Gentiles During the Holocaust

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Gentiles During the Holocaust
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The Role of Gentiles

• As seen in Maus I and II, The Boat is Full,
  Goodbye Children, and The Painted Bird, Jews were
  dependent at least to some degree on help from
  gentile neighbors for survival.
• Especially (but not exclusively) in the killing
  fields of Eastern Europe, the help of gentiles
  was important.

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Why were Gentiles Important?

• They could give or withhold hiding places, food,
  and even false papers and arms.
• These things often made the difference between
  life and death.
• The Nazis often did not have sufficient numbers
  to manage everything or to control everything
  directly.
• The local officials and population therefore
  played a role either working for or against the
  Jews.

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Some Examples

• Bulgaria was a German ally. Local authorities
  simply refused to give up Jews who were Bulgarian
  citizens.
• The same thing happened in Hungary until the
  Germans took over in March 1944.
• After the Nazis took control in Hungary,
  Hungarian officials helped send most of the
  countrys Jews to Auschwitz.

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The Role of the Gentiles

• In Hungary and other countries that collaborated
  with the Nazis, the process of rounding up the
  Jews and sending them to the death camps could
  not have been done so efficiently without the
  assistance of local authorities.
• The actions of Gentiles throughout Europe are
  important, but Poland deserves special attention.
• Most victims of the Holocaust lived in Poland.
  All the extermination centers (death camps) were
  there.

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The Role of Gentiles in Germany

• Germany is also a special case.
• The role of the general population is clouded by
  the fact that their own government was carrying
  out anti-Jewish measures.
• It is hard to say how much Germans knew about
  what their government was doing.
• It is hard to know whether or not the people
  approved.

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Western Europe

• Western Europe France, Italy, Spain, etc.
• This area was remote from the scene of the
  greatest crime.
• But resistance fighters who fought for their
  country in France, for instance, rarely opposed
  anti-Jewish policies.

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A Variety of Opinion

• There is a variety of opinion regarding the role
  of Gentiles during the Holocaust.
• To recognize the different points of view is
  important.
• Because to generalize about Gentiles during the
  Holocaust is just not possible. Any
  generalization is incorrect.
• There is not such thing as all Germans or all
  Europeans acted in a certain way.

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A Variety of Opinion

• The variety of opinion about the role of the
  Gentiles is important because all are correct to
  an extent, but none are exclusively correct.

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Yisrael Gutman and Shmuel Krakowski

• Wrote Unequal Victims (1986)
• They examine the sensitive subject of
  Polish-Jewish relations during the Holocaust.
• They state that the Poles too were persecuted.
  Helping the Jews increased the dangers to which
  the Poles were exposed.
• They assert that the two groups were, however,
  anything but equal victims.

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Gutman and Krakowski

• In their book, they show that some Poles did help
  the Jews, but most did not.
• An estimated several hundred Poles died in their
  efforts to help.
• There was mostly a hostile climate against the
  Jews.
• There were blackmailers who betrayed the Jews as
  a profession on a regular basis.

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Polish Hostility against the JewsThe
Blackmailers

• The relatively large group of blackmailers were
  organized and operated in street gang fashion.
• Most of them came from the very lowest orders of
  society (poor mans snobbery).
• Local peasants often killed Jews themselves to
  gain the approval of the Nazis and in order to
  loot the belongings of the Jews.
• Many of these peasants lived on the fringes of
  the criminal world or were criminals themselves.

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The Blackmailers

• There were rabid anti-Semites who joined the
  blackmailer gangs.
• The blackmailer occupation promoted a climate in
  Poland which made it easier for evildoers than
  for decent men to flourish.
• The group operated with the approval and
  protection of the authorities.
• They also had the tacit approval of a large
  portion of the Polish public.

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Anti-Semitism in Poland

• Anti-Semitism among the Poles was definitely a
  contributing factor to the Holocaust in Poland.
• Popular anti-Semitism still persists in Poland
  today.

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Anti-Semitism in Poland

• Evidence for anti-Semitism at that time is that
  the Polish underground failed to support the
  Warsaw ghetto uprising.
• The Polish military underground had a large cash
  of weaponry.
• But they only got primarily useless pistols to
  the Jews. They gave them very little.
• In some cases, the Jews got weapons and no
  ammunition.
• Usually the weapons had to be bought.

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Gutman and Krakowski

• So in their view, the Polish community showed a
  willingness to help sometimes.
• They also acknowledge that this community had
  almost no resources.
• But their general assessment is that the Poles
  come out wanting.
• The Poles could have done more.

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Gutman and Krakowski

• The over-all balance between the acts of crime
  and acts of help, as described in the available
  sources, is disproportionately negative. . . . To
  a significant extent, this negative balance is to
  be accounted for by the hostility towards the
  Jews on the part of large segments of the Polish
  underground, and even more importantly, by the
  involvement of some armed units of that
  underground in murders of the Jews.

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Another Opinion Richard Lukas

• He wrote The Forgotten Holocaust The Poles
  under German Occupation (1986).
• He assesses the evidence differently in his book
  on Poland under Nazi rule.
• He says that the plight of the Poles is often
  underestimated.
• Their opportunity to help anyone was minimal.

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Lukas

• He states that the Poles were often mostly
  involved with their own survival.
• Under German occupation, their living standards
  plummeted.
• They just were too concerned with their own
  survival to worry about the Jews.
• He also states that anti-Semitism in Poland was
  brought on to some degree by the Jews themselves.
  They did not assimilate enough.

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Anti-Semitism in Poland

• Anti-Semitism in Poland was different
  qualitatively than that of the Nazis.
• It was economic, not racial.
• In some cases, the Poles saw the Jews as
  collaborating with the Germans, as doing business
  with them. Sometimes that is how Jews got by.
• But this was seen as improper and as
  justification for not returning Jewish property
  after ghettoization of the Jews.

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Anti-Semitism in Poland

• To the Poles, the Jews seem to have it better
  than they did at the beginning.
• In the process of having the government taken
  over by the Nazis, Poles were persecuted at first
  more heavily for political reasons.
• Then when the Soviets arrived, the Jews seemed to
  welcome them.
• The Poles never forgave them for this.

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Anti-Semitism in Poland

• According to Lukas, it was not Polish
  anti-Semitism which determined the reaction of
  the Poles to the persecution of the Jews.
• In the tug of war for Poland by the Soviets and
  the Germans, the Germans used anti-Semitism to
  manipulate the population.
• Often the Germans organized Polish pogroms.

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Anti-Semitism in Poland

• What determined the Polish reaction to the Jews
  was implacable German pressure on the Poles.
• Lukas maintains that the Germans alone must be
  made responsible for the fate of the Jews.
• Once the breadth of the Final Solution started
  to become clear, the Poles began to be more
  sympathetic and helpful.

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Lukas Quote

• No reasonable student of World War II can deny
  that Hitlers policy toward the Poles was also
  genocidal . . . . If the magnitude of the Polish
  tragedy were objectively presented, unrealistic
  and unhistorical judgments about the
  possibilities and opportunities available to the
  Poles to render greater aid than they did to the
  Jews would not be made.

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Ian Kershaw Germany

• Wrote Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in
  the Third Reich, 1983.
• He examines the public opinion about Jews and
  anti-Semitism during WWII in Bavaria, a large
  south German state.
• Other historians have argued that the facts about
  the Holocaust were fairly well known in Germany
  at the time by the populace.

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Ian Kershaw

• There were official efforts to keep these facts
  hidden, but historians often argue that the
  populace could not help but notice.
• Kershaw disputes this view.
• On the basis of his research, the Nazis own
  public opinion reports, and the reports of the
  anti-Nazi underground in Germany, he believes
  that the Germans were ill-informed about the
  Holocaust.

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Kershaw Germany

• Kershaw argues that the Germans were preoccupied
  with the countless problems of coping.
• It was an increasingly difficult wartime
  situation.
• The totalitarian state was demanding and
  relentless.
• The Germans tended to retreat into the private
  sphere.

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Kershaw Germany

• He argues that the Germans were largely
  unconcerned with the Jewish problem.
• The Nazi state created conditions that caused
  Germans to be indifferent to the fate of their
  Jewish neighbors.

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Kershaw Quote

• Very many, probably most, Germans were opposed
  to the Jews during the Third Reich . . . . Most
  would have drawn a line at physical maltreatment.
  . . . The very secrecy of the Final Solution
  demonstrates more clearly than anything else the
  fact that the Nazi leadership felt it could not
  rely on popular backing for its extermination
  policy.

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Robert Marrus and Robert Paxton

• The Nazis and the Jews in Occupied Western
  Europe, 1940-1944. Journal of Modern History,
  1982.
• Their study is important for the way the French
  see their role in the war.
• Shows the French acceptance of the anti-Jewish
  policies of the collaborationist Vichy regime was
  widespread until late 1942.

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Marrus and Paxton Western Europe

• They surveyed the situation in all of
  Nazi-occupied Western Europe.
• Local conditions in all countries widely
  determined the fate of the Jews and the number of
  Jewish losses.
• In the Netherlands 75 Jewish losses.
• In Denmark 5 Jewish losses.

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Marrus and Paxton

• The losses suffered by the Jews was greatly
  dependent on the collaboration of government
  officials to help the Nazis in the early months
  of the deportation policies (i.e. before people
  could get organized in an effort to help the
  Jews.
• Local officials often cooperated out of habit.

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Marrus and Paxton

• Local officials often viewed refugees in a harsh
  manner (example in The Boat is Full).
• The French actually helped round up the Jews from
  their unoccupied territory.
• Especially Jews who were not citizens were in
  trouble.
• Once the round up of citizens began, the French
  officials were less reliable.

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Marrus and Paxton

• As the war went on there was more resistance to
  the deportation policies.
• The Final Solution was slowed to varying
  degrees in different places.
• As the deportation continued, officials became
  more reluctant.
• The authors conclude that military defeat alone
  stopped the German trains from leaving for the
  East.

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Marrus and Paxton Quote

• It seems plain that German policy, and also the
  ability of the Nazis to apply their power, were
  decisive in determining how far the destruction
  process went . . . . Only the defeat of the Reich
  brought the trains to a halt.

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Conclusions about the Roles of Gentiles

• There is a variety of opinion.
• It shows the complexity of the situation.
• It is important to think of the specific terms
  and conditions which caused Gentiles to give or
  withhold aid to Jews.

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Conclusions

• What role did anti-Semitism play in shaping
  Gentile behavior?
• If a country such as Holland with little history
  of popular Judeophobia suffered one of the
  highest levels of Jewish losses, can it have been
  decisive in determining the fate of the Jews?
• A thought If the Germans and other Europeans
  were imperfectly informed about the genocide of
  the Jews, how does this inform your idea of
  complicity?