move others toward either empathy or apathy. They can promote norms and values of altruism or by lack of initiative in the system bystanders can affirm the perpetrators.
