Bystanders and Rescuers
From Facing History and Ourselves:
Holocaust and Human Behavior, Chapter 8
Chapter 7 focused on the victims of the Holocaust and the perpetrators. Chapter 8 considers the choices open to everyone else once the Holocaust began. “Most contemporaries of the Jewish catastrophe were neither perpetrators nor victims,” writes Raul Hilberg. “Many people, however, 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.” Hilberg says of these bystanders, “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.’”1
Were they “victims of fate”? Or did they still have choices? Albert Camus, a French writer who joined the resistance, believed that individuals can always make a difference.
I know that the great tragedies of history often fascinate men with approaching horror. Paralyzed, they cannot make up their minds to do anything but wait. So they wait, and one day the Gorgon monster devours them. But I should like to convince you that the spell can be broken, that there is an illusion of impotence, that strength of heart, intelligence and courage are enough to stop fate and sometimes reverse it.2
And Cynthia Ozick warns, “When a whole population takes on the status of bystander, the victims are without allies; the criminals, unchecked, are strengthened; and only then do we need to speak of heroes. When a field is filled from end to end with sheep, a stag stands out. When a continent is filled from end to end with the compliant, we learn what heroism is.3
Download Chapter 8 from Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior
Selected Readings from the Chapter
Notes
1 Raul Hilberg, Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe 1933-1945 (HarperCollins, 1992),
xi.
2 Albert Camus, Notebooks.
3 Cynthia Ozick, Prologue to Rescuers: Portraits of Moral Courage in the Holocaust, by Gay Block and
Malka Drucker, (Holmes & Meier, 1992), xiii.
