The Holocaust - The Range of Responses (UK)

The history of the Holocaust reveals the range of behaviour of which people are capable when confronted with extreme brutality towards their fellow human beings. While the Nazis carried out their plans to murder millions of Jews and other supposedly inferior groups, individuals, groups, towns, and even entire nations risked their own safety to protect, hide, or evacuate those in danger. However, opportunities to resist or rescue were not available to everyone, and among those who had such opportunities, many did not seize them. Indeed, thousands participated actively in the Nazi plan of annihilation, while many more knew what was happening and did nothing. The efforts of rescuers and resisters, therefore, were the exception rather than the rule, and the Nazis largely succeeded in their plan to annihilate European Jews. Historian Peter Hayes writes:

A few diplomats rose to the occasion, but most did not. More clergy accepted the challenge, but a majority did not. Minority group members expressed solidarity with Jews more frequently than the surrounding population, but not reliably or uniformly. Cosmopolitan residents of Warsaw may have been more inclined to aid Jews than Poles in the countryside, but not dependably so. Rescue was always the choice of the relatively few. ¹

Hayes adds that ‘at most, 5 to 10% of the Jews who survived the Holocaust in Europe did so because a non-Jew or non-Jewish organisation ... concealed and sustained them’. ² In the end, the Nazis succeeded in murdering 6 million of the estimated 9 million Jews who lived in Europe in 1939.

Due to the magnitude of the tragedy of the Holocaust, it is necessary to confront the reasons why so many participated as perpetrators or looked the other way as bystanders. The Nazis persuaded or coerced thousands to participate. Many others participated willingly; they were true believers in Nazi ideology and did not need to be persuaded. By doing nothing, one could also indicate tacit approval of the persecution and killing of certain groups, or at least the belief that the victims’ lives were not worth risking one’s own life or livelihood to stand up for. Some people cooperated in the Nazi programme of mass murder, or at least looked the other way despite the evidence that millions were dying, because they stood to gain personally by taking the homes and possessions of Nazi victims. Many people did nothing in response to what they knew because they feared punishment for interfering or were consumed by their own wartime difficulties.

If the action and inaction of perpetrators and bystanders represents some of the worst of which human beings are capable, the courage of resisters and rescuers represents the best. Nearly all Jews who went into hiding relied on others to help them, and they often felt that they were totally dependent on their helpers – for food and water, for news from the outside world, and especially for a willingness to continue to keep their secret. Sometimes Jews were hidden by neighbours or former employees, and sometimes they were helped by strangers. Sometimes entire communities provided shelter, food, and fake documents for dozens of families, actively taking part in the rescue or choosing to remain silent and not report their neighbours’ activities. Some diplomats created false papers and exit or transit visas, saving the lives of thousands of Jews at great risk to their own safety. On an even larger scale, one nation, Denmark, evacuated nearly all of its Jewish residents to safety after hearing that the Germans were planning to deport its entire Jewish population.

Sometimes rescuers acted after great deliberation, or after having taken smaller measures of resistance against the Nazi regime before accepting greater amounts of responsibility for the fate of others. In his study of rescuers, psychologist Ervin Staub states, ‘Goodness, like evil, often begins in small steps. Heroes evolve; they aren’t born. Very often the rescuers made only a small commitment at the start – to hide someone for a day or two. But once they had taken that step, they began to see themselves differently, as someone who helps. What starts as mere willingness becomes intense involvement.’ ³

Other rescuers say that the decision to act was neither gradual nor complicated. Magda Trocmé, who helped hide thousands of Jews in the French village of Le Chambon, explains:

We had no time to think. When a problem came, we had to solve it immediately. Sometimes people ask me, “How did you make a decision?” There was no decision to make. The issue was: Do you think we are all brothers or not? Do you think it is unjust to turn in the Jews or not? Then let us try to help! ⁴

By examining the stories and choices of perpetrators, bystanders, upstanders, and rescuers during the Holocaust, we are not only better able to understand what happened during this crucial period of the twentieth century but can reach a deeper understanding of the range of human behaviour in any time of crisis. By examining what led some to limit their universe of obligation and see the lives of others as not worth protecting, we can gain insight into the forces in our own lives that might encourage us to act cruelly or inhumanely, or to ignore such actions by others. By hearing and honouring the stories of those who took risks, large and small, on behalf of others, we might better find within ourselves the desire to be ‘someone who helps’ and to act with caring towards others when circumstances require.

• 1P. Hayes, ‘Rescuing Jews—Means and Obstacles: Introduction’, in How Was It Possible? A Holocaust Reader, ed. P. Hayes (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2015), 647.
• 2Ibid., 645.
• 3Quoted in D. Goleman, ‘Great Altruists: Science Ponders Soul of Goodness’, New York Times, 5 March 1985, accessed 25 May 2016.
• 4C. Rittner and S. Myers, The Courage to Care: Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust (New York: New York University Press, 1986), 102.

• The readings in the The Holocaust: The Range of Responses handout differ in length and difficulty. Keep this in mind when you are creating the ‘expert’ groups. You might choose to group readers according to ability, so that they all finish reading the texts at the same time, or have mixed-ability groups. Please also note that some of the texts are emotionally difficult to read (particularly ‘Bystanders at Hartheim Castle’). Please review all of the readings beforehand to decide if they are appropriate for your students to read. You know the needs of your class best.
• It is important to remind students that as discussed in Lesson 10: Kristallnacht the terms perpetrator, victim, bystander, upstander, and now rescuer refer not to fixed identities, but to the behaviour of individuals, groups, or even nations at specific moments in time. The same person may act as a bystander in one situation and then as a rescuer or perpetrator in another situation. It is not these categories themselves, as words, that matter; it is the way we – and our students – think and talk about the actions (or inactions) of others that helps us both understand history and make connections to the choices we all make in the present.

As with the previous lesson, the content of this lesson can be emotionally challenging for many students. It is important to be responsive to how students are processing this material and to give them time to reflect and write quietly in their journals when they need it, even if it is not explicitly specified in the lesson.

When discussing the choices of perpetrators, bystanders, upstanders, and rescuers during the Holocaust, invite students to reconsider the choices they analysed in readings from previous lessons in their discussion contributions. This exercise provides the opportunity for students to review past material in a new context, thus deepening their understanding of agency at different times within this historical period. You might ask students to consider both what they now perceive to be the consequences of some of the choices made in earlier years and how the range of available choices narrowed after the Nazis went to war and began to carry out mass murder.

The following are key vocabulary terms used in this lesson:

1. Rescuer
2. Intervene

Add these words to your Word Wall, if you are using one for this unit, and provide the necessary support to help students learn these words as you teach the lesson.

This is an opportunity for students to produce a piece of extended writing that you can mark according to your school marking policy.

This question requires the same skills as the Edexcel GCSE ‘Explain why…’ question and the Eduqas ‘Explain why...’  question. Therefore, in keeping with the question style, you may wish to give students two points that they could include. It can also be adapted to support the ‘How far do you agree with the statement?’ essay question that features on GCSE History exams across the exam boards, by choosing one reason to identify in the statement.  

If you are setting this for homework, you may wish to give some discussion time in the lesson to make sure that all students have three reasons about which they can write.

Consider pairing the reading Reserve Police Battalion 101 with an examination of psychologist Stanley Milgram’s famous experiments about circumstances under which individuals are willing and able to inflict pain on other people. Together, these resources provide a powerful way to discuss the behaviour of perpetrators, as well as the conditions in which each of us might be drawn into harming others.

Use the connection questions following the reading to discuss the content with students, and then deepen their exploration of human behaviour by introducing the Milgram experiment. Use the reading A Matter of Obedience? to provide background information on the experiments, and then show a clip from the film Obedience: The Milgram Experiment (21:55–39:15).

Preview these resources to ensure that they are appropriate for your students. Watching the clip of the experiments is a powerful and often uncomfortable experience for many students. Sometimes students show that discomfort by laughing. Instead of disciplining students for such responses, you might use them as an entry point for a discussion about why the video elicits such discomfort and what it suggests about the potential of any individual to be willing to harm another under the right circumstances.

For an even deeper exploration of perpetrator behaviour, consider showing students the video The Psychology of Genocidal Behavior.

The Facing History website offers a variety of additional resources to support an extended focus on rescuers during the Holocaust. If you decide to extend this lesson to provide a more in-depth focus on rescue, begin by asking students to consider the question: How did people make the choice to rescue? You might also share this statement from psychologist Ervin Staub: ‘Goodness, like evil, often begins in small steps. Heroes evolve; they aren’t born.’ ⁵ Then share one or more of the following videos to help students consider the qualities and motivations that enable one to be a rescuer and look for evidence to support Staub’s statement:

• The Courage to Care (28:40) profiles both Jews who were rescued during the Holocaust and rescuers from France, Holland, and Poland, and it raises questions about the moral and ethical dilemmas that rescuers confronted.
• Life or Death in the Netherlands (5:12) features Marion Pritchard describing her decision to murder a Dutch Nazi policeman in order to protect a Jewish family hiding in her home. (This is the same story told in the reading Deciding to Act.)
• Finding Safety in Italy (5:47) features the testimony of Holocaust survivor Esther Bem and her description of the people in northern Italy who protected her and her family during the Second World War.
• Weapons of the Spirit (35:07) provides an in-depth profile of the French town of Le Chambon and the beliefs that motivated its residents to save 5,000 Jews during the Second World War. (This is the same story told in the reading Le Chambon: A Village Takes a Stand.)

You can extend your study of rescuers even further with additional Facing History resources, including Defying the Nazis: The Sharps’ War and other readings from Chapters 7, 8, and 9 of Holocaust and Human Behaviour.

• 5Quoted in D. Goldman, ‘Is Altruism Inherited?’, Baltimore Jewish Times, 12 April 1985, 70.