"To kill people living within a population, you have to be told who and where they are." Three SS men with drawn machine guns entered our apartment in Lodz, Poland, looking for men for forced labor. I was six, and momentarily alone. How did they know who we were and where we lived?
323
@Jacob Opper
Really, you were six? The adults, however, did know what was going on and many didn't care, even when their neighbors were slaughtered.
15
@Jacob Opper Thank you for sharing your story. For those of us who were not alive then, it is difficult to imagine those horrific events. I fear that the hate we witness now is directly related to the loss of aging voices such as yours. Memories are fleeting and first hand accounts are vital to keep wandering minds in check. Wish us luck as your generation and your voices fade away.
57
@Jacob Opper Exactly. Someone must have directed them to your apartment.
This raises a question though, about Rivka Weinberg's idea of what is required of us: for a neighbor confronted by those SS men, there might not have been much difference between refusing to collaborate, and dying as a hero.
Sadly though, there was apparently enough anti-Semitism in Poland, that someone may not have felt bad at all about telling them where you were.
21
Two thoughts:
1. The banality with which a nation or a region slides into war – while neighbors watch, detached – is incredible. Rather than taking history classes, would sit among the stacks at night and read the news magazines dated early 20’s to late 30’s (newspapers were on fiche)
Go back to the night of the Putsch or Kristallnacht. These were covered – but absent the hysterical pot-banging that’s accompanied this circus of a farce of impeachment
Incidentally, a notable pol – other than FDR – who’d fully grasped the depth of the evil afoot in Europe at that time was LaGuardia. The back/forths between him and the Reich – including the planning of the ’39 World’s Fair – are a full semester of history by themselves
https://www.1939nyworldsfair.com/Ponderings/Germany.htm
“…How does a dictator start on his way? By first picking the weakest minority, abusing and oppressing it; then moving on to another…
2. The Nazis weren’t the Social Nationalist Party – they were the National Socialist Party. Redistribution from the deplorable privileged to the people was at the essence of their rent-seeking. Hitler hated the Bolsheviks – but because they advocated against nationalism, not because they advocated socialism
https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2007/sep/17/greatinterviews1
‘…"Socialism," he retorted, putting down his cup of tea, pugnaciously, "is the science of dealing with the common weal…
"…Socialism is an ancient Aryan, Germanic institution…
3
And then there was the NY Times which buried news of the Holocaust during WWII.
Just saw a short play about it called News Not Fit To Print at a theater festival. Or read Buried By The Times by Laurel Leff.
24
I went to Berlin and their various museums. I always wondered why the people did not stop the Nazis from their crimes on Jewish people. I found out that if you went against the government in the early 1930's, you were either shot right there on the street or placed in jail without a trial and then shot. Just like the writer states, we need to make sure that we stop the murderers before they even start to murder.
16
Indeed, it is hard to stand out and resistant Nazi in such a period(1930s). But I can’t agree that “do nothing” is enough. Because if no one stand out to stop atrocities, atrocities don't go away by themselves. If there are no allies, who will defeat the axis? In WWII, some people in the French government chose to stop resisting the Nazis, but their actions made more people suffer from atrocities, especially the Jews in France. However, not all the French gave up their resistance, and general De Gaulle continued to fight in Africa. Furthermore, at that certain period, it may be impossible to find a neutral position. Holland was neutral in World War I, they tried to do the same thing in World War II, and they were finally invaded by Nazi. It is a little bit like “prisoner's dilemma”, If other people choose to resist and some people choose to escape, the loss of those who escape will be smaller, but if all people choose to escape, all people will bear greater loss. Therefore, it is necessary to teach people to stand out at the critical moment. Sometimes, escaping can reduce some of their own losses, but if all people choose to escape, all people will lose more. Of course, we should not condemn those who do nothing, because their behavior is "understandable", not everyone has the courage to fight against evil.
2
This essay reminded me of a book I read more than 20 years ago: Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's "Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust." For the Nazi evil to succeed there were plenty of Burke's "good people doing nothing" in Germany, and plenty of everyday volk doing a little bit here, a little bit there. Just enough to keep the gears turning.
4
Everything starts with knowing how to seek out truth.
Many people who participated in the extermination of Jewish people had absorbed propaganda without question. They believed that their Jewish neighbors were responsible for Germany's terrible economic recession and loss of World War I.
The first step is asking yourself, "What is really happening?"
And you have to be willing to dig, to read multiple sources, and not to make unsupported conclusions.
One of the biggest clues is when a solution is too simple. (All Jews are responsible for X. All undocumented immigrants are responsible for Y. All Muslims are responsible for Z.)
The moment that you see generalizing and scapegoating, then that is the moment to step back and gather more information. And that is the time to encourage the people around you to use their heads, too.
Getting all your information from one source and letting others think for you is the surest way to find yourself on the road to helping injustice and evil.
20
Many Jews (most?) whose families survived the Holocaust while hiding in Europe have at least one story of a heroic non-Jew who helped to hide or transport them. In Poland, Ukraine, and other parts of Eastern Europe, such heroes were rare, and so were survivors. Jews are conditioned by family history to believe we must do more than simply refrain from evil, though we don't all live up to that historical debt. Everything in this essay rings true. The Poles as a group didn't allow the Holocaust to take place. Rather, they made it possible. They didn't like the Germans. Nevertheless, they helped implement the genocide.
6
For those people who do not believe how neighbor can kill neighbor should read 'Neighbors' by Jan T. Gross. It is the true story of the destruction of the Jewish community in Jedwabne, Poland BY THEIR CHRISTIAN NEIGHBORS.
On a summer day in 1941 in Nazi-occupied Poland, half of the town of Jedwabne brutally murdered the other half: 1,600 men, women and children - all but seven of the town's Jews. They were not killed by Nazis [approved by them, yes] but by people who knew them well - their neighbors.
These murderous events took place in other Polish communities during that time period. This book tells of just one instance. Horrific to read...
18
My French teacher in high school in 1969 in Chattanooga was Mme. Chenee.
She was a tiny, direct, yet self effacing woman.
She had been a member of the French Resistance although she never mentioned it to any of us.
Hero.
12
Sadly, the America of today is not the America of 1945. It has not been for some time. Our Republic has given way to Empire but few can see the result or are willing to. We are those we once fought against.
Looking at the world as black or white - 'with us' or 'against us' - is a simplistic view that leads to extreme behavior.
The United States has been at war for more years than any other nation in the world since 1945. We have also sponsored countless proxy wars during that time.
Ask all those nations we have fought if they are better off now than before our 'involvement'. How many have died - and for what? Our War in Vietnam - based on a lie - accomplished what? A stable neutral nation - Cambodia - was turned into genocidal killing grounds.
Our never ending wars in the Middle East have left the region in chaos and hundreds of thousands dead.
We claim the moral high ground by pointing our the sins of others - while ignoring our own.
12
I thought about this column for most of the day. The road to the Holocaust may not have been paved with indifference, but the on-ramp was. The pre-war Jewish population of Germany was tiny - less than 1%. For the Hitlerites, anti-Semitism was an all-consuming passion. Most Germans didn't know any and just didn't care - the Nurnberg laws were the problem of a small group. The Nazis knew Kristallnacht didn't go over well with the "Volk," but not enough to make a difference, and in any case, it was too late for the 'upstanding' to take any meaningful action. I think the point here is that we want to avoid ever being in the position of having to avoid collaboration with pogroms, mob violence or genocide. That starts with rejecting indifference to the suffering of even the 'least among us' - which itself stands, sometimes uncomfortably for its members, at the very heart of the Jewish and Christian faiths as it does for most of us.
12
I understand why many people blanche at the author's position. Most Americans of conscience have been raised with a hero/coward duality. My family provides an example of why the author is right. Most of our dead could not have been saved. They were marched from their homes and murdered in mass shootings within hours of the SS arriving into their villages in Ukraine and Belarus. Many of their neighbors joined in the killing actions. Some survived the initial killing actions and hid but ultimately were betrayed by neighbors. Only one aunt survived because of heroism. First, my aunt's gentile best friend, a 16 year old girl, intercepted her and warned her to hide because the SS had entered the village and were marching the Jews to their death (she later helped her escape into the forest). Second, just after the killings, an elderly neighbor lied to the SS men searching for my aunt by saying she had seen her run into the forest. Importantly, this lie was only necessary because a different neighbor had informed the SS my aunt had escaped the killings and was hidden somewhere in the village. Had this woman not collaborated, the second woman's bravery and risk would have been unnecessary. The simple truth is there was little space for heroism in the midst of atrocity. Anyone who attempted to help Jews was shot dead on sight. However, it's indisputable that many would have survived if it weren't for the collaborators. How much better it would have been had they simply done nothing.
14
It's hard not to feel that the writer celebrates the mediocrity of A T & T's fictional Dr. Francis. (Patient's spouse: Have you ever worked with Dr. Francis? Nurse: Oh, yeah. He's OK. Patient: Just OK?...) If society conveys to people that something less than moral courage is expected of them, then that's what most people will expect of themselves. Of course, none of us are always strong, brave, and compassionate. But that doesn't mean we should settle for less. Teachers, parents, coaches and drill sergeants hold their charges to high standards because those standards are aspirational; it's understood that people will not always rise to the occasion or live up to expectations, but it's also assumed, rightly, that they are much more likely to do so if the bar is set high to begin with. In any case, the writer's closing remarks ironically undermine his argument. Refusing to turn people in, not helping to organize oppression, and seeking to ameliorate it when it happens--these are not safe compromises with conscience. Authoritarian and/or totalitarian governments take note of such things, which are de facto forms of standing up to oppression, and do not allow them to go unpunished, as the suffering visited upon the victims of autocrats from Hitler to Lenin to Kim Jung Un attests. When the most modest act of nonconformity can result in a person being blacklisted or shipped off to the Gulag, moral heroism may be less a choice than a matter of necessity.
3
George Takei’s internment in the camps during WWII and his musical explores these issues well.
“And one day, I went one step too far. I demanded to know from him why he had let it happen. Why did he lead us like sheep to slaughter, from our home in L.A. to the camps? Why didn’t they try to stop it? But instead of taking the bait, my father simply turned aside and said, “Maybe you’re right.””
1
A few notes -
No one in Germany was put to death or severely punished for refusing to take part in the persecution and later the murder of Jews. Not one defense attorney at any of the trials of German murderers was able to use this defense successfully.
This doesn't mean that Germans could speak out against the treatment of Jews, but they could refuse to take part in murder.
This is not a secret, it should be a beginning point in discussion of how Germans acted.
The mass murder of Jews wasn't a secret. It was well known in Germany by 1942, and well known in Central and Eastern Europe. References to the killing of Jews are found in Italian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, and other government records.
The U.S. and British governments were "reading' transcripts of Einsatzgruppen radio traffic from 1940 on. This was kept secret until the early 1990s, until discovered by Richard Breitman, a superb Holocaust scholar.
On suffering for the crime of protecting Jews. I once interviewed a Pole who had taken part in rescue. I asked him whether he was afraid of being punished by the Germans. He said, 'There were so many things they punished us for, one more didn't make much difference.'
Mary Fulbrook's Reckonings: Legacies of Nazi Persecution and the Quest for Justice (2019) is a superb book that goes into many of these issues in a profound and moving way. Very much deserving of the prizes it has won and very much worth reading.
13
I find it appalling that this very perceptive and beautifully written piece is marred by top Readers Picks comments making it about Trump, once again feeding his narrative that everything is about him, while diminishing what Weinberg has to say.
10
At the U.S. Holocaust Museum, a vivid exhibit features the people of Chabannes, in Vichy France, who sheltered over 400 Jewish children from the Nazis during WWII. Photos of those children intrigued me. One of those children was now a prominent citizen in my Massachusetts town; his grandchildren had attended and recently graduated from our local high school. I was now one of the teachers accompanying a large group of high schoolers visiting Washington,D.C. I cannot adequately describe how I felt, standing in front of this Chabannes exhibit, pointing to the photo of the young boy, and telling my students that this boy was the grandfather of those two kids who had recently graduated from our high school. My students were rapt - spellbound - grasping the idea that those brave, decent, - dare I say holy? - people of Chabannes had made the lives of our own two recent graduates possible. Upstanders, indeed.
15
Ms. Weinberg has written an extremely important opinion piece on the nature, degree, need for, and extent of heroism. Many of her observations, including those about people "steeped in hate," may equally apply to millions of Americans who matter-of-factly discriminated against African Americans and other minority groups. This well-written essay is thought provoking and all too timely in light of continued atrocities that occur around the world.
9
I find it appalling that this very perceptive and beautifully written piece is marred by top Readers Picks comments making it about Trump, once again feeding his narrative that everything is about him, while diminishing the perspective that Weinberg brings to bear.
4
Love this article. It's both reassuring and disconcerting, as you say.
A few years ago I mistakenly watched the film AN AMERICAN CRIME, not realizing in advance what it was about or that it was based on a true story. It was incredibly disturbing to discover how many people--legal children, yes, but teenagers who certainly knew what they were doing--didn't just fail to stop the months-long torture of a child, but *gleefully* participated in it. Gleefully.
It's easier (less disconcerting) to think that there are just a few "monsters" out there surrounded by a sea of people who are merely keeping their heads down. But in fact savagery has wide appeal.
4
I believe Ms. Weinberg's analysis does not go far enough. Sure, not all of us can be heroes. And not all those who chose to collaborate did so out of antisemitism. Opportunism, fear, and peer pressure also played a part. So, how do we prevent such behavior among such people in the future? Urging them simply not to cooperate--to remain just a bystander? I don't think that will work. In Peter Hayes's study of the Holocaust, "Why: Explaining the Holocaust" he observes that the history of the Holocaust "shows the necessity of standing up," and concludes: "Resistance is never easy and seldom comfortable, and compassion has to be practiced in order to hold up when challenged." Without compassion I fear it impossible to resist the blandishments--and coercive power--of those who want to commit evil.
9
I'm not entirely sure what the author means. "[Making] sure not to help them along" is actually doing something; we help embolden tyranny when we go about our business without realizing or caring what our actions or lack of actions accomplish. That's what I call indifference. Not voting because you think all of the candidates are the same; not paying attention to what our elected officials are doing; lack of concern about freedoms being taken from groups you don't belong to is indifference, and it's dangerous.
11
I'm not entirely sure what the author means. "[Making] sure not to help them along" is actually doing something; we help embolden tyranny when we go about our business without realizing or caring what our actions or lack of actions accomplish. That's what I call indifference. Not voting because you think all of the candidates are the same; not paying attention to what our elected officials are doing; lack of concern about freedoms being taken from groups you don't belong to is indifference, and it's dangerous.
1
I'd be more inclined to believe Weinberg if he had some evidence to support his views. That's where philosophy has fallen down to physics, cosmology, neurology, etc. That would be excusable if there weren't actual evidence out there, but I believe there is. Do active collaborators in fact matter more than passive bystanders, either historically or now? We have no idea, and neither does he.
2
"... if he had some evidence to support his views."
Quote the OpEd where she says something that needs to be supported with "some evidence".
1
So easy to judge when you haven't faced the danger yourself. I tend to be sympathetic to the author's argument. I, honestly, cannot say if I would be a hero when confronted with evil. Do any of us?
21
"I, honestly, cannot say if I would be a hero when confronted with evil."
Well, trying thinking about some realistic scenarios from the news:
1. Someone is robbing a store while you are in it.
2. Someone on the bus or subway starts screaming at a passenger.
3. Your child is being bullied while walking to school.
Etc.
1
One wonders how the Polish Jews persisted for centuries living and intermarrying with people largely hostile to them, indeed, wanting to live among Europeans who had a history of turning violently to pogroms against them. Israel, a homeland for Jews, supposedly was created to end that kind of vulnerability to violent anti-Semitism in Poland. Only Israel was created in a region with the same numerical superiority of anti-Semites surrounding it. But this time Israeli government oppression of Palestinian Arabs is the bitter Arab justification. And as time passes Israel’s leaders act as though its defense requires them to expand its borders, rather than offering ethnically cleansed Arabs displaced by Israeli Jewish settlements a life that Polish Jews once wanted among people inclined to destroy them, without the Arab grievance.
5
Really difficult issue if you spoke out you were threatened. I know a man who spoke out for his Jewish students in one of the occupied countries his family was then threatened very difficult when you are a dad.
4
Kitty Genovese was a case of "false reporting???"
2
It was reported that many people did not call the police despite being fully aware Genovese was being attacked. True, they did not call the police, but it turns out they were not fully aware (or so I've read).
1
@Cynthia starks
The truth about that incident is that it was embellished on by reporters and supposed witnesses, and most of it, except for the facts of Kitty Genovese's murder, is simply not true. Because it seemed the perfect metaphor for the times, it was never corrected in the court of public opinion.
9
Thank you for telling the Truth.
France, Poland and Lithuania all cooperated with Nazi Germany.
10
My father, from a very prominent Jewish family in Lodz, refused to join the ghetto Jewish Police and was condemned to work as a fekalist, with an average life expectancy of 6 months. He and his fellow Lodz Fekalists, including my mother, formed the now forgotten Lodz Ghetto Resistance.
Whe asked why he refused the demand to join the Ghetto Police, he said he decided that he would rather work with poop than treat people like poop.
19
@Cambridge 02138
Lodz Getto had 250 000 people. All of them grouped, organized by local Jewish police in hope of survival. They all perished.
I admitted to myself a long time ago that I wouldn't have been strong enough have hidden a Jewish stranger in my home during the Holocaust. I would have been too afraid for the lives of my wife and children.
I like to believe I would have hidden a friend.
And I will work for a world where nobody has to make such a terrible choice.
16
In response to "my mother was saved from the Holocaust by Chiune Sugihara": the 2,139 transit visas Sugihara issued to Jews in Kaunas would have been worthless pieces of paper without the fake destination visas to Curaçao issued by Dutch Hon. Consul Jan Zwartendijk who initiated the scheme. My grandfather (visas 1025 & 1026) was a recipient of both.
While there are Sugihara movies, museums & statues, Zwartendijk’s equal role is rarely mentioned, suggesting Sugihara acted alone. This is a myth. One could not have succeeded without the other. These 2 men (who never met) both responded to the crisis at their doorstep. Zwartendijk was issuing fake visas 5-10 weeks after Nazis had invaded NL, defying the German ruling govt. at great peril. He took huge risks, jeopardizing his family. The Soviets could have sent them to Siberia. Back in NL, during the 4 yrs of occupation, the Germans were arresting anybody who had helped Jews. For those who failed to flee Lithuania, tragedy was imminent; 200,000 Jews were murdered.
We survivors must ensure Zwartendijk receives an equal place in history otherwise we’re perpetuating a lie & injustice. I was lucky that my father told me about “the Philips Radio Man,” or I would also not have known about Zwartendijk. No one knew his name or how to find him after the war, incl. me, even though I was living an hour from him in NL. Fortunately this spring a book about Jan Zwartendijk, written by Dutch author Jan Brokken, will be published in English.
28
A couple years ago while I was riding the Red Line in Chicago a fight broke out between 2 guys. I ignored it and continued reading my book. I have chosen to intervene in similar circumstances in the past, but having seen the beginning of the fight, I thought both guys were idiots and not worth bothering with. As I continued reading my book, I heard a new voice in the noise. A guy far smaller than the guys fighting had jumped in between the 2 gladiators and was trying to break up the fight. I could also see the other passengers becoming more alarmed, so I put down my book and jumped in between the fighters. Between the little guy and myself we managed to stop the fight. The two wannabe gladiators got off at the next stop. A woman came up to me as the train moved on and thanked me. I wasn't sure what to say in response. I don't think I would have jumped in if the little guy wasn't already in the middle of the fight. I think my motivation for acting was fear that someone on the train would pull out a gun and embarrassment that the little guy was risking his neck while I was reading a book. We need upstanders because their actions can sometimes embarrass a bystander to join them.
23
"A couple years ago while I was riding the Red Line in Chicago a fight broke out between 2 guys."
Didn't anyone pull out a phone and call the police? Or start recording the fight with their phone camera?
Or course, that scenario his hardly comparable to one in which the police are actually working for a totalitarian state.
2
The act of voting is one of the most upstanding things an average, non-heroic citizen can do. Not bothering to vote involves taking on the role of bystander. With a large number of scoundrels up for re-election in a few months, America cannot afford to be a population of bystanders. If outvoted by a minority of haters, the bystanders would be abetting in the dismantling of democracy. The failure of citizens of good will to exercise their franchise in the upcoming election could result in the disaster Edmund Burke was warning us against.
15
"It never works to participate in the terrible thing in order to try to make it less bad. "
Tell that to Kelley et. al.
9
Read Daniel Goldhagen's "Hitler's Willing Executioners"
9
"“When madmen are elected, it’s time to leave the country,”
I would say it's TIME to get rid of the madmen.
I've been to Auschwitz (and Bergen-Belson, Birkenau, Dachau), watched Albert Speer pompously driven down a Heidelberg street after his Spandau "time", and see what's happening here and now. Hitler was insane. Our traitor in the WH is ALSO INSANE. We, at least, have a chance to rid ourselves of this madman. VOTE!!!
24
Kudos to the author for calling out the moral cowardice of Poland during World War II. Poland's collaboration with the Nazis has never been reckoned with and it is even outlawed to mention it there. Many Jews lost their businesses, homes and lives because their Polish neighbors turned them in due to hatred and greed.
19
Wasn’t there even a pogrom against Jews in immediate post WW2 Poland?
2
@Wayne
Sir, with all respect, you have been misinformed....
Do the right thing because its the right thing to do. You do not get a pass for horror like the murders of innocent men, women and children because of Ms. Weinberg's logic. To fight tyranny, you have to start early...
6
Rivka, listen to your mother. You *should* be ashamed. You need to find the stones to be as good as she has been and is.
Nice idea you have there that you can avert catastrophe and horrific genocide by 'not welcoming the murderers and not helping them organize oppression or finding a way to make what happens 'less terrible' and you don't even have to turn in people."
However, as we have seen, that is NOT ENOUGH.
It wasn't enough before WWII or during WWII or after, as in now when racism and anti-semitism has been set free to fester and spread under the likes of the current White House.
We all must find the courage to be the heroes we need today.
Get a spine, Rivka. And show your friends and family and students exactly how they can acquire the character your mother has and you should have, as well.
7
As I read this I’m reminded of the movie “Cosely Watched Trains” about how courageous Czechs did everything they could to throw dirt onto the gears of the Nazi machine. The German occupiers quickly learned they could not turn their backs for a second or risk an exploding train. Remember also that European appeasement led to the giving of Czechoslovakia over to Hitler. Just across the border the Slovaks practiced appeasement by becoming a vassal nation for Hitler. When the Slovak people yearned to split from Czechoslovakia in the early 90’s the patron saint of those demonstrations was an SS murderer... that fact outraged and saddenned most Czechs to such an extent that they didn’t resist the split. Both nations are now linked again as members of the European Union. Yes... there are many ways to resist. There is no shortage of examples in history of those who ignored the suffering of others only to be later be comsumed by the same flames. So when POTUS proclaims that in Charlotte there are “good people on both sides” we should all shudder.
12
Let’s not forget it started with people being divided into givers and takers. That is why they went first for the mentally ill and developmentally disabled. When you hear about people being a drain on society, takers etc. start worrying. Too late once it’s about ethnic groups and gays.
28
I don’t think this writer really understands that in Nazi Germany there was no room for neutrality. Fail to pledge allegiance to the Nazi party and you were immediately suspect, costing you your position and possibly your life. Fail to inform on your neighbors and you could be deemed subversive. The environment was so poisonous that “not helping” was an indictment. Knowing this, many people sought to preserve themselves by casting innocents into the Nazi dragnet. However reluctantly they did so, it was wrong and they bear responsibility for it.
Ordinary people are often inspired to heroism by the upstanders. I believe that everyone is capable of sacrificing for what’s right. This author takes a dim view of human beings’ capacity for bravery. Just like evil is contagious so is truth telling and faith.
Resistance to evil has to begin early, before the roundups and camps, before the fear becomes so palpable that self preservation feels like the only option.
22
@Cecelie Berry
So true that is why we are fighting so hard against this administration. Listening to the democratic senators tonight asking for the white house evidence and seeing the GOP lawyers lying to the Chief Justice we can see who is for democracy and who is not.
We are on that slippery slope we already have children in concentration camps, we have babies pulled from their mothers arms. We had stop & Frisk under Bloomberg and Rudi. We have houses of worships being targeted. We have a pretend SS guard in the white house working on immigration policies, this can not stand
We are going backward vs forward. We must never forget and not be part of an evil administration. Everyone needs to vote, pay attention get off of social media and fight for our democracy, Register people to vote, show up at GOP town hall meetings let your voices be heard.
Thank you for sharing your painful story and realize that we will continue to fight on for freedom.
We all can be heroes.
11
My Oma and Opa presciently left Germany in 1924. At that point, Hitler was seen as a bit of a buffoon, having attempted the Beer Hall Putsch (worth Googling) in late ‘23.
During my childhood, I had the great fortune of hearing my Opa’s stories. He’d grown up near Weimar, and by the time he and my Oma left, artists and intellectuals were already being derided as illegitimate. He’d recount how little resistance there was, and how folks just hoped that Hitler would make Germany great again after the horrible economic times in the late teens. Then he’d weep at what eventually became of his town and country, friends and family. In some way, he felt that it happened on his watch.
My Opa has been gone for some time now, but I am sure he would tell us all that this is the time to be an “upstander.”
19
"It never works to participate in the terrible thing in order to try to make it less bad."
Maybe life is a bit more complicated than that. What of Oskar Schindler's famous "list"? Schindler cooperated with the Third Reich in the systematic exploitation of Jewish workers in his factories. And yet, in the process, he saved perhaps a thousand people from extermination in Nazi death camps. He enabled a corrupt system for personal benefit while simultaneously circumventing the bureaucracy from within.
Was he a principled, idealistic "hero"? A pragmatic businessman? Or some complex and contradictory combination? Like those he exploited and those he saved, he deserves to be seen as human. We all do.
9
I can think of a number of actual genocides in process today, from the massive Chinese effort, replete with concentration camps, to destroy the Uighur people, culture, language and history to the continuing genocide against the Tibetan people that's been going on since Chairman Mao conquered Tibet in 1949, to the Myanmar "ethnic cleansing" (I hate that term because ethnic removal has nothing to do with cleaning) of its Muslim Rohingya population.
And, of course, there's the on-again off-again genocidal war in Sudan of tribe against tribe, the Brazilian war against the indigenous in the Amazon who are getting in the way of "progress", the century-long Turkish war against the Kurds, on and on. I'm sure I missed a few.
As the world goes more Trumpian, the forced removal of 300,000 Kurds from their homeland by Erdogan barely gets a mention or even any space in the back pages of those newspapers struggling to stay in existence despite the right-wing onslaught.
Climate change won't get us, humans will.
12
A few words about Poland.
About 3,500,000 Jews lived in Poland prior to World War II; only about 25,00-30,000 currently reside there.
Large numbers of Poles were enthusiastic murderers and robbers of Jews during the Hitler-time and its aftermath, and many remain proud and active anti-Semites today. Hitler lusted after a Europe that was entirely devoid of Jews and, with a great deal of assistance from Polish helpers, he came very close to achieving this.
Yes -- as Yad Vashem and the Holocaust Museum in Washington have amply documented -- there were a considerable number of brave and honorable exceptions, but they were vastly outnumbered by the gangsters, murderers and common criminals among them.
Virtually alone among European nations, Poland has done virtually nothing to return private property stolen from Jews by Poles during and after the war.
Poland today remains a backward country when it comes to Jews, with some of its people still digging around for buried treasure in old Jewish cemeteries, and large numbers of its people still blaming Jews for what happened to them.
https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/confronting-anti-semitism-in-poland-today-memoir
20
The Orthodox Church, in particular, resisted the Nazis and were a large part of the resistance in Bulgaria. In Greece too the Orthodox Church played a roll in resisting. Archbishop Damaskinos Papandreou is the primary example there.
From his wikipedia article: "Damaskinos first spoke out of behalf of the Jews in March 1943 when he published public letters addressed to Prime Minister Konstantinos Logothetopoulos of the Hellenic State and Günther Altenburg of the Auswärtiges Amt, which together with the Wehrmacht administered Greece. Using his moral authority as archbishop of Athens, Damaskinos also had 19 distinguished Greeks from the arts, the law, academia and business worlds co-signed his letter......according to the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, the appeal of Damaskinos and his fellow Greeks is unique as no document similar to the protest against the Nazis during World War II has come to light in any other European country.
Damaskinos went on to publish the letter, even though the local Schutzstaffel (SS) commander, Jürgen Stroop, threatened to execute him by firing squad. Damaskinos's famous response to him was:
“According to the traditions of the Greek Orthodox Church, our prelates are hanged, not shot. Please respect our traditions!"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damaskinos_of_Athens
5
6 million Jews were murdered. Over a million of them were children.
I'd say a great deal of indifference was required to achieve that. A great deal indeed.
15
I think the writer is complicating issues that need lesser complication! As academics seem are prone to doing.
I think it’s more sensible to say some was perhaps indifference and perhaps some active collaboration and help.
We can’t ask the people who were there back then, we are left with drawing conclusions as best we can and applying whatever sense we have.
There was barely any clarity or agreement on some of these questions even back then, so we can scarcely claim to have some now I think.
Either way, it seems to me indifference can enable it. Most people simply have to be “busy” with their “work” being “good citizens” “obeying the law,” for such atrocities to happen.
For me, I think it was more due to indifference. Collaboration actively also helped, but I think indifference lent the silent approval needed for collaboration!
Indifference I think called on people to be “smart enough” not to be involved, not to “play hero.”
I think I see the same indifference today! It’s not to send people to the camps for their deaths these days. Today it’s to depot and harass and terrorize some.
To me, the last three years have taught me that it was exactly indifference that enabled Hitler!!! I’ve learned that silent support otherwise called indifference was really what made it possible!
6
This is an interesting text on the Holocaust, and well-written.
Yet, the most popular comments are those from rabid 'liberals' who translate this into the November elections, presumably seeing themselves as victims and Reps as, what, fascists, killers, you name it. Just how deranged and deeply rooted in hatred those 'liberals' are ...
2
Trumps action and the cynical sycophancy of his enablers are exactly what Hanna Arendt was referring to in "Eichmann in Jerusalem- the Banality of Evil."
Think not? Look how far we've come in 3 yrs. Michael Lewis lays it out in "The Fifth Risk. Thousands of examples-Children in cages, removing SNAP from the hungry, and the classic NOAA reduced to an idiot drawing on a weather map with a sharpie.
10
Thank you for deflating the world of aphorisms in which the minds of children are bridled with deceitful, corrupted thinking.
1
This article is way too abstract and in the clouds. The Nazi State and its accomplices murdered 6 million Jews. After World War II there were 3.5 European Jews who were alive, 2 million in the Soviet Union. That the Holocaust did not claim 9.5 million Jews was not due to individual "upstanders" or little acts of "resistance" by well-meaning people, but to the Allied armies, and especially the Soviet Red Army, which had the power, forces, organization, and brutality to kill millions of German soldiers and destroy the Third Reich.
Transposed to the modern day, it means that we have to be appropriately radical as reality. Tweets and little acts of kindness and walking in a Women's March and even voting will not be enough to stop the emerging fascism of Trump and especially the Republican Party and their corporate backers who will still be with us after Trump is gone. This is going to be a long, hard slog of a struggle, and at some point we're going to need millions of organized and mobilized people who refuse to conduct business as usual.
16
@R. Seltzer And yet, the Red Army isn't going to defeat the Republicans this time. The historical situation is just too different. It's true that it's going to be a long struggle, but in fact it will consist exactly of things like the Women's March, and Black Lives Matter, and all kinds of local elections and resistance organizations... and there will probably never be a victory in the sense of an end point.
Unfortunately, quite a few people will get "organized and mobilized" into pointless and dangerous armed militias who will probably be ranging around for quite a while, with their visions of ethnic nationalism and fanatical programs... they could be a real problem.
But I think the real problem that you are seeing is that in the days of the Nazis, the evil looked like you could point to it on a map, and say, we must eradicate THEM. And that was doable. But now we see Trump supporters in every town, and Republicanism built into our way of life, and similar patterns all over the world. It's not exactly Nazism, but it's more insidious. And meanwhile, we should really be turning our attention to climate change...
2
I hope I would behave as Prof. Weinberg's mother did. The fact is that anyone whose hand wasn't raised in a Nazi salute at a parade or who didn't display a swastika in Hitler's Germany was suspect. Once people take little steps to go along with a majority or even a sizeable minority who are advocating hateful policies, it is easy to continue down that slippery slope. Why do you suppose so many Germans after WWII denied any knowledge of concentration camps and the Final Solution for Jews? They had convinced themselves that their Jewish neighbours had been rounded up for "relocation" in the East. Even if they didn't loot the Jews' homes or businesses, they were aware that looting took place and did nothing. How much easier was it to tell themselves that the Jews must have done something to deserve being arrested? Ultimately, we all have to confront a terrible decision to do what is right or to look the other way and allow wrong to be done. We can't avoid our complicity in a crime that we know is taking place because to act is dangerous. We are still complicit.
7
Never forget that for decades up until just after WWII US military intelligence kept lists of Jews, and colored maps of predominantly Jewish neighborhoods, all for rounding up in the event of some political 'emergency.' US military attaches were instructed to develop lists of Jews in foreign countries. Leading US officers openly sympathized with the Nazis. Anti-semitism was officially part of the 'educational core' taught at American war colleges, and permeated the officer corps well into the 1970s. Jewish survivors of the death camps were cursorily designated DPs (displaced persons) by the US military, which treated them with extreme contempt and suspicion, herding to camps, denying them rations. The US and European governments were happy to deport the survivors to Israel, fulfilling in their own way the Final Solution of 'ridding Europe' of the Jewish Problem.
Read "The Jewish Threat" by Joseph W. Bendersky.
7
Bystander, cooperator, collaborator. I prefer the term “enabler.”
June 16, 2015
“Ladies and gentlemen, I am officially running for President of the United States.”
“When Mexico sends its people, ………..They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists, ……….”
Yep, he really said that, right from the start.
I prefer the term “enabler,” a label I would give to 53 Republican Senators today, including Susan Collins.
12
Right-wing elements in Germany today are using the cudgel of the Nazi past to stand against a woman's right to have an abortion.
There is not even a remote moral equivalency between, on the one hand, a hate-based policy organization bent on world domination; and, on the other hand, a woman being asked to give up her life, her livelihood and her future to do something with her body that she doesn't want to do.
If men could get pregnant, access to safe, legal abortion would be the 11th Commandment!
4
"The Road to Auschwitz Wasn’t Paved With Indifference"
Yes, indeed. It was paved with optimists who convinced themselves that Hitler is not going to let things get out of hand. After all, he presented himself as a "true nationalist" he wanted prosperity and national security for his country and, first and foremost, he wanted to "Make Germany Great Again" (Please see 1).
1. www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/elect.htm
10
"To kill people living within a population, you have to be told who and where they are. You don’t just march into Poland or France from Germany and magically know who to round up and where they live. "
IBM. Without IBM machines and their continued maintenace and opertional support right up to June 1945, the Nazi's would never have been able to murder millions.
The census bureau's in most European countries, with the exception of France, where run on IBM machines. Those bureaus's and their detailed information on the population was how the Nazi's were able to round up millions.
This was all spelled out in the Nuremberg trials, it wasn't indifference or anit-semitism from the locals, it was the detailed information the census bureaus had collected.
'IBM and the Holocaust' is a book everybody should read to learn of IBM's role in the mass murder. The rounding up, the transporation and the operation of the death camps (which IBM gladly continued to help even after been told what they were doing there) could not have been possible without IBM and it's US based management's support. It's all documented and to this day IBM are still blocking access to all it's records.
6
@P
IBM refused to acknowledge there behavior at a board meeting ten years ago. The board members to this day refuse to address it. Every time an IBM commercial is aired, I think of the individuals who died because of the greed of IBM.
3
Comparing the Judenrat position of trying to mitigate evil and harm under unimaginable terror in the ghetto with the German Judge who rushed to 'lessen' the Nuremberg Race Laws is a false and dangerous comparison. The Judenrat members were already victims and knew that defying the nazi order meant death and thus required heroic action from the start. Take note of Adam Cerniakov head of the Judenrat in the Warsaw Ghetto who 'redeemed' himself in suicide rather than send children to their deaths by order of the Nazis. The Nazi lawmaker simply followed his own ideology ad absurdum. Shameful comparison that offers no moral lesson to a reader today. Shameful.
3
If you see forces of the government imprisoning and killing your neighbors, your friends, your family, and you do nothing ? You're not as bad as the forces doing the government's bidding, you are worse.
8
I wonder how many of the critical commenters here themselves have the courage to take the risks they are recommending to others, to do more than refuse to participate in evil.
There are too many self-righteous people reading the New York Times.
5
@Taykadip I'm a critical commenter here today because my grandfather and others in his family survived the Armenian genocide. I know full well of what I speak. It's not self-righteousness, it's being human. It's seeing others as fellow humans. Be Upstanders. Everyone must be Upstanders.
6
Upstander vs bystander is not that simple. Depends on the circumstances and the geography of the time. Being now an upstander against Trump's repugnant presidency is far from being as physically dangerous as being openly anti-Nazi under Hitler. At worst you could feel threatened at your job if your boss has different political ideas and abuses his power. But you won't end up, you and your family, in a concentration camp or gas chamber.
4
Years ago, the following was suggested as an inscription to the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, then under construction:
Look and Ponder, Learn and Pray
Above All Remember Well
That Silence and Indifference
Fuel the Fires of Living Hell.
10
I don't get this argument. If your village has 500 bystanders and one Nazi collaborator, that's enough for the Nazis to round up everyone they need to round up. Sorry, but somebody is going to have to stop standing by and either hide the Jews or kill the Nazi.
Not committing genocide is easy, sure, but that's a strategy that 100% of the population needs to adopt.
4
The perversion that was the Holocaust lives . It lives in the heart of every Jewish child who has that horrifying awakening , when like a young precocious Susan Sontag they see the photos and realize that the people of a highly educated culture wanted to murder every Jew on Earth. The frightening realization that if they had won and had the chance that’s just what they would have done . And the even more terrible realization that so few tried to stop it and so many helped it with an obsessive fervor. It breaks the heart this terrible reality that people can be so cruel, so merciless that they could kill every Jewish child they got their hands on and they were only stopped from completing the job by their reach. Its a terrible assault on the senses for a young Jewish child , no older than Anne Frank to discover this and to have to come to grips with such meaningless death. Every Jew born after the Holocaust holds a sadness in their hearts, it never leaves .
“Ashes of those who were burnt on the camps
Bodies stabbed, shot, beaten , maimed in the camps
Resume to me what befell you , O allow me to remember you.
I do not think your ashes will nourish and rectify
anything, I do not think
your
deaths had any meaning,
or that any good will be seen served from them:
Forgive me for not having the power- had I the right - to transmute them”
-Susan Sontag
7
This makes intuitive sense, but seeing the numbers validates what we always suspected: The Poles were notorious haters, and the rest of the nations you list where Jews were wiped out were havens for aggressive antisemitism.
The wonder is the places where Jews were not so hated: What made Bulgaria and Denmark different?
When "Hitler's Willing Accomplices" came out, the story of those who protected Jews disturbed people in France, Germany and Poland more than even the stories of murder, because it suggested those willing accomplices had choices they could have made but did not.
One reason I've thought Trump cannot do here what Hitler did in Germany is the vocal opposition here.
There are groups which have been more silent than I would have expected: Where are the Black leaders decrying from their bully pulpits the anti Muslim and anti Hispanic Trump rants?
Black comedians have noted: "Whew! It's their turn. At least nobody is doing us any more!"
But there's a dark truth in that riff.
American Jews have been prominent in decrying anti Muslim bans and diatribes. Presumably, they took the lesson you are preaching.
9
Sometimes being a temporary bystander allows one to help. In the Spring of 1939 in Vienna, when most family members had already escaped, a close friend was stopped on Gumpendorfer Strasse by police, asked if he was Jewish and pulled into the car. He shouted his name and address, asking that someone notify his wife. Two separate bystanders did so. She told my grandfather who took a briefcase full of cash to Dachau where he bribed enough Nazis to get Fritz Neumann out and onto a train to England
6
One correction: heroism can be taught. All cultures have tales and myths about heroes. We have Hollywood. Heroism is not something that can be "taught" in a classroom, but it can be instilled in a population so that some will step forward when needed. It is a necessary counterweight to what the American-born daughter of a member of Lithuania's Hitler Youth said to me: "Everyone was joining it."
5
@John Walker
Go to a trump hate rally, everyone is joining in
4
Don’t wait till they come for you.
6
That's why a couple of my favorite Bible personalities are Shifra and Puah, midwives in the time when Pharaoh ordered the killing of all Jewish male babies. David
2
The road to all the death camps and killing fields was much larger than anti-Semitism. The original bully-boy mentality of the Germans was leading to the genocides of all non-Aryans. WW2 was due specifically to Hitler, and those who failed to recognize the danger. The rulers of Germany would not accept that the uncouth, clownish, bigoted Hitler was dangerous, and let him have the chancellorship, convinced they could control him or that he would soon quit. Sound familiar? Popular support was facilitated by the German master-race mindset--note the earlier similar Herero and Armenian genocides in the same century, only enlarged later by industrialized killing of the Jews and others. Add the hate-filled propaganda; the unchecked criminality of Hitler in the earlier decade; the fear of socialism that led industrialists to finance him. These are all paralleled today, yet most people won't recognize the takeover. The rule of Hitler began with the demolition of a democratic government, then immediate internment, torture, and murder of political opponents and intellectuals/critics. All preceded by a cult of young ne'er-do-wells easily trained to mayhem. Currently, Republican Senators want to hand our democracy to Trump, despite his life-long criminality; persecute opponents and honest critics. The Right took over the rural media decades ago.
The Holocaust/WW2 could have been stopped--is it too late to stop what is happening now? Sinclair Lewis, you were correct--it can happen here.
9
This piece grossly misstates historical reality. Bulgarian and Italy are held up as examples where many Jews survived - ignoring the fact that the reason why is that both Bulgaria and Italy maintained their independence from Nazi Germany (as Nazi allies). Poland is held up as an example of a society where most Jews were annihilated, supposedly because of Polish anti-semitism - ignoring the fact that the Nazi terror in Poland was ten times more intense than, say, in France or Holland. Poland was one of the few occupied countries where sheltering a single Jew would lead to the automatic execution of the entire host family. Please, get your historic facts straight before you start blaming the victims of Nazism for Nazi crimes.
4
when the jews were abandoned by the rest of society , they were easy prey
when the world turned a blind eye to the plight of the jews, they were even easier prey
since the jews had their own country , they did not need others to save them
the is the key....
never depend on others.....altruism, virtue, and kindness are very thin safety nets, as jewish history clearly and continually shows
3
The 2,139 transit visas Sugihara issued to Jews in Kaunas would have been worthless pieces of paper without the fake destination visas to Curaçao issued by Dutch Hon. Consul Jan Zwartendijk who initiated the scheme. My grandfather (visas 1025 & 1026) was a recipient of both.
While there are Sugihara movies, museums & statues, Zwartendijk’s equal role is rarely mentioned, suggesting Sugihara acted alone. This is a myth. One could not have succeeded without the other. These 2 lionhearted men (who never met) both responded to the crisis at their doorstep. Zwartendijk was issuing fake visas 5-10 weeks after Nazis had invaded NL, defying the German ruling govt. at great peril. He took enormous risks, jeopardizing his family. The Soviets could have sent them to Siberia. Back in NL, during the 4 yrs of Nazi occupation, the Germans were arresting anybody who had helped Jews! For those who failed to flee Lithuania, tragedy was imminent; 200,000 Jews were murdered.
We survivors must ensure Zwartendijk receives an equal place in history, otherwise we’re perpetuating a lie & great injustice. Had I not been lucky enough that my father told me about “the Philips Radio Man,” I too would not have known about Zwartendijk. No one even knew his name or how to find him after the war, including me, even though I was living in The Netherlands, an hour away from him. Fortunately, this spring, a book about the life of Zwartendijk, written by Dutch author Jan Brokken, will be published in English.
3
The cooperation of even some Jews during the Holocaust seems to imply that such atrocities happen not just because of hate but because not enough people know to question power, to be stingy with it, to severely restrict access to it, and to seriously vet anyone we hand power to, police to president. It would also help if people would quit sending their DNA to big pharm, which will no doubt eventually be forced to share the data, paving the way to a much easier next Holocaust, one that doesn't even require a family ancestry kit to establish who great grandma was, genetically speaking...
3
In America during the 1930s, the appeasement of Hitler, the isolationism, resulted of course in the horrors of WWII and the Holocaust, that the appeasers and isolationists did not even dream would be the consequences of their isolationism and appeasement of evil. There is a lesson there for the isolationists of today. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, listen up!!!
1
It' a thoughtful piece, and then a poster directed us to "Hitler's Willing Executioners" and then my thoughts went to the Virginia Capital and the armed men there yesterday; are they just another brigade, or are they the next in the line of "willing executioners" who claim a bogus moral ascendancy for their ideas over those of any others?
1
No sense trying to teach people to be upstanders if you simply conclude and assert that they can't do it. What a fatalistic and flawed bunch of "philosophy"! This column is full of blanket declarations of what the author considers true or false, with little to no backup, leading to a conclusion of....don't bother anyone, just don't actively collaborate and maybe it will be alright. Please just don't ask anyone to aspire to anything more.
You're mother is right, Dr. Weinberg, and you should feel ashamed. Sorry to have bothered reading this drivel. I hope your mother didn't.
4
Although collaboration was/is a problem, the underlying problem is lack of education and ignorance about how power works in the government. The Nazi dismissed all local police and put their own in to all local police stations within a very short period. What would you have done had your child been kicked out of school, and you and your wife lost their job?
1
After 75 years we have learned very little about Fascism and Dictators, to the point that many would doubt these visages ever becoming existential here in the U.S. when in fact both are clearly in our midst. The corporatocracy of fascism has been extant here for generations; this was challenged by the New Deal which has been under attack since its inception. As we have a Senate that has made clear that a President is above the law we have turned a sharp corner to full autocracy and torn out the guts of our constitution. Indifference, the roadway to hell is paved not with good intentions but indifference and that is what a vast majority of our electorate are in holding Trump harmless for his abuses of power and other crimes.
Hitler did not start out with the final solution and Trump did not start out to destroy our constitution but he will if it suits his vanity and with our Senate to aid and abet him, who knows?
5
Hitler joined his first political group known as DAP in 1919. At Hitler's insistence the party's name was changed in 1920 to NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers Party).
In it's promise to undo certain clauses of the Treaty of Versailles NSDAP pledged to …"MAKE GERMANY GREAT AGAIN."
Mr. Trump is more dangerous than people realize.
Hitler's plan was to Make Germany Great Again by declaring that Jewry (as he called it) was a race as opposed to what it really is, a religion. He further ordained that only natural raced people of Germany had rights, could vote, hold jobs, continue to live in Germany. Eventually Hitler decided to exterminate the Jews. In the late 1920's Trump's father was arrested in New York as a participant in a Klan march.
Now Trump wants to make America great again by building a racist wall - keep the people of color out and remove people of color who are here.
History is repeating itself. Trump has declared out loud that he can do anything he wants under Article 2. His lawyers are arguing the same today, in the impeachment trial.
The question today is not about indifference. The majority of Americans are against Trump. The question today is of complicity by Mitch McConnell and the Republicans who cower under him in the Senate. To reject the path Trump and the Republicans are paving it is going to take heroics and votes.
9
We live in a society that tolerates and even permits a tremendous amount of petty theft. What hope is there for upstanding moral acts from individuals when so many people will toss away their dignity for the unknown contents of a random amazon package and believe they did nothing wrong? Imagine what such people would be capable of in genuine crisis! Remember all the eager local collaborators of Nazi occupied Europe? I submit that simply " doing nothing to help them along" is not a worthwhile argument when so many human beings are craven, opportunistic and vile creatures of action.
1
I read the piece and was disappointed by the almost childish
synopsis of life in Germany in the 1930's---the Brown Shirts and the Hitler Youth ran freely among crowds at parades smacking in the heads with socks full of sand and ripping purses off women. they sat perched at the train station robbing and plundering.
Faculty members turned other professors in for vague reasons---some jews! It was about survival and the belief, again childish, that things would settle down and life would
return to normalcy.
As violence grew, the normalcy became a matter of survival and obedience, complacency became a crime in itself, and people were all pressed to obey and serve------words hardly mattered, actions were the measure of loyalty, not words, and to say you agreed was simply inadequate, you and your loved ones were now required to do and act in ways that supported other people, not their family nor themselves.
3
When thousands of people are allowed by law to show up carrying weapons, including weapons of war, dressed in camouflage and all sorts of accouterments of war as if they are hungering for a chance to shoot and kill people, then, then the nation in which that is happening is sick, very sick.
It is but an explosion from a nation in which mobs of men in brown shirts stormed the streets, burned, beat and looted as they paved the road to hell, to Auschwitz.
We are already on the road to Auschwitz. Like the conservatives in Germany in December 1932 and January 1933 who made a deal with the devil only to be consumed by him, the Republican Party long since made a deal with the devil represented by the armed mob in Richmond and by its prophet, Trump.
6
This profound writing pushed me to think, more. Hannah Arendt struggled to understand how others she knew allowed the atrocities to happen, coming to the conclusion that people "did not think". She was a brilliant philosopher. I am still struggling to understand. I do not think I will ever understand the murder of innocent persons at the behest of political groups.
But today, I do not think I can be a thinking bystander. I cannot stand by and allow Trump to decimate our Constitution and democracy. I will make phone calls, address envelopes, fax my Congresspersons. I will get out the vote. Otherwise, I am responsible for what he does.
7
@Kathryn
We are all in it together to save our democracy. Thank you we cant lose if we all work together.
I think we don't know (though, we hope we might) if we have the stuff to be heroes unless we are called upon to do so and we actually do so. I think we can more likely decide in advance not to collaborate with killers and bigots and not to forget the difference between right and wrong as so many of our fellow citizens (to certain baseball players and nearly all Republicans) have. This article makes a lot of sense.
1
Sometimes "doing nothing" does contribute to the evil, because no one can really do nothing. The writer's mother's work situation was likely just such a case.
But sometimes "doing nothing" by refusing to participate is enough.
I have been in both situations.
I resigned from a job when I received multiple reliable reports that indicated a long-term culture of sexual harassment by superiors at my place of work. To stay and do nothing would have been to allow these people to continue profiting from my skills. It derailed my career trajectory for almost a decade. And I would do it again in a heartbeat.
I also did not intervene in a fistfight downtown near my work recently, other than to call 911. Wasn't sure I would be able to stop it, had no idea what it was about, and no clue whether they or their friends had weapons, or their state of mind, etc.
Do what you can to make the world better, or at least not worse, and to preserve your sanity and moral integrity.
3
I first thought the author was talking about Israel's oppression against Palestine, while the world sits back and watches. Indeed, President Trump ratified its normalcy by giving Netanyahu a green light to continue bulldozing, evicting, arresting and building, this after moving the capital to Jerusalem, and then issuing the December 11 presidential Executive Order, sanctioning any university member and the institution, for equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism and suppressing the BDS human rights initiative.
4
What is the key to stop future genocide?
It is important that each of us need to go above treating tribal instincts--including religious, political, ethnic, sexual --as the base arbiter of behavior.
It is also vital that each of us need to put financial gain below humanity, comfort below righteousness....
But without a doubt, the key is for each one of us to accept that we are capable genocide.
2
Never mind the brave things, we are asked at the very least to bear witness to the suffering of others. Yet, do we?
A fund-raising letter from the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC came to me with a thought-provoking insert about Mr. Albert Garih who survived the Holocaust. Next to two photographs of his from childhood and today, it read : "You help us tell stories the world needs to hear. Will you tell mine?"
If we do not so much as bear witness to atrocity which is the most basic thing that we can do in extremis, that is, tell what is happening, to whom and where, indeed, when we actively deny the atrocity, or trivialize it, how will we ever do the demanding things like sheltering the persecuted or assist in the long, arduous work of their rehabilitation?
2
Trump has instigated and condoned so much incivility and hatred during his last campaign and during his term as president that voting against him in November constitutes a moral stand and a vital step toward quelling the flames of hatred.
7
Profound. Thank you.
And God Bless you and your mother. What a lady.
6
Rwanda, Khmer Rouge, Stalin's gulag archipelago, Stasi and others all within a lifetime. The Nasi's didn't corner the market on genocide. This level of mass murder wasn't halted by some professor of philosophy opining on heroism, nor will it be prevented in some future.
Bush and his neocons invaded Iraq while good men stood by and voted against their so-called conscience for fear of being weak or unpatriotic. A mass murder took place thereafter and we all have some blood on our hands.....today; not some eulogized past.
5
It would be good if scholars of the Holocaust and WWII would stop blindly and incorrectly including France in the pro-active, collaborating perpetrators list. 95% of Lithuanian jews were killed, roughly 80% in Hungary (which was the two examples you gave). Yet 75% of Jews survived in France. There are plenty of excellent literature explaining why including the recent book by Jacques Semelin "La Survie des Juifs en France 1940-1944" which is prefaced by Jacques Klarsfeld (the French equivalent to Simon Wiesenthal). It does not take away from some of the tragic events that happen and this should not be reduced to statistics. However, the French population reacted differently and considered the Jewish population to be part of the fabric of society outside of what the occupied French state did.
1
The author's description of the relative good fortune of Bulgaria's Jews is missing important details. The Jews of Thrace and Macedonia (previously Bulgarian ruled territories) were deported without disruption. The Jews of Bulgaria proper were saved from the deportation orders of Eichmann because of people in government and in the Church who did risk their lives and fortunes to oppose government plans for deportation.
Dimitar Peshev, Vice-Chair of the Bulgarian National Assembly, wrote a letter to the Chair of the National Assembly opposing the government's actions to collaborate with Eichmann and found 42 members of the majority party to co-sign it. Prime Minister Filov of Bulgaria was angered by the letter and wanted to personally humiliate Peshev. Peshev was stripped of his duties as Vice-Chair and not allowed to publicly defend himself.
The Metropolitan (analogous to an arch-bishop of a metropolis) of Plovdiv (Bugaria's second largest city), also found out about the plans to deport Jews. He sent a telegram opposing the move to Bulgaria's king, interceded with government officials and allowed Jews to take refuge in his home.
In the capital, Sofia, numerous individuals intervened with friends and relatives to protect the Jews.
If not for the courage of these individuals, the Jews of Bulgaria surely would not have been saved. Morality can be learned. Details above from the book: The Fragility of Goodness: Why Bulgaria's Jews Survived the Holocaust.
5
The mother is the one with courage. The author has found an intellectual justification for being non-collaborative.
I am afraid this writer has not read Hannah Arendt. The story told in Eichmann in Jerusalem is much more disturbing than simple anti-Semites leading to the destruction of a people. I would simply ask people go to their local library and procure a copy.
I recently met a woman who was a German who was a teenager during World War 2. She married an American and is living out her life in Kansas City. She wanted me to know very specifically how awful the American and British bombing was during the war---a fact, however little press it tends to get anymore---and that, to paraphrase her, that "Jews were much better treated in Germany before the war than people thought." While I was aghast at that suggestion, I saw no point in arguing with a woman almost 90 years old.
How many people do we simply overlook in our every day lives? How often do we degrade the humanity of other people? When we judge others as good and bad, how easy it is to stigmatize the supposed bad.
3
On a visit to the Holocaust museum in Washington, DC I noticed that the line was sometimes made up of three or four individuals beside each other. At one point there was an announcement to form twos. People automatically began to form in pairs. The voice of this unknown authority was heeded. It is easy enough to see how this worked during the Holocaust both among the Jews and their neighbors.
Next time the murders come ???? Do we really want to wait till murders come into power. Author seems confused. There are lot of things people can do which would be lead to being an up-standers. Resistance to injustice, Women's march for example, doesn't need heroism.
2
How is it possible that this opinion piece does not mention China? How?
1
So heroism springs forth, naturally and randomly? I doubt that very much.
Moral codes have varied widely across cultures and epochs.
So, people learn a moral code, often from their family, but sometimes from other people. It could be a moral code of hate, racism and xenophobia. Or it could be a moral code of courage, selflessness and heroism. Or it could be a moral code of selfishness, apathy, and risk-aversion.
Ms. Weinberg's mother learned a moral code from Chiune Sugihara, and it led her to selflessly and courageously stand up for an unfairly fired colleague. Good for her. Too bad Ms. Weinberg didn't learn from her mother's admirable example.
Plainly, the Nazi collaborators were far worse than the bystanders. But if the collaborators had learned to be bystanders, and the bystanders had learned to be heroic, perhaps the Holocaust could have been avoided.
Finally, I'd note that in today's age, we are all aware of distant genocides, such as ISIS perpetrated against the Yazidi. Did our bystanding save lives?
5
I can't stop thinking about what the author's paternal grandfather said: "when madmen are elected, it's time to leave the country."
5
I have chills reading this article. Today, there’s an article in the National Catholic Reporter about an elderly Catholic priest being arrested for protesting Trump’s family separations and child incarcerations at our southern border. Reading the comments about the arrested priest, many of my fellow Catholics sided with Trump, saying “these people shouldn’t come here illegally, so lock them up!” We are on a very slippery slope in America today, hate is an epidemic and it’s everywhere. The lies Frump tells about undocumented immigrants, people who are “different” etc., are dangerous.
“Those who make you believe absurdities, will make you commit atrocities.” ~ Voltaire
3
No. I will continue to teach my child that “the only thing necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing”. Inaction is, in itself, collaboration. Our national leadership is spreading hate. Silence is assent that emboldens the haters and aids the spread of that hate. Speak up; make known that these views are not ok. Make it known that compassion and ethics matter. It’s a shocking, dismaying idea that being a bystander is ok, as long as one isn’t a collaborator. What an awful, cowardly way of thinking and living. It reduces the vast majority of people to amoral drones, and requires the few “heroes” to lift far heavier loads. Spread the “heroic” burden with small acts. Speak up, speak out, VOTE. Stand up for your friend being bullied, as my 10-year-old child already has, and thus inspire others to stand up too. Make the right and good matter again.
3
@RPB Absolutely agree and I teach my children the same!
2
Being an Upstander includes not being a collaborator. I strongly disagree with the author that we should not be Upstanders. Of course we should and we must.
4
Gee whiz… Is the author implying that here in the United States a person is in or could be in a situation where they would be witnessing the rise of fascism or violence?
Often I see large Trump flags waving from the back of pick-up trucks and yes… From behind a luxury yacht in a marina…
So I’m just supposed to keep my head down… And go about my business… Good to know
2
I don't know whether I would have the courage to stand up when confronted with the ultimate challenge.
But that does not make me blind to what being a moral person is.
Clothing weakness in motality to make the author feel better does not hide the shame beneath.
And that is not meant to be high fallitin strutting.
We need only look at what mass resistance achieved in Denmark during the War to see why.
3
Say something when somebody, anybody makes a hateful, racist remark.
I was done being silent for the sake of “getting along” or being “polite” or “not making a fuss“ a long time ago.
Acquiescence equals acceptance.
Do not accept hate speech in any form whatsoever.
If the people around you are like that it’s time to find a new group with whole to associate.
4
"During the Holocaust, where the local population was more anti-Semitic, they tended toward greater collaboration, resulting in a markedly higher murder rate." That statement by Ms. Weinberg is simply wrong. In the Netherlands, where the local population was probably the least anti-Semitic in Europe, over 75% of the Jews were murdered. However, in Bulgaria, where the local population was as anti-semitic as any Eastern European country, and the Bulgarian government was pro-Nazi, almost all the Jews were saved. Also, in Hungary, up until the Spring of 1944, almost all Jews were saved, even though the government of Hungary was virulently anti-semitic and passed Nazi-like anti-jewish legislation. It was only until the Germans occupied Hungary that deportations took place.
The reason why Jews survived or were murdered is related to the capabilities of the Nazi occupiers, and whether or not they had the mechanisms to carry out Hitler's extermination policies, not whether local occupied populations were anti-semitic.
4
I have always loved movies and there are many that I have watched numerous times. There is however one award winning movie that I refuse to watch, even a second time. That movie is “Sophie’s Choice”. The “choice” was too heart wrenching. To me Ms. Weinberg suggests that to chose is to collaborate. That reflects how I have felt, all these years, if faced with such a horrendous situation. Pray for the courage to just tell the Nazi, you are the killer, you chose. I will not spend the rest of my life, measured in minutes or decades, knowing I had participated in an atrocity that sent one of my children to an early death.
1
My mother was saved by a pole of German descent, a family friend, who smuggled them out of the ghetto to the Russian border, he risked his life and the life of his family . I hope I'll have the courage to the same in similar situation. Her polish neighbors would have gladly tun her in for a pound of sugar.
5
It is nice to think that there may be a sort of Hippocratic Oath to preventing evil: First, do no harm, as the author avers.
But I think that is wrong on general principles.
Think of Yeats: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst. Are full of passionate intensity." to understand that passivity is an inducement to evil, not a counterweight.
While not participating actively is certainly better than being a practicing Nazi, the world cannot afford either.
4
German and Polish civilians are generally viewed as complicit in the Holocaust. But there is more to the story.
Historian Norman Davies tells of Nazi atrocities against Polish civilians and frequent efforts of Poles to help the Jews (notwithstanding their extensive collaboration). As for German civilians, I have known many who claimed not to know. Skepticism is common, but it is based less on evidence than the claim that "they had to know".
Little told are the stories of German civilian life during the war. Civilian deaths numbered in the millions, including 500,000 targeted by Allied bombers to break the will of the people. And German civilians lived among as many as 15 million foreigners doing forced labor. As for their living conditions. these deteriorated as the war progressed, and were horrific by 1945..
The attention of German civilians was constantly distracted from the fate of Jews by the horrors of war. Add to this the fact that millions of war deaths of family members were a constant. All of this must be factored in when claiming that "they had to know."
Today, our carbon footprints are unsustainable and our descendants may well view all of us as complicit in future deaths. This should remind us that those who view others from a distance often lack perspective and, in passing judgment, they fail to step into the shoes of those they judge. 20-20 hindsight.
I think it's very easy for us to judge the bystanders of Holocaust from the comforts of our home.
Especially that the punishment for hiding Jews was death. I am not so sure that many of us would sacrifice their own families if we had guns stuck to our heads or saw other people die for hiding Jews. And 240K Poles died in Nazi concentration camps too. I don't think we can compare standing by to what is happening currently in US to Holocaust. And the United Nations was informed about Auschwitz in 1942 and the Allies chose to "stand by". Were they wrong for concentrating their resources on winning the war and not bombing the concentration camps? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mass_Extermination_of_Jews_in_German_Occupied_Poland
3
This what Daniel Goldhagen argued in "Hitler's Willing Executioners."
I disagree strongly with the reference to her grandfather's "Spidey sense," which seems to quietly belittle those millions without said superpower who remained in Germany and other European countries because they have the temerity to believe that they were in their respective homelands, equal to non-Jewish compatriots.
1
"Just don’t welcome the murderers, don’t help them organize the oppression or make it “less terrible” (that won’t work anyway), and don’t turn people in. That will usually be enough".
That simplistic and specious argument is predicated on a falsehood: that people had choice in determining their own behavior. The members of the judenrat were forcibly conscripted by the Nazis, and if they failed to do their bidding were tortured or murdered, and replaced. You couldn't just "quit" the judenrat, or refuse to cooperate. If you did refuse, then you would be committing what the author says is not necessary--a heroic act. The same applied to the non-Jewish population. Collective punishment meant you were a participant whether you liked it or not. Not cooperating, Weinberg's prescription for thwarting tyranny, in those conditions, is a priori, a heroic act.
1
It would be equally possible to find a strong correlation between the death rates of the gentile civilian population and the numbers of murdered Jews. It is very possible that the driving factor was fear for personal survival not anti-semitism.
If trying to lessen the horrors is a fools errand such as the examples of the lawyer Bernhard Lösener or the Jewish Councils, then surely doing nothing at all is an even more foolish errand.
People love going to see movies about make-believe super heroes; I think the time has come we try teaching them instead to be real heroes themselves. There needs to be moral consequences for doing nothing when harm is done to others, otherwise there will be no end to the harm being done.
I'd rather die trying to do right then living knowing I did nothing
1
As an attorney, I am not sure I understand the author’s point. In our system, with its often racist outcomes, should we all refuse jury duty? Always vote to acquit?
I would note that in totalitarian states like Nazi Germany, the upstanders often operated in secret, because to do otherwise would likely get them killed. I respect the resistance fighters who spied or committed acts of sabotage for the Allies. I also respect the Catholic nuns who took my Jewish father-in-law and his brother into their orphanage and claimed they were Catholic orphans. Thanks to themI have my husband and our children.
Many Germans were very happy to go into the apartments and houses of the deported and take whatever they wanted for their own place. Naturally after the war they all claimed to be helpless bystanders and naturally they usually did not get rid of their loot.
Greed made them guilty of collaboration.
1
I think your Mom was right Professor Weinberg.
1
The case of the Netherlands is very troubling. More than three-quarters of the pre-1940 Jewish population was slaughtered -- the greatest toll in any west European country. At the same time, the second largest number of the Righteous Gentiles came from that country. A poignant story is "Goodbye Holland," a story of indifference while many of those fellow-citizens were herded to their deaths. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodbye_Holland Prime Video customers can see the whole movie. https://www.amazon.com/Goodbye-Holland-Destruction-Dutch-Jewry/dp/B07FZ9WGMQ
“When madmen are elected, it’s time to leave the country”
That's the coward's way out. When your country is in trouble, the courageous patriot stays and fights.
I have contempt for those who run.
That's the kind of people liberals want to let into this country, by the millions...millions of self-serving cowards.
We have a country because the people, without legal protections, decided to stand and fight, to risk their lives.
One tactic used by the British was to capture the sons of prominent colonial rebels and hold them on prison ships, where they would surely die unless their fathers agreed to abandon the rebellion and betray their country and comrades.
The fathers sacrificed their sons, rather than give in. This is the kind of courage and sacrifice that it takes to create and preserve a nation.
Not, running away because there is trouble, and lookin' for a free ride in a foreign country.
1
The German writer Erich Kästner, who was persecuted by the Nazis for his critical and often irreverent poetry and prose, famously said “Es gibt nichts Gutes / außer man tut es” (There exists nothing good unless it is done). Which is why we need to resist both indifference and evil actively - not collaborating does not seem enough.
Ms. Weinberg describes how being an upstander can be difficult, if not impossible, allowing hateful actions to take place, using the case of the Second World War as an example. This example of the Holocaust is likely the most extreme example of hate that has ever been recorded in history and presents the most difficult case of where being a upstander, or even a bystander, would have been the most dangerous.
For many people in their normal lives, the consequences of failure when being an upstander or bystander is significantly less than that would have been the case in the Holocaust. As well in modern cases, stopping an action of hate is less difficult than it would have been in the case of the Holocaust. Today, not being a upstander when an action of hate has been committed would be less understandable than during the Holocaust, where being an upstander would inflict the whole wrath of the Nazi Gestapo or Nazi SS.
While some forgiveness or understanding can be made for the millions of bystanders and collaboratorators during the Holocaust, those people also grew up in a different, difficult, and more racist time than today. Such ignorance of hate occuring today would be most definately more problematic today, with the improvements that we have made in terms of racism and all.
Fascist governments attacking minority populations do in fact pressure and threaten and insist that the majority population aid in this oppression. Identify the Jews, refuse commerce with the attacked minority, co-operate with the authorities or you will suffer consequences, perhaps just a fine, or maybe your job, or your freedom or even life. Especially in the electronic linked world where privacy is so compromised, the term bystander has less and less meaning. So all of us are faced with the issue of co-operation and compromise and the question isn't just actively seeking out and collaborating with an unjust or evil government. The code of universal human decency requires that we all need to take a stand against monstrous injustice. This is true even if we are very frightened. Courage is defined as the ability to help those in need despite our fear. Perhaps that means sharing food or money with destitute immigrants , perhaps it means much more. Monstrous injustice also practically requires resistance to stop it. French and Czech partisans sabotaging Nazi rail lines materially helped defeat the Axis. I'm afraid there's no getting off the hook of moral responsibility in the face of extreme injustice. It's a matter of what each of us is capable of doing.
This view makes sense only on the condition that you restrict your focus to allegedly isolated events (e.g. the Holocaust). Such myopia allows Weinberg to appeal to the background of anti-Semitism as an explanation for how the Holocaust could have been carried out so effectively without actually considering how that anti-Semitism could have been combatted before it enabled the Final Solution.
This is precisely MLK’s point when he says: “the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.”
MLK displayed the kind of moral heroism that Weinberg views as supererogatory. But he was motivated by a more accurate understanding of the nature of injustice than Weinberg’s or the white moderates’. Once we reject such false rationalizations for leaving an unjust status quo in place, we too should be motivated to take an affirmative stand for justice instead of just keeping to ourselves.
1
Brava, Ms. Weinberg. What you have said needed to be said. We can not expect heroes to save the day when, for example, the evildoers control the machinery of government. To think otherwise is to ignore reality and in particular the law of self-preservation. But in the Nazi period it is clear that so many more would have survived if not for the collaboration of so many, some of them even well intentioned.
2
What a marvelous stimulating essay. For those who don't have the character to be heroes, passive resistance can be a reasonable path. The Italians didn't fight the Nazis for the most part or even stand up to them openly, but they did ignore them and lie to them. It's nice to know there is value in this.
2
Here is the awful thing. Millions collaborated, acquiesced, or looked the other way when evil was abroad and they did not live under a fascist flag, at least at the time. Mid-century Europe bears its lessons, our times bear their own.
2
In this newspaper, The New York Times, I read a story in 1990, I think. Or at least around then.
It was a story from a Holocaust survivor. She said that they would take her and others out of the camp to clean up at factories and workshops, during the day.
At one of the factories, there was an older German guy, and he would be eating his lunch in front of his workbench. A sandwich and an apple or something. And one day, after eating his lunch, he threw the paper bag his lunch had been in into the trash, and then he looked at her. Glared at her, but didn’t say anything.
Later she emptied the trash, as that was her job, and she looked inside the paper bag, later, secretly when she could, and there was half a sandwich in the bag.
This happened the next day too, and went on for weeks and months.
She said that, essentially, for the most part, this German guy had saved her life.
He was limited in what he could do to help her, but even so, he did what he could, and as it worked out, it was enough to save her life.
3
No comparison between the Holocaust and the workings of the Trump administration can be made, however, those in the administration who profess to be there in order to prevent worse things from happening would be wise to heed the words of this author-
“History shows that when you participate in an atrocity together with the perpetrators, in an attempt to make it somehow a little less horrible, in the end you’re still participating in the atrocity and it is no less horrible.”
2
It seems that the genocide disaster lies on a continuum which allows for different levels of "safe" interaction as the descent progresses. Once the ball starts rolling, smaller and smaller acts of resistance become increasingly dangerous. Refusal to turn people in becomes enough complicity to put yourself at risk.
I wonder what the political climate felt like to Germans not fully committed to the political grievance felt by those rallied to the Nazi cause. I have a sense that our nation is becoming unmoored from its stated principles that may be analogous to the descent into fascism back then. I'm nervous that there's a tipping point where public sentiment flips to find that dissenters are enemies within. When I hear strident right-wingers these days I can't help feel that they're the vanguard leading the way to the big flip.
Wouldn't the best approach for the nervous Germans have been to fight the fascist inclinations harder? How about now?
2
Honestly, I am not sure if I am understanding the author correctly, but let me just say this: being a bystander is hardly ever, if ever, morally permissible (we can play the scenario game and come up with ones that force the issue, but in general, one has a choice to act rightly and righteously, or not).
That's the logic of the coward, the self-centered, the fearful. Indeed, one never knows how one may act until some circumstance comes to be reality and requiring one to act, but if one has already given oneself tacit permission to stand by and do nothing, well, we are indeed doomed.
One should think of it in this way instead: do you wish me (or anyone) to simply stand by as your child is raped? beaten? tortured? your spouse? Family?
Do you really grant me the moral permission (as if you have such power, btw) to just do nothing?
Sorry, but if it kills me, I'll save your kid, your Mum, probably not your dog, but hey, who knows. I do like dogs, often more than people.
And honestly, if I see you sitting off to the side doing nothing, when I've 'dealt' with the rapist, torturer, or whomever, you'd better not still be standing there because I may decide it is morally permissible to deal with you in a like manner, because you are a worthless human being in my book.
Witold Pilecki. Just read about him, Ms. Weinberg.
1
The road to Auschwitz was not only the road to Auschwitz. It was the road to the bombing of Berlin and Dresden; it was the road to total defeat of Germany and the German people, their economy and their self-respect. Hitler began as a farce and turned into a tragedy -- and yes, because people didn't take seriously the threat he and his followers presented until it was too late. We're still at the farce stage in America, but in the blink of an eye we can be on our way to tragedy.
1
Thank you Rivka for your voice. Turning my thoughts to the Holocaust it reminds me of a very sad story about the Holocaust , one of millions of sad stories , so sad we can barely stand to hear them.
There was a young child , about seven years old who had been sent to Auschwitz with his mother and sister. His mother and Sister were immediately sent to the gas chambers upon arrival. For what ever reason the boy was spared an immediate death . His Mother had been a great violinist, and you wonder how a child could survive in that man-made hell on earth. His psychological salvation came from the camp orchestra , made up of Jews , who played in the center of the camp . It was this music, the magic of this music that saved this boy. The music of his mother it was as though she were playing it for him to give him hope because hope always remains , it is the last thing we cling to , it is what makes us human. There is magic in music , and in all the arts, though many Jewish musicians and future musicians were turned to ash, joining with all those lost scientists , writers, all those artists, and the children they would have had , and the children of those children . they would have had , all lost, all that natural resource , cut down , meaningless and all that was lost to future humanity enough remains to give us hope . The boy survived and survives . There is always hope even in the most hopeless places, there is always light in the darkest places. Shine a light with your life.
1
Don't get mad if you're favorite Dem doesn't get the nomination. Just make sure you don't stay home, or write in something silly on the ballot.
You also don't have to personally organize your whole community into some anti-Trump army either. Do the one little right thing.
Vote blue, no matter who.
2
As a student of history, I have always wondered whether, if my Jewish/Muslim/(fill it in) neighbors showed up on my doorstep late at night, with nowhere to go and the Stormtroopers/Gestapo/white nationalists/(fill it in) hot on their trail, what I would do. It might be easier for me now as I’m a widower with no children and little to lose and much to gain (in terms of being able to look myself in the mirror). But with a family, would I place all that at risk? I hope I would have the courage to do so. I try to picture the faces of my Jewish friends and ask myself: “Would I risk everything for them?” I hope the answer is yes.
2
It's easy in the clarity of hindsight to sit in judgment of the past, to pick the heroes and villians. But it is only the present that matters.
Dr. Weinberg, consider how Israel, a country founded by the survivors of the Holocaust, treats the Palestinians.
What are you? A bystander, a supporter?
1
As a person that is a bystander, this is obviously calming. Still the spectrum of upstanding-bystanding-collaborating can be frustratingly fluid.
Say I am a pilot of the US navy and my bomber carries Agent Orange that i drop over Vietnamese civilians. Am I a bystander because all I do is execute an order that I signed to obey? Or should I refuse because I deem this action amoral?
Or say I vote for Trump. Am I a bystander knowing of the policy to separate children from parents at the border? See, I do not have to vote for Trump. It takes no courage not to vote for Trump. So then I am actively participating in the said atrocity by voting for Trump.
This essay is really though provoking and I urge the author to follow up with thoughts about the aforementioned fluidity.
2
When and if the occasion arises, I hope I have the courage to be "heroic" or I would consider myself already dead. What use is living if you are dead inside? We are just stardust. Only doing the right thing makes life worth living.
3
To get one thing straight: Jews in Poland were easy to catch because many of them lived in Jewish quarters, dressed differently, spoke Yiddish, had Jewish names, documents stated their religion and so on.
When Germans turned the quarters into walled ghettoes, they ordered Jewes living outside to move there on pain of death. Many obeyed.
Collaborators played a role but were not essential.
3
I completely disagree with Rivka’s thesis. It is far from enough to not collaborate, not cooperate, with evil. It is necessary, actually, to stand up against it. I’ve written biographies of two American heroes who did, Varian Fry and Muriel Gardiner. And I have lived my life speaking out, fighting against, and standing up to bullies, as did her mother. Perhaps it’s risky but to my mind it’s essential: only by putting ourselves on the line, by risking our safety - even in cases such as Varian’s and Muriel’s, who opposed the Nazis - by risking our lives, can we truly hold back the forces of evil.
I can't imagine how I would have reacted in Germany in the 1930's. I would like to think I would have been a "hero", but would I have risked my own and my family's property and lives to do so? Hard to know without being in that situation. We are certainly not there yet. If you believe we are, then your knowledge of the history of that time period is sorely lacking.
This year, what we can do is vote, vote, vote! Vote for whoever is the Democratic presidential nominee, and vote D in all races. Trump has turned the Republican party into a cancer that must be removed from the American body.
4
@Robert - absolutely! This can't be stressed enough. Not only must we vote D for President but all down the line top to bottom we just have to vote D, VOTE D!
I get that not everyone can be heroes, but we've lowered the bar to where people don't worry about the result of their vote, or even bother to vote.
I seem to recall Arendt stated that not all the people who aided Nazism were evil, they were simply people who never thought much about what it meant to be good. The argument in this column seems to encourage that level of indifference.
I lived in Northern Ireland during the height of the Troubles and I can understand how hard it can be in tight knit communities - Catholic or Protestant - to take a stand against violence. The possibility or even likelihood of being ostracised or having to flee the country,
or worse a bullet in one's own back or that of family members...I was a child and didn’t have to take those decisions. I have tried to be an up stander on several occasions since where I thought a woman or child was being threatened (not for any political reason). But I would never judge those in NI who kept their heads down...and if paramilitaries turn up at your door wanting to use your house for a stakeout? Actively assisting without fear of implicit or explicit threats is different of course, and contemptible. And I would include in that category of assisting the act of voting.
3
They're not going to need people to turn people in. There's data on all of us now. What our voting patterns are, our beliefs, our support or non-support of the current administration, our race and ethnicity. We all have a long trail. The government can segment data and find people. Regarding data the government might want from the private sector, surely they'll find a way to get it.
People should have been as rabid about protecting the data about themselves as they are about their gun ownership.
3
A poignant and harrowing article. It is hard, however, to appreciate how mainstream anti-semitism was throughout the world, baked into society. I recently completed research in Norman Lindsay, an Australian artist and writer from the 1930s - 1970s, widely lauded in Australia as one of the country’s greatest artists and was distressed at his outspoken, virulent antisemitism (evident even in his so-called children’s’ books still widely sold). As far as I can tell, this has never been challenged by other artists and booksellers. In fact, his work seems to be gaining new life among alt-right types. My point is: social and psychological theory of group dynamics and action are interesting, but anti-semitism is unique among evils because otherwise good people think it normal.
2
@Saint Leslie Ann of Geddes -I've read a lot of history and anti-Semitism is prevalent throughout. One question not answered by any of it, unless I'm missing it, is why. Yes, I've read the religious and racial reasonings, but those sound like excuses. The only two logical explanations for the hatred I've come up with are:
1) Economic-Jews are usually more successful than any other group in whichever country they are living in. They accomplish this with intelligence and hard work. People get jealous, especially those not willing to work as hard.
2)Moral-Jews hold up all of us (usually) to a higher moral standard. They were the first group to stress love over sacrifice. This goes against our base instincts.
Just my thoughts. No, I am not Jewish.
2
I think the advent of social media and the present news cycle distinguish now from then a bit in this regard. Upstanders are always noble, as are aspirations to do good works. We need more of both right now.
It seems the writer contradicts her own point within her own family history. We’re it not for a hero she would not be here to share her words. I worry every day that I am on the wrong side of history through my inaction. This essay has convinced me that action and heroism are the only option as opposed to comforting myself that I did nothing but that doesn’t mean I was complicit... As I have heard many times from my family “someone drove the trains”
"... comforting to realize that we don’t have to be heroes to avoid genocides."
The author takes a point of view throughout this article that leaves me pained. She takes the point of view of those individuals who presumably have the choice to remain alive if they do nothing or risk death by objecting. Choose to do nothing she concludes because there are instances in which some have tried to mitigate harm to no avail or worse. But what of the point of view of the Others, the other side of humanity? What thoughts would the author have for comforting them? In essence, are we at a moment in history where what is useful is soothing the anxieties of those in whose name--whether they act or no--others will suffer? Hence, the comfort offered to the individual in this instance naively gives license for turning away from the mass discomfort of a group or groups.
1
Analogizing Trump supporters to Nazi collaborators is neither accurate nor helpful.
5
@Greg It's highly accurate. Please look up the Enabling Act of 1933, then witness Moscow Mitch's action in the Senate. The results are the same.
3
Greg, they are not the same but they are made from some of the similar cloth. You as a nation have allowed a group of monsters to run you country - we may all regret it. I hope your nation replaces them with more decent people in November.
@Greg, Greg, take it from a professor of German literature and culture that things are never one-for-one. Strictly speaking, you are right. You may be thinking in this vein. But historical events can be unsettling because they are so analogous, and in that way the juxtapositions become ever so enlightening, one way or the other. I would suggest you take the book, "The Authoritarian Personality" (1950) in hand. Everybody knows a "Trump," and some know little "Hitlers."
I don't know if the author will read this. I have spent 24/7 over fifty years working on what is written about here. Right now a project has cost me everything for two years but I have been here before for human rights and duties.
I so far can say, every person can be a hero. Education is needed in the sense of learning to open our minds to open our souls to see that life is more than from time of birth to time of death - there is the opportunity in between to learn more about love.
2
What a sad and scary article. Implicit is the murderers are coming again and we need to prepare ourselves mentally for the challenge, and of course, know your neighborhood. It's going to be worse in some places than others. The existing micro cultures should inform us as to what to expect. I was nearly pushed down the stairs in the park by a large angry white man who became infuriated because I was wearing a tiny Black Lives Matter button. I'm 70.( It must be Hell to be black in this country.)
4
Mary, I am so sorry you were assaulted. I hope you picked yourself up and were able to continue. I agree with the implicit notion that the murderers are here again - the details won’t be the same but I suspect awful things are on the way. Voting for societal decency has never been so important.
A thoughtful, forceful and brave piece as it flies in the face of what we are currently taught. People forget how frightening it is to live in a Fascist or dictatorial regime. I do think that we have to think hard about what "participation in the atrocity means " because it doesn't necessarily have to be as extreme as writing the Nuremberg laws. I heard an eminent China expert, who had worked for Republicans and Democrats, speak on the eve of the election and he was asked if he would work for Trump for the good of the country. He said "Some might. I would not because I find him morally repugnant."
1
A very insightful & pragmatic perspective. As a daughter of Holocaust survivors, I’ve often wondered whether I would have had the mental & physical fortitude to survive those atrocities assuming luck was with me. I’ve also speculated how I would have reacted as an ordinary non-Jewish citizen in those circumstances. I would like to think that I would not have been complicit however to be honest I’m not sure whether I would have had the courage to stand up against the evil had it put me or my family at risk although one never knows until confronted with the situation. Thank you Ms Weinberg for presenting this unique point of view.
3
Another thought I have is that perhaps heroism or the willingness to be an upstander is on a spectrum range. Each of us may be willing to stand up to various degrees. We may also be more or less of an upstander at different stages of our life.
1
I think this essay is clearly in error.
The author states:
"It’s rare for people not motivated by hate to casually witness a serious crime and do nothing about it."
I think we can all recall countless news reports of children abused and neighbors doing nothing, of woman abused by husbands or boyfriends and other people doing nothing,
Sometimes one must get up and show some courage. I think this essay is symptomatic of a change in values that has transpired with the feminist movement.
The feminist movement undercut the value system which lauded bravery, strength and manliness. Bold battles were seen as coarse, piggish and the epitome of macho which was widely despised.
The author's outlook, with all due respect, brings to mind Neville Chamberlain impotently twirling his umbrella.
15
@David Gottfried Agreed. It is, unfortunately NOT rare for witnesses to do nothing. On a positive note (!) many ARE taking phone videos of what they witness, creating a record. It may not be enough, but it isn't "nothing".
12
@David Gottfried Women and children have been abused since time immemorial because there was a societal belief that these were private matters beyond the reach of the law. Domestic abuse has diminished with the change in belief that women’s rights are human rights. A human rights violation occurs either when the government is the perpetrator OR when the government is not empowered to act on behalf of the victim. You are blaming exactly the wrong people. Furthermore, my father, father-in-law, husband and son are not “macho” which in my definition suggests that it’s ok to worry about being “dissed” and to get in a brawl to defend one’s honor. It’s the brawling we object to, not standing up to bullies. And there’s no one braver than a mother (of any species) defending her child.
A few years ago, I heard a commotion and looked out my window to see a man in a physical altercation with a woman. I called the police immediately, and the encounter ended even as I spoke with the 911 dispatcher.
When I mentioned the incident among friends, a couple of them worried that the guy might try to exact revenge on me. I find that completely unacceptable. I will not be silenced when I see a crime in progress. If we all do that, we have already lost.
2
@David Gottfried
The feminst movement did no such thing. And since when are bravery and strength solely attributes of men?
So, if you are brave, what are you doing to fight for the rights and protection of individuals and communities that are vulnerable?
5
An interesting perspective, but not included in this article (and a shame it is missing from the evidence) is the fact that ordinary Danes were responsible for saving more than 90% of Denmark's Jewish population during the war.
4
“The road to Auschwitz was built by hate but paved with indifference.”
Very timely piece and points to the Republican Party of today, sitting complicit while a tyrant in the Oval is above the law.
They will not hold him accountable and he will continue to obstruct justice and corrupt US politics to the point of no return.
16
Really? Really? The Republican Party is comparable to the Nazis? How utterly absurd. I detest both the Republicans and Democrats equally as the twin parties of Wall Street, enemies of all working people. To assert they are like Nazis or that we face the rise of fascism is demonstrate an absolute and infantile lack of knowledge of the actual history of the rise of fascism. More to the point such hysteria will only serve to obscure the actual rise of a fascist movement here, should it occur.
Count me as a bystander - my natural inclination - who has nevertheless adopted the attitude of an upstander.
I'd propose that it's possible for those of us who are natural cowards to act heroically, contrary to what Professor Weinberg suggests.
It involves, for want of a better word, visualization and self-training. Simply, when confronted with a situation that demands intervention - and involves possible personal risk - I ask myself whether I could live with the shame of *not* getting involved.
I've found that, even for this born coward, shame usually outweighs fear.
110
@jrsherrard My personal opinion is that a person never knows whether they are a bystander or an upstander until they are forced to choose. Fortunately, for most of us living in liberal democracies, we almost never have to make that choice. I suspect there are many people who would consider themselves a bystander who may be surprised at their actions when push comes to shove. I also suspect that there are many people who fancy themselves upstanders who quietly disappear into the night when action is required.
41
@Melbourne Town
It may also be a function of age.
4
Thank you ms. Weinberg for your eye opening article. I hope younger people read it. I am approaching 89 years and know how hateful people can be. But I have hope younger people will get out and vote in mass. This hateful President we have is re-living the 1930s all over again.
15
I find this to be bizarre. There is so much hatred in this country that it is palpable. It seems to me that we don't just have differences of opinions. Our opinions now label us as friend or enemy. I don't think it would take much to "help them along". We are at a point where people will turn "others" in.
10
Already, happened in Mississippi when Trump’s ICE raided a chicken processing plant.
This is a fantastic piece. Like the best arguments, Professor Weinberg’s innovative thoughts are so clear and compelling that they seem intuitive. I was taken by how much her essay reminded me of Hannah Arendt’s portrait of Eichmann. In Arendt’s view, the Holocaust was made by seemingly regular folks. Yes, there were monsters in the mix, but the extraordinary evil became possible due to scores of ordinary Eichmanns. Professor Weinberg makes a similar point – the Holocaust and other genocides can be prevented, or at least greatly impeded, when ordinary people simply choose not to take mundane steps that facilitate the evil end.
6
This essay is great for anyone who takes a Buzzfeed quiz called “How heroic are you?” and scored a 2 out of 10. It’s fine to distinguish between someone actively commuting atrocities, someone trying to mitigate the effects of the atrocities, and not acting - there are distinct differences. However, there is no distinction of heroism - it’s either you are leading the charge at great risk and sacrifice, or nothing. I’ve lived long enough to have been in situations where I have acted in time when action was needed. Sometimes, I led, sometimes I followed. Sometimes I knew the right words and actions worthy of a superhero movie, and sometimes I fumbled. However, it’s never hard to live with mistakes made while acting for the right thing - the regrets I am haunted by are the times when I didn’t act.
4
This is a piece with moral gravitas. We all want to believe that we will be heroes when the time comes, but our small, everyday silences and accommodations in the face of trivial wrongs are proof that very few of us are capable of it.
Do no harm is a rule that just about everybody can live by, however.
11
Living in Quebec after a life of living in two countries this is the discussion closest to my heart.
I am reminded of the 18th century and the debate between the Chassidim and the Misdagnim. The Misnagdim always win the debate and win the future but the Chassidim always win the war because facts can't compete with hope.
I watched ultra conservative theocratic belief based Quebec turn into an ultra humanist fact based secular democracy while America the first nation of the Enlightenment rebel against science and human values.
The Gaon of Vilna taught learning math and science must come before studying mysticism and religion.
Maybe we should start listening to the evolutionary psychologists like Steven Pinker and look for the root of our insanities. Maybe flight or fight is not in our heart but in our genes.
6
The writer cavalierly dismisses the theory of 'bystander theory" in the Kitty Genovese case w/o seeming to read the study that she uses to dismiss the theory. Politics used again to deny scientific theories. It is unfortunate that she uses this study as part of her article, because the overall point of the article is spot on.
1
When the US was initiated the rulers agreed that slavery could function and it took a hundred years and 700000 lives for this agreement to be repudiated. The Jim Crow years followed and it took another 100 years to establish some sort of racial equality. The author of this article says…. What we must emphasize is the cruelty and destructiveness of hate and the perils of collaborating with it. As I see the perils it is not so much the collaboration but in a democracy that is based on one vote one man. If Trump says global warming is not due to the consumption of fossil fuels and the majority support him do you collaborate by not buying a car or do you become a hero?
3
And how should one act when parents and children are forcibly separated at our borders? How should we act or react when we discover that our government has no plan as to how to reunite that parent and child? There are many who will declare that there is no equivalency here and that the comparison is abhorrent on its own. But is it?
Tell that to a mother whose child is gone and we have no idea as to whether or not she will ever see that child again.
19
If you think of character as a collection of habits that we develop over time, in the way Aristotle understood the well ordered soul, then upstanding is not a moral trait which average people lack and heroes magically possess. Upstanding is more like a muscle that develops strength with continuous training, or a habit that becomes a knee-jerk reaction through sufficient conditioning. Very few heroes act spontaneously brave—they build their resolve over a lifetime of brave acts, bit by bit. We should teach our children to be upstanders first so that through force of habit, from the playground forward, they develop into the brave and heroic adults that they deserve to be.
7
My very good friend, Mark, a distinguished engineer in a Fortune 100 company, started blaming the immigrants (morally softened by qualifying refugees as illegals) for the gut-wrenching changes to his family who are from a small manufacturing town that was decimated by globalization. He is very well educated like me, so his position shocked me.
Prof Weinberg articulated this for me cogently. Like in history, The greatest tragedy of the current times is the openness with which people are entertaining hateful ideologies. Most people are doing this unwittingly not having any deep convictions that justify their positions. Well to do immigrants parrot this to desperately belong to the same "tribe" without understanding the consequences of their actions.
This fever has to break.
It's quite tragic until then.
12
“This fever has to break” — this perfectly captures what we’re going through right now.
In the early 80s I had health issues and a rocky time. We were in Zilker Park, Austin, watching a performance by Deborah Hay’s annual workshop. Dusk was near. The Barton Creek trail where a serial rapist was active was 50 yards away. We heard a scream from that direction and I reluctantly stomped toward it. I’m a big guy.
I never looked back but must have slowed as I left the lit areas. A bad guy could conceal himself and see me coming, and I was not happy about it. I reached the trailhead, and suddenly I was in a crowd.
I was so giddy with relief I almost laughed when someone asked if they could stay by me. Two young men on bicycles risked ranging down the trail in the gloom and others surged ahead. Turns out Barton Creek was running high after recent rains - three 12 year old boys had gotten in trouble at the rapids and screamed.
My wife said after I’d gone 10 yards a guy got up to follow me, and then someone followed him, till a posse of 30 or so had formed.
I want to say how high the others were as we headed back, chattering excitedly and wondering if we’d be in the newspaper. (We weren’t.) For years it was a touchstone for me when I felt low.
Perhaps there are times when you must act, not exhort, and hope a posse forms behind you.
43
One of the saddest facts in all this is the belief among Trump supporters that he is on their side. The only ones who are safe are members of the Trump family, and even that is not certain.
11
I grew up in a family with strong beliefs about justice and human rights. We lost our family in Europe in the Holocaust and I have often thought about what I would do (assuming I wasn't the victim) in the face of such evil. What I was taught and strongly believe is that protecting the lives of innocents is worth dying for. No-risk morality is not good enough.
7
Thank you for enlightening us of a middle way for those of us who are confounded by confusion and fear. It's a clear guide.
2
There is a dangerous illusion of heft to this lengthy piece. Obviously, it's better to standby in silence than to help the bully locate or pin down his victims. Finding such a simple but underwhelming truth coated in a veneer of historical examples and shellacked with academic analysis, the reader could come away feeling better about his/her righteous passivity. Not so fast. As Gold Meir once reportedly said, "don't be humble you're not that great." I was once punished by my fourth-grade teacher for not reporting a playground fight. The participants received harsher sentences. She quickly and easily got it right. So good for the Bulgarians and Italians (who actually were active in their resistance to Jewish deportation per Arendt) and better still for the Danes, who got in their boats and set sail, boats against the current, to ferry all of their Jews to safety. Very strange timing for this op-ed, the day after our national celebration of a hero of very active civil disobedience.
6
Though the notion of willing collaborators and indifferent bystanders certainly has resonance in own time and in our own homeland, as a Polish Jew, I take exception to reducing the notion of Polish collaboration in such broad strokes. It is a fact that Poland was decimated and that nearly as non-Jewish Poles were murdered in Poland by the Nazis as were my Polish-Jewish countrymen. The penalty for Poles to as much as give a Jew a piece of bread, was death. Yet more Poles have been honored by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among Nations than from any other nation. Who among us would be so willing to risk their own lives and the lives of their loved ones? It is grossly unfair to condemn an entire victimized population for the misdeeds of a relatively small minority.
22
@schtickyhickey
Thank you...
This is a great essay that articulates clearly what too many people, especially in the US, find it hard to accept: genocides are not perpetrated by cartoon villains. They are perpetrated by good people who believe bad things. The Nazis soldiers who murdered my grandmother’s family were not a bunch of sociopaths. Many of them were, undoubtedly, good family men. They just happened to believe that Jews were not human, and that exterminating them was their sacred duty. Christopher Brown’s famous book “Ordinary Men” based on interviews with members of Nazi killing squads demonstrates just how ordinary these murderers were. They could have been your friends and neighbors. This is why people’s belief systems are so much more important than their supposed moral character. I would take a scoundrel over a true believer any time.
10
I understand the author's point, but I must disagree. Look at our own history of holocaust - What about all the white southerners during the Jim Crow era who never participated in a lynching and maybe were against segregation but who never spoke out against it? Were they not part of the problem? Are their hands clean because they only stayed silent when innocent people were being murdered instead of participating in the act?
11
And of course, we know where the current GOP stand in all this.
3
Ms Rivka Weinberg is oversimplifying. She says few Jews survived in Romania, and says Romanian culture was virulently anti-semitic.
Wrong on both accounts. The pogroms and rounding up of Jews were mostly in Iasi, before USSR invaders were attacked, and during the military campaign in the occupied territories east of Prut.
The Jews in Romania proper were not deported, but had to sufer Nurenberg type confiscation laws, and were forced to perform public labor.
Some Romanians were antisemitic, most were not. Can't draw a line and say the Romanian culture as a whole was virulently antisemitic.
If you wish to understand Romanian culture in the epoch, a good
starting point would be, for example, the C.A.Bejan book 'Intellectuals and Fascism in Interwar Romania'. Culture, in Romania, is interpreted to be more intellectual culture than culture of the masses. Reading that book you will notice some Romanian intellectuals were pro-American, some were pro-French, some were Pro-Iron Guard, the fascist organization - many were Jewish, and most were looking to plot their own independent Romanian path.
3
@Andrei Radulescu-Banu: The reason more Jews were not eliminated in Romania was because they were sold
to Palestine. I refer you to "The Ransom of the Jews" by Radu Ioanid (2005).
I do grant you, as Elie Wiesel stated in the preface of
this book: "Nevertheless you and I must acknowledge
the recent changes that have occurred in this country where political and intellectual leaders have decided finally to confront this chapter of their past: Romania
is no longer the country of yesterday, even less the country of before yesterday."
Although now that only about 3000 Jews remain there, there's no one to be anti-Semitic about?
This is not 1930 Germany, but I ask how many have questioned themselves what they would do if you saw a woman with a hajab being harassed on the street or in a park. I know I have.
6
Ms. (Dr?) Weinberg's essay is useful guidance for ordinary human beings (the vast majority) seeking a minimum standard of guidance for moral comportment. I take issue, however, with the following oassage.
"You don’t just march into Poland or France from Germany and magically know who to round up and where they live." Well, yes, the Nazis marched into Paris in 1940 with thoroughly detailed advance knowledge of whom to root out, where they lived, what they owned, where they worked, and the remote nooks of Paris where they might be hiding.
Aided substantially by the local French constabulary, the invading Germans were able quickly to impose their reign of terror on Parisian Jews. The Drancy round-up of 1942 was almost entirely the work of the French police, but the Nazi occupiers could easily have carried out this brutal operation on their own.
Resisting atrocity demands more of decent people than innocent bystanding. There's no doubt that such heroism is very, very hard, one reason why there are so few heroes.
We need such heroes now, for we are in the shadow of a massive new evil. So, let's put on our action-hero duds and behave accordingly.
2
War is obscene. Twenty million Russians died, ten million soldiers, ten million civilians.
2
I am glad someone broke through the myth many people have of themselves, speaking as if they would've been one of the heroes, had they been there.
I want to mention two more things.
Not every collaborator acted out of hate. Some acted in terror. This is an overly simplistic view, that we can prevent another one as long as we don't hate. The US has killed millions without hate campaigns among the masses.
Also, many died resisting the Nazis and are not seen by anyone as heroes. They are not in the Righteous Among Nations because they did not succeed in saving lives. They died. They are called victims.
13
"Don’t perpetrate; don’t collaborate."
Republican senators, please read this and think.
7
Some conservative columnists who work at the NYT have spent the last three years calling Trump immoral. But recently they have said they would not vote for Sanders or Warren because they disagree with their policies. Isn't the refusal to vote to defeat evil an act of collaboration?
5
As a young man I studied the between word war history and 15 years later spent time in West Germany on a research sabbatical in 1970. I became conversationally proficient in German and quite frequently spoke with Germans who had lived through WW2. Most claimed that they knew nothing about what was going on and that the Nazi's had lied to them. Because I spoke German and had a European heritage I often got glimpses into what they really thought. My feeling at that time was that if Hitler returned a lot of them would be right behind him again.
Daniel Goldhagen's book - Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust - available from Amazon - is a must read to understand what really happened to all of those murdered during the Holocaust. Since then similar scenarios have been re-enacted in various parts of the world -Bosnia, Hutus and Tsusis, Malasia, and now in some other parts of Asia.
Genocide and Democide seems to be a mode of behavior that people who have been taught hate instilled into them and is often carried out because there are too many bystanders doing nothing.
Nelson Mandela who was a victim of racial hatred during the Apartheid era said after his release from prison that "people have to be taught to hate' because it does not occur naturally. We sure have a crop of politicians doing exactly that here and now.
9
I strongly disagree with the author. You don't necessarily need to put yourself in harms way to help--and there are varying degrees of risk. There is always something you can do with minimal/acceptable risk. For example, you need not run into the burning building and pull out those in danger; but you should at least call the fire department and paramedics. If no one calls the fire department, then the building burns--and the person who did nothing absolutely contributed to that by not taking simple pro-active measures, even though they did not start or assist in starting the fire. Is it possible the arsonist finds out who called the fire department? Maybe. But that is an minimal/acceptable risk--and the alternative is unacceptable. Another example, it is not permissible to fail to vote in the coming elections. You need not run for office yourself, campaign for a candidate, or even contribute money to a candidate. But, everyone absolutely is morally obligated to, at least, vote. So, no, it is not permissible to do nothing. But there are varying degrees of pro-activity--and a call for help or a simple vote may be enough.
5
@ZMC I would guess the author would agree with both of your examples...
2
I am reading this just after visiting the German history museum in Berlin. It wasn't just that good people did nothing. The Nazis committed acts of violence that made everybody afraid. In that setting, being an upstander is impossible and pointless, and "not cooperating" is heroic and hard to do. So I agree with the author to some extent, but in the extreme case even the author's prescription is not enough.
Before viewing this museum, I had felt that there are parallels with the current administration of the US: inflammatory rhetoric branding outsiders as evil, nativism, propaganda undermining the rule of law and offering a bizarrely upside down view of reality. After the museum, I realized the importance of physical violence in undercutting democratic institutions. And the utter extremism of the "master race" philosophy. It reminded me that parallels to Nazi Germany should be made very carefully; evil continues, but the evil of Nazism was exceptional.
166
@Catherine L - I haven't been to Berlin, so I'm glad to hear your take on the history museum there. But Trump and some of his supporters have explicitly said that "their side" has the guns and the bullets. I find Trump rallies and gun rallies terrifying because liberals like me are the ones that right-wing mobs will be coming for if they are sufficiently stirred up. Do you think I'm dramatizing? Maybe, but I'm more worried that we're all very naive and will look back on this period of time and wish we'd taken stronger stands against white nationalists while it was still safe to do so.
45
@Catherine L It IS that good people did nothing.
What happened in Germany was NOT that one day everything was great, and the next day there were SS in the streets threatening to kill anyone who didn't do what they were told. It happened gradually, and it happened with the blessings of many Germans. Germans were willing to turn a blind eye when their Jewish neighbors disappeared. Germans were willing to participate in Kristallnacht. (I know. My grandmother is one of those Germans.)
There is a beginning and a middle before there is the culminating event of a genocide like the Holocaust, and in that beginning and middle, ordinary people have a chance to stand up, before the first oven is built, before the violence against others is turned against them. But there were plenty of Germans who were excited by Hitler's economic growth, and valued that above all else, and so they looked away. That does not excuse them.
I wrote about my family's German history, and my response to it, on my blog just yesterday, if you want to see that perspective. We cannot let ourselves off the hook.
https://kristinadahl.blogspot.com/2020/01/telling.html
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@Catherine L This is exactly right...there was often not a choice to be a bystander. Bystanders were likely not seen any differently then resistors in the eyes of the authorities. There were those who actively helped kill Jews, her "collaborators," and then there were those that did not actively help kill Jews. Those that did not actively help kill Jews, the author's "bystanders," likely put themselves in mortal danger. In this kind of an environment, and G-d forbid any of us should ever experience such a thing, simple "not helping" to accomplish the evil is either not a possible option or an ineffective one. I think this fact basically undermines the entire point of this article, and if you agree with me, don't bother spending your time reading the whole thing - I didn't.
2
This is a very interesting article, with a twist that makes a lot of sense.
I'd ask for one addition. In the first sentence, it would be gratifying to this Russian-American if it were mentioned that it was the Red Army which ended the horror of Auschwitz.
4
@alyosha It is in both the book and film adaptation of Schindler's List.
The molotov-ribbentrov pact of mutual aggression against weaker countries made the holocaust possible. The killers of babi yar were soviets, as were most of the trawicki men despite putinist lies about ukrainian nationalists. Your beloved soviet moscow engaged in a pattern of mass murder of millions of peasants in the 1930s and the only "ideal" stalinist soldiers fought for was naked animalistic survival. If they had any higher or dignified purpose in mind, the orgy of rape and murder undertaken by the red army as it rolled into moscow nullified it. The soviet (not russian) liberation of auschwitz was an accident of geography only.
2
Quite beautiful.
Right now, today we are watching our own government mistreat thousands of refugees along our southern border. Where are the protests, the demonstrations? Separating families, caging children? Where are our values? Who are our heroes?
4
There is zero analogy to be made between the murder of innocent Jews in the holocaust, and the treatment of illegal immigrants and purported refugees voluntarily crossing our boarder. That anyone can make such a comparison only highlights the antisemitism that has slowly but surely taken root within the left of the political spectrum.
1
@LA Realist - "Purported refugees"? Thanks for helping to make my point.
1
Sadly, never again has happened several times already. How does Western Europe address the atrocities that happened in Bosnia ?
3
The west collectively waged a limited war primarily against christian serbs who had perpetrated the worst of the atrocities (though atrocities happened on both sides). Nato actions, largely on the side of balkan muslims, brought lasting peace to the region with a minimum of casualties. Nato intervention in the balkans was on balance one of the most successful uses of force ever undertaken and the us and others did this essentially selflessly with little to nothing to gain (not even the bare minimum of thanks from beneficiaries such as yourself). International courts have worked diligently to prosecute criminals (unlike say in the entirety of the soviet union and later russia, where not a single state mass murderer or wager of aggressive war has ever been punished). What is it exactly that you are complaining about again?
2
In 1984, at the University of Connecticut, I had a very good history professor, Professor Coons, who told our class:
« Boxcars don’t happen overnight ».
4
A woman in the Studs Terkel oral history, 'Hard Times', said: "Most of us live lives too small for our spirits."
I think many more people than one might suspect are heroes in waiting: waiting for the moment to shine forth in an act of utter moral certitude.
Let's roll. All of us.
5
Thanks for a little history in place of the vague and incorrect assumptions most people pick up about the Holocaust. I can't change curricula or make people read serious history books with footnotes, but they may take time for a short opinion piece.
4
Though the notion of willing collaborators and indifferent bystanders certainly has resonance in own time and in our own homeland, as a Polish Jew, I take exception to reducing the notion of Polish collaboration in such broad strokes. It is a fact that Poland was decimated and that nearly as many non-Jewish Poles were murdered in Poland by the Nazis as were my Polish-Jewish countrymen. The penalty for Poles to as much as give a Jew a piece of bread, was death. Yet more Poles have been honored by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among Nations than from any other nation. Who among us would be so willing to risk their own lives and the lives of their loved ones? It is grossly unfair to condemn an entire victimized population for the misdeeds of a relatively small minority.
5
As a content expert and frequent trainer regarding active bystander activity in the workplace, I take issue with Dr. Weinberg's rather polarizing view that one must be a hero to be actively involved in mitigating harm. The framework for deciding on a bystander strategy is first to consider personal safety, and secondly to determine whether you have influence (capacity) to make a difference. Diving on to a loaded gun or publicly confronting a CEO is foolhardy, likely ineffective, and no doubt will exacerbate the situation. Conversely, doing nothing (even just refraining from complicity) is not enough. Disruption, support of targets, recruiting those with enough influence to act, distracting, making the positive aspects of the target visible and obvious, sharing information widely and standing with targets are among the many options one can consider that, depending on one's status, power, and authority, may be effective. I share a heritage with Dr. Weinberg, and agree with her Mom. We have a moral duty to make an effort. To help, with the only limitation being that we must stay safe while doing so.
3
For those interested in the topics discussed here, I highly recommend the seven-season French dramatic series called “A French Village.” It is well done, entertaining, and does an excellent job of illustrating the dilemmas posed in this article as they play out within the drama’s characters over the duration of the German occupation and its post-liberation aftermath.
4
I'm reminded of this quote by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn from The Gulag Archipelago"
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
So when we make fun of the Virginia pro-gun demonstrators as naive rural bumpkins.....
5
I can't agree nor can I agree. I just know what my feelings are. I wish we could all be upstanders but I think the culture in Europe at the time of the Holocaust was exactly as the columnist writes. The culture was to stay quiet - out of fear. People had been hungry from the previous war. The world was not stable enough for people to speak for others. Today many of us in the Western world take survival for granted. The columnist writes about a symptom but we need a solution because we are destined repeat what happened otherwise.
1
Lots of accepted facts and theories are summarily rejected by the writer of this piece without providing any evidence for the rejections, other than her opinion. This is the first I am hearing that Kitty Genovese was a case of "false reporting." Says who? Secondly, I've seen it with my own eyes that people people freeze when they witness a crime or atrocity or even a medical emergency in public. Unfortunately, human beings are mostly conformists. Almost everyone I encounter in today's workplace is a "go along to get along" or "fake it till you make it" type. No one wants to rock the boat. And Millennials and GenZers are perhaps the least openly confrontational generations yet. They cannot even say "excuse me" when they bump into you on the street. Calling out wrongdoing and helping are acts of courage, something our society currently lacks.
4
the times retracted much of the original story in 2016. (eg the number of witnesses was way exaggerated (or made up) , 2 people called the police, and one came out to help.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/05/nyregion/winston-moseley-81-killer-of-kitty-genovese-dies-in-prison.html
that does not in any way invalidate your other points as to the importance of standing up to injustice.
White supremacy did not survive in the South because most whites were indifferent - most were participants. It was a collective culture and it still is, though not as open as in decades past. Most people who voted for Trump are active supporters of racism and xenophobia - they had a choice at two stages to vote for others who were less racist, although racism has been part of the Republican party for decades (and of the Democratic party in the South before that). It should also be realized that religion is typically involved in mass murders. Religion is a collective phenomenon which is not dependent on any messages from supernatural beings to individuals, but on the instincts which cause people to cohere and attack other potentially hostile groups. These collective instincts, and pogroms and genocides, will not be overcome until they are understood more fully. Personal indifference is not the key, even if most individuals were actually opposed to such things in practice.
4
The road to Auschwitz was not paved with indifference, but it was paved by relative powerlessness - and with a recognition of the limits of the Allies' power.
2
Yes! Stand up! Speak! Do! Pray! Hannah Arendt broke away from accepted trajectories with her conclusion after witnessing the Eichmann trial, as I understand it, that evil was basically banal. The "Wannsee Conference," drained of its brutal asides, was numbers and policy and resource allocation. A huge part of the Final Solution was a bureaucratic solution. My temerity here, when there is very little room left on the moral high ground, is to be mindful that evil can be so common it is hardly noticed. With almost all of the focus on center stage these days, is it not prudent to see what is happening in the wings as well?
I'm with the author, but slightly less than 100 per cent.
2
Let me point out another aphorism: All it takes for evil to flourish is for good people to do nothing. True or false, it really doesn't matter to me. I am worried about the state of anti-Semitism in this country and I have experienced it personally.
On the other hand, without the heroism of my great-grandmother, I wouldn't exist. She sent my grandfather to this country when he was only 13 years old in 1905. Though the reason is lost in time, one possibility is that she was trying to save him from pogroms in which his sister had been raped and murdered in front of him. Imagine being a mother back then. She would never see her son again nor hear his voice.
I'm grateful for this heroism and for my life as a result. I can't sit back and do nothing. I must speak up.
6
Important article. Unfortunately, our society is teaching exactly the opposite within our schools. For example, We’ve over corrected on the “bully” problem and now have a worse problem. I suspect this approach is only raising more cowards and moral failures. Bottom line, we had fewer bullies when u could punch them in the face and the same will be true at a National level with extremists
3
Yesterday on Martin Luther King Day something horrendous occurred. It was overshadowed by the impending impeachment hearings but should not have been. 22,000 pro-Trump believers in unlimited gun rights, thousands of white supremacists among them, heavily armed, wearing face masks and pseudo military clothing, marched in Virginia. Virginia has just gone top-to-bottom Democrat, approved the Equal Rights Amendment. For several years neo-Nazis and white supremacists have regularly marched in Charlottesville, Virginia. There is no denying the message that yesterday's marchers were sending. And that message is wrong wrong wrong. That is not most people being generally helpful, in resistance to great wrongs. That was helping those wrongs along.
178
@Robert I think you have missed the point of this article.
You equate the pro-gun Virginia marchers with white supremacists. While there are white supremacists among the pro-gun community I think many more in that community would agree with this article. The point of private gun ownership is not sporting clays, it is to resist tyrany, to be an upstander and not a bystander.
5
@Steve
The unlimited gun rights people and miscellaneous white supremacist groups publicly said they were planning to march together yesterday. Given the context, the point of yesterday's march had little to do with resisting tyranny.
38
@Steve " to resist tyrany (sic)" is NOT why the Second Amendment was written. At the time, we had no standing army, and were threatened by foreign invasion, by Britain, and possibly France. We needed a "well regulated militia" (which, over time, became the National Guard), to protect this country. We needed all "able bodied" to have a flintlock, be trained and available for what was perceived to be an imminent threat.
It never had anything to do with insuring anyone (untrained!) could have any military weapon, loaded, and walking around in public with said weapon. THAT'S the difference between liberty and LICENSE, and has NOTHING to do with the Second Amendment.
86
Born in France three months before VE-Day, I agree with the author of this excellent piece. As for the readers who ask for more, I would like to see how they would actually behave if placed in those circumstances. But I am glad that so many Times readers are potential heroes.
4
My concern is that we cheapen the actions of real heroes in really difficult times by comparing them to the issues of today to further our political views. We are not in Nazi Germany were not even close. We have a government and laws that actively work against Hatred and racism, and although we do have some problems, to compare them to Nazi Germany is a disservice at so many levels. We have an active vibrant democracy and we have a polarized country around divergent views of our political system and our future. But we are not even close to the environment around Germany in the early 30s. I know it’s a lot to ask but let’s try to keep some perspective.
3
@Paul I love optimism! But we don't have to be Germany in 1933 to recognize the clear and present danger of those in our government, being so corrupted, they violate their oaths of office, and the U.S. Constitution itself, to further their own greed and avarice. Being aware of what COULD easily morph into a tragic disaster MUST make is look clearly at what's happening and STAND UP, not rationalize why "it can't happen here". IT CAN.
2
I wonder how you would feel if you were poor and/or not white about comparing now and then?
Vigilance requires us to carefully examine history and see if there are parallels happening today. We are not Nazi Germany. But the sim is to make sure we never become Nazi Germans and recognize that dark path before we’re on it.
I have to disagree with this author. Yes, of course evils like the Holocaust happened because of collaborators, but it also happened because of indifference and apathy. Of the majority of people putting their heads down and pretending they didn't know what was going on. If enough of those people had had the courage to speak up history may have been different.
5
@Sallie
IMO, apathy is willful indifference. Not caring on purpose. That's very different than just trying to get through your life without taking on any huge struggles.
If someone leads against hate, follow them. But you don't have to always be the one who steps up and leads against hate.
I hate to dismiss something that the author has obviously thought long and hard about, but in the end, what a strange and unhelpful argument. (And I do believe that at this juncture, unhelpful = harmful.) Simply doing nothing is OK, because at least you aren't actively aiding and abetting evil? Sorry, not good enough. Lots of ordinary people can do simple things, like contributing to the (heroic) lawyers who are fighting this regime's family separation policy, calling their elected representatives, closing their wallet to the companies that do aid and abet, etc. Heck, even marching or leafleting maybe take a tad more gumption but are still fairly safe, yet positive, actions. Just as some ordinary folks stain themselves by voting for, cheering for, or subsidizing evil, plenty of others can step up in small ways to provide a counterweight. That's what's needed right now.
8
So again the maxim "First, do no harm" applies.
2
I must disagree with your main point: Doing nothing in the face of evil is NOT an appropriate response. I refuse to be lulled into your brand of thinking that no serious consequences will occur as long as I and my friends don't collaborate.
I believe that being a bystander is NOT laudable. When you are in a position to do more than sit on the sidelines, you should seize the opportunity to do so. As you yourself point out, many who act do not see themselves as heroes -- they see their actions as ordinary, not extraordinary.
You denigrate the Jewish commandment:'Do not stand idly by..'. Do you really consider this value to be relatively insignificant in the Jewish tradition? You also appear to dismiss the importance of the transmission of such values from generation to generation. How else will core principles of Judaism survive?
Bottom line: I refuse to sit on the sidelines. I also want others to be 'upstanding'. Your providing a justification to do nothing in the face of evil and injustice does a great disservice to society.
9
Like many of my generation, GX , I never had any question about whether or not Nazi's and Fascists represented some of the absolute worst that humanity could offer. I can remember asking my father, "Dad, why would anyone agree to do those things?" His response was never definitive and seemed to share in my bewilderment. The shared-assumption was that somehow, those people were "evil."
Now as I look around at relatives, friends, and neighbors who celebrate a clear fascist movement in Trump, I find myself battling with anger, disgust, and disappointment. Many of those who are following the anti-hero are the people were the first to denounce such evil, to raise flags to honor the fallen, and to cheer as modern folk-hero's as they fought off the Nazi-regalia wearing bad guys in movies.
While it's easy to think of them as "stupid" or "evil," I know they're not (most of them). They're afraid.
In the late 60's, Ernest Becker proposed that as humans want to be "a person of value in a world of meaning." Culture is what provides us with the map. When that map fails when compared to the map of another group, existential terror grips us. In response to this terror, humans become more polarized in their views and attempt to convert or annihilate those who's world view is different from our own. We need to find a way to make our fellow citizens feel heard. There IS space in America for differing worldviews, it's part of the dream that spawned our nation.
4
This is like WOW !!!! finally someone pointing out the elephant in the room. Thanks.
Just to be clear: the author's point is that the virtue of moral cowardice is that it still prevents genocide though at the cost of many, many murders.
That argument is reprehensible.
6
In the mean time nobody speaks out for the Uyghurs for fear of corporate retribution.
10
Professor Weinberg is correct, I suppose, in thinking that few of us have the courage to risk our own lives for others. Still, she oversimplifies upstander education--at least as I understand it--by suggesting that being an upstander requires high risk, confrontational action. My children were taught that heroism isn't always possible, but an upstander might offer comfort or safe haven to a victim, bear witness, report discriminatory behavior to the appropriate authorities--steps that might not put an immediate end to the danger but would convey solidarity and provide meaningful support. So this training strikes me as worthwhile and important, as well as nuanced, and I hope it will continue.
4
Thank you for this piece. It has made me think about what opportunities are available to me, today, to make something happen for the better.
One of worst things about the Trump era has been the sense of powerlessness we feel in the face of terrible deeds. The chance for real heroism may not appear today--but every day I can be less of a collaborator. I can try to figure out small ways to help them fail.
4
Regardless of whether this writer is "right" or "wrong", I do believe that there is value in giving people small goals. If I am told I'm immoral or complicit unless I am first to rush into the burning building, that's pretty discouraging and leaves me feeling pretty powerless. What good is that?
5
Interesting. Are those of us paying taxes and going about our daily lives while our governments (state and federal) incarcerate millions bystanders or collaborators? What about when our government separates families and keeps them in cages simply for migrating here in search of a better life? What about when our government carries out a foreign policy that starves hundreds of thousands (thinking of the Iraq sanctions during the 1990s)? These aren't genocidal (maybe), but they are atrocious. Collaborators or bystanders?
5
Absolutely.
It’s often easy to excuse and look the other way when faced with the narcissistic behavior of leaders who will do anything to win, to maintain their hold on power.
Sadly, even when we impeach the elected official who corrupted the highest office of the land, there is a chance culpable bystanders will vote to acquit.
5
In the Torah, in the book of Leviticus, it states, "You shall not stand idle while your neighbor bleeds." To me this means that I need to more than a bystander, I do need to take action when my fellow human beings are dehumanized.
264
@Leah, I agree. You don't need to put yourself in harms way to help. You need not jump into the burning building and pull out those in danger; but you should at least call the fire department and paramedics. So, no, it is not permissible to do nothing. But there are varying degrees of pro-activity--and a call for help may be enough.
23
@ZMC
I don't think the author is suggesting that one not do the things you cite. Summoning help from others is usually not heroic. True heroism is something far more involved and at risk to one's own safety.
Summoning assistance from others lies somewhere between passive bystanding and the heroism of more direct intervention.
8
@Leah Leviticus, like Deuteronomy, says a lot of other things too -- things like stoning, torture, and mass murder as pleasing a god. It would not be an authority I would use.
11
He makes some important points regarding heroism or upstanding and bystanding. In an open democracy, we have the power, when enough voters are unified, to get rid of a president or congress who is doing harm to our nation or other nations. We can educate ourselves, and not always accept what we read or are told by others. Bush W brought the US into a war with Iraq by lies to serve his own, the Neo-Cons and the Military-Industrial complex own purposes. It caused great harm to the US with loss of US soldiers and billions of dollars wasted. In 2004, a majority and electoral college majority could have voted W out and brought in someone to get our troops out of Iraq and also Afghanistan as quickly as possible. About a million Iraqis died in the war and US occupation. With just our vote, we could have saved thousands of lives. This would be a heroic action, and done by bringing no harm upon each US voter.
4
Unfortunately in some corners of our society, this indifference to suffering is turning into a virtue. You don't intervene, you don't come to rescue, you certainly don't call the police --- but you DO record it on your cellphone, perhaps laugh about it in the background, and then share it on social media. This is a growing problem and I don't hear too many people talking about it.
6
I generally agree with the author but I think we need to make a distinction between situations where we are truly putting our lives at risk and those where we are not, even though we my be risking physical, emotional or financial harm , as well as situations where we are not truly "bystanders".
My father, who was Jewish, was in the Coast Guard during WWII. One day some other white crewmates starting harassing the only black member of the crew. My father stood up for this man and helped diffuse a potentially violent situation. When the man thanked my father, his response was "don't thank me, I knew after they got through with you, they were going to come after me". Knowing my father, I think he certainly acted as he did because he objected to this behavior, but also because it was in his self interest to do so.
6
The forces of bigotry, hatred and fear of the others stoked by reinforcing systematized propaganda have delivered up potent cocktails that have and will produce many cases of atrocities at local, regional and worldwide levels. The best defense against such movements is a well educated populous. A populous that has had the opportunity to examine a breath of information that is broad and inclusive. A populous that has been schooled in how to filter through and find what best accommodates the health of society in the whole. What are the best accommodations? There's the rub.
2
I'm the child of Auschwitz survivors, and loved this piece.
"Like so many other things about me, my perspective on bystanders horrifies my mother."
Like so many other things about me.... Some stories behind that, I'll bet.
2
Thank you for this timely column. The moral question is always not 'what should I do?'. It's deeper than that. It asks the question 'who am I?'.
From the day Trump, speaking before a national audience, mocked a handicapped Wall Street Journal reporter, it was clear to me, like I'm sure it was clear to your mother, what we were facing. Nothing he's done since that evening has changed my impression. Sending him off to the dust heap of history will be, in Churchill's ringing phrase "our finest hour".
13
I think what has to be taught more than heroism is thinking for yourself. People have to be willing to defy authority. For example, the ferry disaster in South Korea, passengers (many of them high school students) were told to stay in their cabins while the ship sank. To take your chances in the water is not heroism because you're saving your own life, not others, but I think this spirit is what underlies it-- if YOU feel that something is wrong, don't go along with it, see if you can do something to fix it.
9
Yes, people need to think for themselves and stand up to authority, but they must also be willing to defy their peers. The inability or unwillingness to do so feeds the fire of most bullying. And the line between bullying and holocaust is shorter and straighter than many think.
1
Please read Timothy Snyder “On Tyranny”. Thank you for a thoughtful and timely article. Unfortunately I think we will have to stand up given the ways things are going eg go to jail if Trump gets re-elected.
1
The Stone was created as a space in which philosophy could be brought to the educated public (i.e., the readers of the NY Times). That is a great idea and a real public service. But this essay is sociology rather than philosophy. The argument is about the measurable effects of different sorts of responses to evil. That's empirical science. Philosophers from Plato to Kant discussed moral concepts from a more abstract perspective.
@Richard Miller Perhaps this isn't the right place for the "abstract perspective", given the times (and place) in which we live. I've always revered philosophy as the "art of wondering", and enjoyed postulating about its practical applications in life, rather than as abstract introspection.
Is morality an inherent human characteristic?
1
I find the article thoughtful and inspiring, I am thankful to the Prof Weinberg for that. I believe there's useful spectrum for all of us between being a bystander and a selfless hero. The things that we would lose to save another person's life don't have to be as drastic as our lives. If I am to lose a job or even a career to save the life of an innocent victim, it makes moral sense to act and do the right thing. What is at stake from a personal point of view may well be too much to risk, but there is plenty of room to act when the personal value at stake is not comparable to the lives or honor of others.
2
In an actual social context, where social pressures, social expectations, and community/employment relationships can be overwhelming forces, simply being a “bystander” — refusing to do anything to participate in evil and not actively being heroic — may entail significant adverse consequences to a person. While all collaborators in atrocities are evil, some “bystanders” are committing small acts of heroism at great personal cost. So that makes them a kind of “upstander.” And if they are doing anything to allow the machinery of evil to perpetuate (which can be as simple as doing a job that assists an evil regime like preparing food for regime officials), then they are collaborators. In other words, there are not simply three rigid categories as the author would have it.
1
If there is a problem with this column it is that it tries to discuss whom to blame as well as what to do.
Blame is discussed in one paragraph. It is much more complicated than that. For example, in France, not only did some local police help with the rounding up; the country actively collaborated with the Germans throughout the war.
4
In the smallest of small ways, I have been an upstander in my life. I have gotten in trouble, endured discomfort, but never was faced wtih the kinds of risks that true heroes endure. It feels automatic in the moment, but it is really not - in my case, it is the legacy of the things my beloved father modeled for me and taught me. The author errs in offering the opinion that upstanders are born and not made.
2
@Suzanne You are correct, upstanders are made. My father taught me that early on.
3
It seems that the next idea to explore in this piece, then, is how we make heroes.
1
We all imagine that, when the situation presents itself, we will be heroes. This is an interesting notion, that it's enough not to cooperate/collaborate. But as the essay makes clear, most collaborators do it because their sympathies lie more with the perpetrator than the victim. Or for selfish reasons.
1
Rivka says she is not heroic like her mother. I don't think a person knows what they will do until the choice is forced upon them.
4
This is very well written and cogently argued. A lot of food for thought for our own times.
2
Maybe could have edited out some of the repetition in the piece to make the case that simply standing by rather than aiding is a successful strategy, and more strongly make the case that it's not possible to mitigate the effects of a corrupt or hateful system from the inside. Both are interesting arguments, but would like to see more underpinning them.
3
I've often asked myself: "If I had lived in Warsaw (or anywhere else where Jews lived), would I have fought back, knowing that it was probably going to be useless (to a large extent)?"
I like to tell myself "yes," I would have had the moral courage. After all, like the author's mother, I have stood up for the rights of my colleagues at work, and like her, I too lost my job and sacrificed my life-long career and livelihood.
But would I have actually picked up a gun to fight? Lit fires? Thrown stones? I like to think so, but I can't honestly know for sure.
And hopefully I'll never have to find out, even as our country goose-steps in a similar direction.
4
This is an important conversation, and I wish I could add more.
Bystanding indifference IS part of the problem. Not knowing who the collaborators are is another part of the problem. Allowing collaboration to flourish is another part of the problem.
The solution is to do something about all of these parts, and more. The solution needs to activate resistance on the one hand, but it also needs to disenfranchise the collaboration and the collaborators. Call out their complicity in evil. Make them known for their bad works. Tie the money contributions to the effects and the advertisements.
There is no one simple solution and the time for solutions is late.
Thank you for this article.
1
The article makes an interesting point. We fail to teach our students, our children, about the morality that is within their reach: simply do not collaborate and evil will not gain such a foothold. How simple, and profound. It is not an either/or proposition. We can still teach about heroism....just add a dimension so the in-betweener's understand they have something to contribute in the fight against evil.
3
I believe Prof. Weingberg is incorrect here. I suggest reading the final of Ordinary Men (and if you can stomach it - it's hard - the book itself).
The situation in Poland and Ukraine is far complicated than other countries since both were flattened.
And the situation there is complicated. I'll quote Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands:
pg 93 - "When the show trials began in 1936, the heights of the NKVD were dominated by men whose own origins were within the Soviet national minorities, Jews above all. About forty percent of high-ranking NKVD officers had Jewish nationality recorded in their identity documents, as did more than half of the NKVD generals."
pg 108 - "When the mass killing of the Great Terror began, about a third of the high-ranking NKVD officers were Jewish by nationality."
One could also read about Lazar Kaganovich or that Molotov (of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) had a Jewish wife.
At some point, for me the moral question switched from A-'Look what someone else did' to B-'What would I do? What are the qualities of the people who stood up and how do I develop them in myself?' The latter question is hard, entirely in the individual, and independent of one's ethnicity. (And yes, many Jews, like everyone else, would fail.)
8
No matter the situation one can name it and speak against it somehow. Silence does condone. Being a bystander and remaining silent is never acceptable when a bad thing is happening to an innocent or powerless person. By remaining both publicly and privately silent the person choosing silence does in fact support the wrongdoer. The social pressure which a group or a single person can create by speaking out against the person doing the wrong does shape future behavior. Silence by a group or a single person lets the wrongdoer act unchecked. Choosing silence is an act of participating in the wrong. everyone, anyone can find a way to say something, somewhere and somehow to challenge the wrong. Always.
6
Ultimately it's a question of duty.
If you've taken on an obligation to help people, if you're a police officer, fireman, ship captain, etc., then certain risks are expected of you in service of your fellow human being. If you claim moral superiority because of a religious or ethical creed, you have a duty to uphold that creed.
If you're an elected official (Senators), you've taken on a duty to honestly represent those people, regardless of the risks.
The question I think you must ask yourself is, five, ten, twenty years later, can you justify your inaction due to a higher goal or are you going to regret not having done something?
It's also important to understand that, when doing something seems dangerous, there are often alternatives that are less so (they may be less effective, but still better than doing nothing). The number one rule of rescue is not to become the next victim.
4
Interesting, and it's certainly true that a lot of times the "innocent bystanders" were actually collaborators. But I'm not sure whether Weinberg is articulating a useful pragmatic way of distinguishing what our moral requirements are. Maybe we could add: don't just not welcome the murderers, but vote against them, and talk to your friends about it. Maybe make a little donation. There is a spectrum of resistance between inconspicuously avoiding participating in the crime, and between defiantly putting your life on the line. Most good people will be somewhere on that spectrum, sometimes more to one end or the other from time to time.
6
While increasing levels of effort, activity, risk-taking are all important to fight evil, I don't see why we can't encourage more heroism. Sure there are no sure way to ensure it. And some, maybe many, will never be able to achieve it. But as there's no more important category, we need as many heroes as we can ever get. Among other things, beyond the exact moment of even supreme personal sacrifice, heroic action can last and inspire others for years.
So, even it comes down to that in-the-moment decision, to prime people for that moment, perhaps there are things we could do. Maybe teach about heroes, their legacy, and they didn't have to be and probably weren't perfect; take financial care of their families; at least suggest that as we all have to go, there is no better way; and whatever suggestions others have.
I see no reason to assume that more people are not capable of it even if most may not be and the other categories above "bystanding" and "collaboration" are the best that we can hope for.
Forty five years ago, an Irish immigrant economics professor used to like to say "if you're not with me, you're against me" in one of my classes. I was too young and dumb to know why he was saying this, but it always bothered me as too reductive. That may have been his point, or he may have been merely quoting an expression dating from Irish Republican movement.
In most circumstances "if you're not with me, you're against me" is a fallacy, a conclusion supported by too few premises. But might there be times when action is imperative, when this alternative is not a fallacy? For example, if a people are to achieve independence from an outside ruler might it be necessary to categorize people as either "with us" or "against us"? I haven't the answer here.
I disagree with Ms. Weinberg's contention that heroism cannot be taught. Rather than focusing on the active word "taught" I choose to use the perhaps more passive word "learned." I believe that some people can learn heroism. However, I also agree that heroism is a behavior at the edge of the bell curve. It is demotivating to the people not located at that edge to demand that they relocate themselves there.
The collaborators in the occupied countries were much worse than ISIS of today. I don't understand how these collaborators could go on a Sunday to a church and pray. Did they pray and told how many Jews they killed that week?
We were there this past summer and it hit me how people could be so evil in the twentieth century.
2
The United States of America was more than willing to ‘stand by’ as the Holocaust began. Was more than willing to keep refugees from our shores. Was even willing to see Europe under Hitler. Much later, willing to ignore other genocides.
Is paying your taxes a moral crime? Is sending our minority youth in uniform overseas, collaboration?
A fellow I knew, who flew for the Germans in the war, an intelligent and good man who made his life here, always predicted that It Can Happen Here. He never found any reason to suppose that it would not. I don’t either.
16
Dr. Weinberg should also be taking into account climate change and population growth. People who normally would be happy to get along with their own lives and not persecute anyone will behave very differently when they feel their living standards, their childrens' futures, are in danger. Things are going to get much worse on this planet, and you can't ask people to give up their living standards, give up their childrens' future, without a fight. Yes, they will look for scapegoats (Jews being the favorite,) and no, ordinary people with a strong survival sense and a grip on reality are not going to welcome third world refugees. Rather than trusting that human nature will be good enough to prevent catastrophe as the third world heads North, I'd prefer to be setting up UN refugee camps on the Mexican/Guatemalan border and accept this as the future.
4
Rivka, this is for you. Some people will never be up standers or bystanders. You need to take a lesson from their lives, their heroism and love of others before themselves.
Nicholas Winton, a Briton who said nothing for a half-century about his role in organizing the escape of 669 mostly Jewish children from Czechoslovakia on the eve of World War II, a righteous deed like those of Oskar Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg, died on Wednesday in Maidenhead, England. He was 106.
The Rotary Club of Maidenhead, of which Mr. Winton was a former president, announced his death on its website. He lived in Maidenhead, west of London.
It was only after Mr. Winton’s wife found a scrapbook in the attic of their home in 1988 — a dusty record of names, pictures and documents detailing a story of redemption from the Holocaust — that he spoke of his all-but-forgotten work in the deliverance of children who, like the parents who gave them up to save their lives, were destined for Nazi concentration camps and extermination.
For all his ensuing honors and accolades in books and films, Mr. Winton was a reluctant hero, often compared to Schindler, the ethnic German who saved 1,200 Jews by employing them in his enamelware and munitions factories in Poland and Czechoslovakia, and to Wallenberg, the Swedish businessman and diplomat who used illegal passports and legation hideaways to save tens of thousands of Jews in Nazi-occupied Hungary.
6
Excellent article and so true when you help and believe you are organized like the Warsaw ghetto and don't recognize that you are helping evil to do its dirty work even though you did not mean to. The Uprising was brutal, but at least people stood and fought and showed the way that yes, in many instances in history people know they will lose and die, but it is better than helping the evil. I notice this article is important since the Governor in Texas says his state will not take in any and I mean zero refuges now. What does that say about us in 2020 people should be in the street and outraged, but it seems we really don't care. At 73 and a vet of the Vietnam War, what scares me today in the winter of my life is that we are living in the 1930's all over again. When groups of people are demonized by the Governor, and more important the President it makes it so easy for the same to happen all over again and to justify it. When one takes away someone's humanity that is what one gets. Don't forget American history is filled with creating demons read the history of WW II and what happened to Japanese Americans and today with muslims and other groups. When the powers that be speak a code language they open the doors to anti semitism and the violence that goes along with it. These are terrible times. A President who so openly lies and the media and the people just laugh it off, oh, that his Trump just being Trump like it is a joke. Glad I am on the way out. Jim Trautman
8
Ms. Weinberg makes the disturbing claim that doing nothing is enough to stop atrocities. Yet during the Holocaust that's exactly what most Europeans did - and it didn't work. While these ordinary people went about their daily business, the Nazis and their collaborators killed millions of Jews and in most places met almost no opposition in doing that. In sharp contrast, in Denmark, where the Danish resistance acted as upstanders rather than bystanders, virtually all Danish Jews were saved through the very active efforts of Danes who chose to, yes, actually do something to help. The lesson of the Holocaust is that evil will only be defeated when good people affirmatively do something to stop it.
14
"In Bulgaria and Italy, where the culture wasn’t as anti-Semitic, the local populations didn’t cooperate with the murder of Jews; most Bulgarian and Italian Jews survived."
This was also pointed out in Hannah Arendt's "Eichmann in Jerusalem" It seemed that the Bulgarians and Italians, for the most part, ignored the Nazis project of exterminating their neighbors.
4
There is so much food for thought here and I hope this column inspires much discussion and debate. I just want to share one observation: the devaluation of the word "hero," which has come to mean any person who does anything to help. The man who leaps into the water to rescue a drowning stranger is a "hero." The person on a crowed train who comes to the defense of a taunted member of a persecuted minority is a "hero." The teenager who turns a found wallet, cash included, to the police is a "hero." Aren't these things any of us should be moved to do under the circumstances? Even with dramatically far less at stake than during the Holocaust, what is seen as heroic should be instinctively human. We shouldn't need lectures about being an "upstander" to be guided by empathy and a moral core.
3
An excellent article! So much for the "boring from within" argument, the one used in favor of accepting posts in an evil government despite your avowed humanistic values.
1
Did I read this right? When the murderers come for your neighbor, turn your lights off and pretend you're not home. It's too much to ask to get involved (by, for instance, calling 911).
This is an argument for moral cowardice. The author's mother has a better idea.
3
When my Uncle Mike was thirteen years-old, The Nazis put him to work in a factory manned by Jewish slaves. (Eventually he would also be in numerous concentration camps as well.) He became sick. Ordinarily when children became ill and couldn't work they would be murdered immediately. But the owner of the factory put young Michael on a cot outside his office, nursed him to health and let no one hurt him or take him away. A saint? Hardly. My uncle, although Jewish, had blond hair and blue eyes. In fact Uncle Mike looked like the factory owner's brother. This man sometimes would drop Jews into vats of acid. Yet he saved my uncle's life. Beyond the random nature of the universe we also need people who heroically step up. It is true, I suspect, that on Wednesday I might see a horror take place and freeze. Or even run. Yet the following Thursday I might see the same situation and run to help despite the risk. On different days different people can respond in different ways. Most of us will not always be heroes. But there are moments when we feel more alive than others, when we are in touch with some special part of ourselves. And then we do leap into the fray thoughtless of the consequences. Some day I might have to shave and look into the mirror. But Rivka Weinberg has a point. As the doctors murmur, "First do no harm." Alas Josef Mengele never learned that lesson. He was called the Angel Of Death. We are all saviors if we want to be. And I'm not speaking mystically.
3
Everyone has a choice, even under life or death circumstances.
For example Sophie Scholl and her brother, and die Weisse Rose. Excellent article with interesting points. For me the bottom line is when world leaders are somewhat protected from retribution for their actions, i.e. in the case of the St. Louis ship which was refused entry into the US sending all of it's Jews to a known fate of death...there is no excuse for indifference, aka as blatant racism and in this case anti-Semitism.
2
The Franklin Roosevelt Administration initially turned away thousands of Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust. Officials alleged that Nazi spies may have infiltrated the hordes seeking refugee here.
At the Evian Conference in 1938 meant to decide what to do about the fleeing Jews only the Dominican Republic agreed to take in significant numbers. Bolivia welcomed 30,000
Thus, FDR helped ensure that the Nazis were able to murder thousands of would-be Jewish refugees.
It was only in the latter stages of the war that Washington moved to help endangered Jews.
Like America, Cuba turned away the USS Elizabeth carrying more than 900 refugees. They were forced to return to Germany and many later perished in concentration camps.
Later Cuba accepted 12,000 refugees.
8
The St Louis was the refugee ship that Cuba turned away
This essay is so wrong. Every book on the history of the Third Reich contradicts the central thesis the author puts forward.
Being a “bystander” is an cowardly and insidious for of complicity and collaboration.
The author should be ashamed of herself for putting this idea
forward. What we today is for more people to actively resist our
nation’s slide towards Fascism.
5
Indifference, starting with this opinion piece, plays a big role in the road to Auschwitz, as well as its corollary: historic amnesia. An example , but there are many more, is the Roma people. Never mentioned in this opinion piece the Roma stand mostly undefended and forgotten in today's neo-nationalist Europe, even if they were a main target of the Nazi and Fascist death machines.
4
@Davide agreed, but the same truth of death in the Holocaust applied to the Roma. In places where people didn't see Roma as unworthy of life, and instead saw them as colleagues, citizens, and neighbors, fewer died. In towns/villages where collaborators handed over lists of "Gypsies" to the Nazis and their collaborators, they were almost completely wiped out. I think she is saying that our minimum standard has to be NOT participating in the evil...don't hand over names, don't tell the police who the Roma are. In Europe today, she's asking individuals to stop assuming Roma are criminals, to stop assuming they are "less than" everyone else. Understand they are humans. Of course there's room for heroism, but for most people, NOT actively participating in persecution is the minimum moral standard. And, as you point out, that's not being applied very well in today's Europe when it comes to the Romani people.
1
While finding the author’s essay stimulating, I would like to correct one minor widespread fallacy, that the Jews helped by the Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara were fleeing “the advancing Gestapo.” In the summer of 1940, Lithuania was occupied by Soviet troops and about to be incorporated into the Soviet Union as part of a secret pact between Hitler and Stalin. The two dictators had agreed on an amicable division of Eastern Europe, and no one thought that Hitler would be crazy enough to invade the Soviet Union. As subsequent interviews testified, many if not most Sugihara survivors were not fleeing a then-unimaginable Nazi takeover of Lithuania but escaping becoming citizens of the Stalinist state.
2
@J.A.K. That is an oversimplification of their plight. Lithuania was already full of Jewish refugees from Nazi occupied Poland. It was not unimaginable to the Jews in Lithuania that they would eventually suffer the same fate. An invasion was already considered possible:
https://www.yadvashem.org/righteous/stories/sugihara.html
There is much to admire in this essay, but there are also some VERY unsettling flaws. It’s true that it is crucial to avoid actively facilitating (or worse, collaborating) with atrocities. It’s also true that inaction does not equate with indifference. And certainly the author did not stint in her praise of those who DO find the courage to speak out or act against catastrophic injustice.
Unfortunately, the essay focuses on examples that are tone deaf to today’s circumstances. Yes, in certain societies like Italy there was very little cooperation with NAZI genocidal measures against Jews. But the Italians didn’t elect Hitler (even if they did elect Mussolini). It was circumstances in Germany (where Hitler’s party never won more than 40% of a fair election).
THAT is why we MUST fear indifference and the kin circumstances of ignorance and despair in the US today where “OUR” president* is actively whipping up fears and hatreds against vulnerable populations and immigrants. THAT is why we MUST fear apathy, ignorance, and numb fatalism while our Senate collaborates with a power abusing president even to the extent of saying that “abuse of power is NOT an impeachable offense.”
3
A difficult piece. I'm reminded of an important essay on what it takes to make a Nazi: https://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/
I lean toward disagreement with the columnist, but appreciate the occasion to think about my own position in greater depth.
155
@Jean8 I read the piece in your link - thank you! It was a wonderful read, thought provoking, terrifying and reassuring all at once.
14
@Jean8 I read the piece in your link - thank you! It was a wonderful read, thought provoking, terrifying and reassuring all at once.
4
@Jean8 thank you Jean for bringing that article to my attention. Also "Those Angry Days" by Lynne Olson, should be required reading.
6
What hate and authoritarianism are you speaking of? All the hate and authoritarianism I see is coming from the left? Where they hate white people for supposedly having a privilege and the evidence they hate minorities is that they engage in the bigotry of low expectations, or everything negative that happens to them is due to racism, which is not true, and is definitely patronizing, which is a subtle but powerful form of hate and disrespect. I see Trump's right as the big umbrella party, because it follows king's dream of judging based on character rather than color of skin. Also, he protects the civil rights of the people of this country by not allowing just anyone to ignore our immigration laws and fraudulently misuse our asylum laws. And he doesn't just give foreign governments funds without asking for something in return. Ironically it is he that is least fascist. Ironic because he's being accused of fascism on the basis that he has character. There is no good argument that he brought fascism and yet articles like these intend to scare the public into supporting the fascist left. This is nonsense.
5
"Fascist left" is an oxymoron. Anyone with at least a high school government class under their belt would know that. Feel free to explain why Donald Trump is uniformly supported domestically and around the world by neo-Nazi groups, and why at the biggest and most destructive neo-Nazi rally in modern history, the literal, self-described fascists, neo-Nazis and white supremacists were waving swastikas and Trump flags side by side.
No president has done more to attract and keep the support and votes of white supremacists, neo-Nazis and anti-Semites than Donald Trump, no matter how much his supporters try to deny it.
1
It’s people like you who are the scariest of all. You are willfully blind to the fact that Trump stirs up hatred of immigrants and anyone who is not a “real” American in order to serve his own ends. It’s no accident that hate crimes of all kinds have been on the rise since Trump got elected—the tone is set at the top.
1
While I believe it is true that, other things being equal, our moral obligations to others decreases as the risks and costs to ourselves increase and the benefits to others diminish, I think Rivka Weinberg's dividing lines between pointless martyrdom, saintliness, and actual obligations are in the wrong place. The costs to others of doing nothing in some cases is too great not to justify at least some risk to yourself and loved ones. And it is better to suffer wrong, than to do it or to permit it if you can stop or resist it.
I have to side with her mother and with the Burke quote, along with, the quote (mistakenly?) attributed to Dante that "The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crises, maintain their neutrality." And the fact that some people might not be able to be heroic doesn't mean they shouldn't aspire to be or try.
Her mother was right to try to defend the colleagues at work whom she did. It was wrong that she was fired for doing so. Being unfairly punished for a right act does not make it wrong; being unfairly rewarded for a wrong act does not make it right.
143
@Rick
I have a real hard time these days believing that any republican politician has conscience or courage; but I would still like to see the quote from Dante read to them in public.
18
@Rick The quote from Dante seems to be inaccurate. The worst circles in Dante's Hell are not hot but freezing cold. Those people who were morally neutral or switched sides are not in Hell (for they committed no active crimes) but in a vestibule, the ante-Inferno, where they repeatedly follow changing banners: "behind that banner trailed so long a file of people -- I should never have believed that death could have unmade so many souls." Naked and miserable, they are repeatedly stung into running by horseflies and wasps. To me that is the perfect description of those of us who remain "neutral" -- or is it apathetic?
8
@DukeOrel I believe the Republican politicians today for the most part are simply auditioning for a forthcoming potentially very thick book that would be titled "Profiles in Cowardice" which could also be subtitled: "the heights of hypocrisy and the dearth and death of moral reasoning.
8
"...and don’t turn people in. That will usually be enough."
Of all the don'ts cited, not turning people in is the most profound. That is how most Jews were identified for the Germans, they were given up by average folk out of hatred, jealousy, efforts to ingratiate one self and, for the monsters in our midst, simply for the reward.
I agree that acts of heroism are instinctual in origin and often of the moment and therefore unteachable. But what can be taught is compassion. That is the quality that all those who save people throughout the world share.
It's not hard to teach compassion, one simply has to demonstrate it; most bystanders will view the act positively and try to emulate it in their way.
5
A provocative commentary better to start a conversation than to prove anything definitive, Kudos.
3
There is a silver lining to your story that affected my life growing up as Baby Boomer. My father was a 10 year old Jewish immigrant from Poland when he came to America in 1930 to be with his family who lived a Jewish section of Brooklyn. He also had rheumatic heart disease.
In 1943 he was drafted in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and served with distinction in the Europe. After the German surrender, most of his division was disbanded, but he was sent to the concentration camps in Poland because he spoke Yiddish. He helped survivors live these camps until new homes could be found. I learned about this from my mother.
When he came back to America in 1946, he married, went to college on the GI bill, started a family, and live the American dream. He grew a thriving office furniture business in NJ. He died when I was 15 of a bad heart.
The lesson he passed unto me from his WWII experience of protecting & caring for his fellow soldiers who came from all walks of life in America, was that he wanted his children to live in a mixed community. This would be the only way we to prevent a Holocaust in America. Soon, other immediate family members moved out their "Jewish only communities".
As horrible as WWII and the Holocaust was, we need to be diligent in protecting our democracy and get active to prevent the dark side of human nature of living in fear, hatred, and divisiveness.
Thanks to all the Dads who sacrificed their lives and time to prevent this from happening.
14
Without an armed counter-force, the daily acts of intimidation by self-styled, domestic militia groups and individuals who are white supremacists and other anti-Semites of all nationalities and religions will tend to grow more violent. Lone wolf terrorists are more difficult to keep in check. Usually, in America, citizens expect their local and state police, elected representatives, and federal agencies like the FBI to be that effective counter-force. A major problem arises in a society when the police, FBI, and politicians stand by or actively refuse to do their jobs and let the problem grow. A problem also arises when there is an inadequate set of checks on the mass sale and distribution of military grade weaponry. If there is a systemic failure on the part of the authorities who are hired or elected to enforce the laws and protect the citizenry, then average citizens will be compelled to take the law into their own hands. Self-defense militias and individuals will need to use the 2nd Amendment and form an effective counter-force. It will become necessary for them to stockpile military grade weapons, get appropriate training, and take on the burden of resistance and stand up to evil. The willingness to fight and possibly die for the cause of human decency and freedom is the best deterrent.
1
@Dan The recent episode in Virginia was interesting and a little bit reassuring, because the FBI actually did take action to block participation by violent white nationalists, and authorities provided enough security to keep everything calm. Trump himself, as we expected, chimed in to heighten the tensions, but the authorities, including at the federal level, took the side of law and order. That said, it's pretty appalling that there were that many people who wanted to carry their weapons around in public, in the fantasy that they were defending themselves against tyranny
The author writes with great certitude-"it's false that...it's false that...it's false that..." from the safety of living, working, coping, adapting and functioning in a democracy, albeit conflicted and divided, which continues to enable and even promote a toxic WE-THEY violating culture. Daily. By words and deeds. By laws. Edicts. Traditions. Customs. Beiefs. Legacies. Revised histories. By personal unaccountability by ranges of ordinary peoples as well as by policymakers. Elected and selected ones. At all levels. Everywhere. It is obvious that the writer cares about preventing, if possible, and minimizing, if not, violating bodies, psyches, souls; traumas. She presents, inadvertently or by intention "formulas" without even brief reminding us, her readers what are the actual and potential relationships between reality's dimensions
(uncertainties, unpredictabilities, randomness, and lack of total control, no matter one's efforts-timely or not-
and her suggestions about what to do and what not to do. For example, where does "collaboration," or not, fit in for the all too many who choose to be willfully blind to whatshould not be? Willfully deaf to the experienced existential pains of the many around us? Willfully indifferent to...? Willfully ignorant about...? Lastly, using words to suggest actions, what are the conditions necesary to transmute the word into needed, relevant, effective actions, when NO WORD can ever adequately represent what it was created to express.
I feel like Ms. Weinberg sets the bar too low. No, you don't have to lead the resistance, as it were. But I think in our current "Germany 1933" moment, we can ask more of people than just not collaborating.
Letting Trump supporters know why you are afraid Trump is trying to dismantle our democracy is a start. Letting them know that his assault on Blacks, jews, muslims, women and immigrants may not affect them personally (although it's a long list) but that it needs to be forcefully rejected is another.
Of course, voting against him and his sycophants in November is a given. I am glad the Richmond rally ended without bloodshed. But anyone who doesn't think that Trump is encouraging violent attacks against those who oppose him is willfully blind.
329
@Sparky I like your analogy about leading the resistance.
Of course we need leaders: people who spend their resources and risk their lives to make the world a better place. But we also need people to make sandwiches for those leaders. And we need people to pass along a message. And we need people to share a little of what they have. The great resistance leaders couldn't do it along - they needed right hand (wo)men and co-leaders, but they also needed thousands of people along the way to help them.
I just don't think we can let ourselves off the hook by saying "I'm not SuperMan/WonderWoman so what can I do?" We can all do plenty. "Plenty" might look different from person to person, but we all have gifts to bring...and we are all needed.
16
What if the reason somebody is a Trump supporter is precisely because he attacks immigrants, Muslims etc? I’m at a complete loss as to how we can fight back against the disturbingly large segment of our population who wholeheartedly approve of everything Trump does.
36
@K. Anderson
I'm right there with you. My own family members are Trumpettes. What to do? How to challenge them? This is not about reason; it's about passions--fears, hopes, and neuroses.
I fear that this split will lead to civil war--which will not settle everything as the 19th-century Civil War proved.
8
A lot to think about in this article. I certainly commend this author's perspective and connection to horrific events but ultimately, I side with her mother. When our very humanity is being threatened by the virus of hate we MUST stand up and be counted any way we can or risk being consumed by it. A movie that was tragically prescient when it was made in 1940 is "The Mortal Storm." It is a chilling account of decent, ordinary people being swept up in a culture of hate. Unfortunately we are beginning to see the seeds of this type of thinking emerging throughout the world. Hate must be confronted and rejected overtly as well as subtlety.
1
Are those who purchase advertising on Media channels that spread hatred collaborators? What about the audience?
4
Thank you for publishing this profoundly thoughtful perspective. It’s appearance is timely for current US history.
3
Hmmmm. I think the author ignores group psychology. People often have a hard time not participating when asked by peers. I mean leaders of some communities won't call Farrakhan a bigot and anti-semite. Need I say more?
5
I completely agree with the point of view of this article. Collaboration with evil -even if for noble reasons- is strangely overlooked as a contributing factor. But the author only distinguishes between private heroism or doing nothing. There is a form of active opposition that doesn't demand heroism; organised civil protest.
https://www.aeinstein.org/nonviolentaction/198-methods-of-nonviolent-action/
2
@Anna True, although historically, organized protest has sometimes involved a fair amount of risk, and even more for the organizers. But you're right, the option of joining a protest is important.
Thank you for this insightful article. As I am writing a book on "The Underground Practices that Has Normalized Child Abuse," this article is so timely and appropriate for our political landscape.
I agree there is some confusion and fallacy of "be an upstander and not a bystander." It is not clear how it manifests itself in real life. It also infuses a false sense of security.
When the victims of Larry Nassar spoke out as early as 1999, everyone around them covered up. It took 20 years to stop Larry Nassar.
The collaborator are just as guilty as the perpetrators and therefore, they should be held accountable with severe personal consequences for their crimes.
The perpetrators are the "malicious virus." But those who cover up are the injector of the "malicious virus."
Which is worse?
The reason we have 'cancers' induced in our society; it is because the "collaborators" are the enablers. The cover ups range from financial corruptions to disregard to human life.
Companies should not be liable legally to protect the “perpetrator or their "collaborators". These co-conspirators should be personally responsible for spreading the cancer.
There should be not only moral obligation but legal obligation. We must enforce laws and policies with severe consequences for the cancer to subside.
1
Great piece.
I also can make no claim to being heroic.
2
As a Jew whose grandparents left Europe after WW1 and before Hitler came to power, I've often wondered how I would have acted in a situation where I had to choose between helping those facing persecution (and worse) if it involved my personal safety. I've never had to find out, but I fear I would have not been heroic, and I suspect that this is true for the majority.
As such, I find your article meaningful and encouraging and thank you for the thoughtfulness of it.
6
Language makes a difference. I suppose one is writing down to the teenagers by alluding to a paternal grandfather's "Spidey sense."
It also moves into reductionist language where horrific events of the past and real humans are simplified down to comic books.
Evil is complex. It deserves complex language from a stated philosophy professor. Not children's metaphors.
2
@JohnBarleycorn
Don't be silly; I'm not a teenager, and I know what 'Spidey sense' is.
If you think this is NOT 'complex language', perhaps your own comprehension is at fault.
1
@JohnBarleycorn
Nonsense. To reach the widest audience, which is surely what is wanted, one should use plain language.
As a Jew (whose father left Germany the day after Hitler was elected - not because he foresaw the Holocaust, but for the same reason your grandfather left) I'm appalled at those Jews who support Trump under the illusion that Trump's other supporters will 'spare' them (and who think that it's okay to turn their backs on other minorities on Trump's 'hit list').
28
@Grant
Excellent point. And we shouldn't assume Trump's family connection will soften his attitude toward Jews, either.
5
The other problem with “upstanding” is that everyone thinks they’re the hero of their own story. Many of the people who helped the Nazis round up local Jews didn’t think of themselves as evil but as saving their country from what they saw as a threat. It is far better for people to have a bias against action, to act only when upon research and deep reflection they are sure that they are actually the good guys and not the bad guys.
4
the nazi reach. how convenient, how simplistic, is the reach for the nazi reference. godwin's law on "the stone."
wouldn't a real philosopher, concerned with real problems, draw parallels to climate change?
what is more astonishingly and stupefyingly aberrant than a species willfully destroying its own habitat, its own planet, for snacks and selfies?
do you really think that folks living a century from now, in the heat and disorder, turmoil and human suffering created by climate change, will say "those nazis, pure evil!"
they won't be talking about nazis anymore: they'll be talking about you and me, and our utter moral failure.
9
Yes, and.
Shrinks say the basis of hate is fear, and the greatest terrorism holds the greatest fear.
No history of the horrors of the Holocaust is complete without looking at WWI, and the brutal treatment of Germany after that war through the Versailles Treaty.
Some thirteen million people voted for Hitler. Once he was in power, bit by bit, the door opened to what came later.
Sure, it was an eternal lesson for Jews, but just so, to the rest of the world, defend your political offices from despots, or fall to the darkest of times.
Hugh
3
@Hugh Massengill A friend of mine likes to point out that the French treatment at the end of the Franco Prussian war was just as bad as the Versailles Treaty, but they just tightened their belts and paid up. Of course, there was also the global depression making things hard for the Germans, and everyone else.
But I think it's true that people are too quick to see the Versailles Treaty as a significant cause for what came after. It is probably just as relevant to look at the decision to not actually march in and occupy Germany after WWI, a decision that let them feel that maybe they hadn't actually lost the war militarily, but that it had been a political betrayal. That myth wasn't possible after WWII.
You should listen to your mother, and you should feel ashamed.
Yes, many people participate in violence when a society disintegrates and collapses into violence. Many people participated in the Holocaust, the Holodomor, Mao’s madness, the Indonesian massacres, the mass murder in Cambodia, the slaughter in Rwanda, and all the other examples.
But societal disintegration must get to that point in order for the violence to commence and it does so because too many people do nothing. As our democracy dissolves before our eyes and our culture disintegrates under the weight of constant lying bullying and once-again-permitted white nationalist hate, Trump maintains support of a minority of the the population. He won, and may win again, because millions of people “stayed home” on Election Day. His, and GOP lies are propagated by corporate media that has not learned to report only that he lied without repeating the lie, and too few speak against the outrageous display of war-gear and weapons of death paraded overtly in our streets as an overt threat.
During the early phases of societal disintegration people must recognize it as such and speak out when it is still possible to do so. They cowards who have left the Trump administration yet refrain from loudly speaking out will go down in history as such, especially if we too descend into violence or stand by and allow catastrophic climate change to occur and threaten human societies and existence.
Don’t be a bystander.
10
@Gary Swergold
Thank you Gary!
This is spot on. Bystanders are complicit.
Her view is advocating cowardly silence in the face of evil
and injustice.
It is shameful.
1
How did they find all the Jews in cosmopolitan Amsterdam?
By the giving up to the Nazi’s the synagogue membership and address ledgers.
Does that mean all or a majority of the Dutch were collaborators? Certainly not.
Yet, why did no one bomb Assad’s crematorium?
Selling arms to the perpetrators of genocide in Myanmar?
Defense of communities of the targeted is out of self interest.
That is why those who hid the Jews in Serbia, Holland, Greece, Poland, Bulgaria etc
who risked their lives deserve our greatest admiration.
Who fights against ethnic cleansing these days?
4
Don’t forget the role IBM and its Hollerith technology played in first identifying, then locating, then collecting Jewish citizens, starting in the early 1930s. IBM personnel (management, sales, and tech support) were involved up to the gas chambers. Read Edwin Blacks book or https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/04/hitlers-willing-business-partners/303146/
7
Let's not forget what happened in this country 80 years ago...
80 years ago, 20,000 New Yorkers cheered for Nazis at Madison Square Garden
https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/2/20/18230052/night-at-garden-oscars-2019-madison-square-bund-anniversary-interview
If anyone thinks that it can't happen here, think again.
Charlottesville recent riot "Jews will not replace us!" still rings in my ears as a stark reminder on what was going on February 20, 1939
"A Night at the Garden.”
Don't allow this memory lapse and to take hold, we're not immune from repeating our dark history!
It's imperative for teachers to educate our young generation, who for the most part are not familiar with these facts.
It has to be a big part of every school curriculum.
The desperate need to find scapegoats, being it muslim ban or resurgence of anti-Semitism is always on our threshold, especially now in our bitterly divided tribal country!
Thank you Ms. Weinberg for this remarkable op-ed.
Silence and complicity are not the answers!!!
9
Let's not forget what happened in this country 80 years ago...
80 years ago, 20,000 New Yorkers cheered for Nazis at Madison Square Garden
https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/2/20/18230052/night-at-garden-oscars-2019-madison-square-bund-anniversary-interview
If anyone thinks that it can't happen here, think again.
Charlottesville recent riot "Jews will not replace us!" still rings in my ears as a stark reminder on what was going on February 20, 1939
"A Night at the Garden.”
Don't let this memory lapse, we're not immune from repeating our dark history!
It's imperative for teachers to educate our young generation, who for the most part are not familiar with these facts.
The desperate need to find scapegoats, being it muslim ban or resurgence of anti-Semitism is always on our threshold, especially now in our bitterly divided tribal country!
Thank you Ms. Weinberg for this remarkable op-ed.
3
“When madmen are elected, it’s time to leave the country”
That's the coward's way out. When your country is in trouble, the courageous patriot stays and fights.
I have contempt for those who run.
That's the kind of people liberals want to let into this country, by the millions...millions of self-serving cowards.
1
@Raz
Whoa. If your enemy is so powerful there is no chance to stay safe, retreat is sometimes the only smart thing to do, living to fight another day. But of course you have all the answers.
2
To Raz in Montana—You assume that most of those who are leaving their countries have the protection of the laws that you have in this country to fight back. Really? They are educated, literate people who know their rights and history ? They have the means to fight dictatorship when they don’t even have enough to eat? These are cowards? Obviously, you are unaware of the histories of even the countries in this hemisphere. The few with the means and educated are quickly silenced. That’s why there are so many who have “disappeared.”
2
@Norma Gauster
We have a country because the people, without legal protections, decided to stand and fight, to risk their lives.
One tactic used by the British was to capture the sons of prominent colonial rebels and hold them on prison ships, where they would surely die unless their fathers agreed to abandon the rebellion and betray their country and comrades.
The fathers sacrificed their sons, rather than give in. This is the kind of courage and sacrifice that it takes to create and preserve a nation.
Not, running away because there is trouble, and lookin' for a free ride in a foreign country.
2
My mother always said that if a true Christian had accompanied every Jew sent to the ditches and later gas chambers there would have been an end to the killing early on. The price, she said, would have been high but it would have been what true love of God demanded.
5
My grandfather did the same thing as the columnist's grandfather, taking his family and fleeing a country that would elect Hitler to power. My father, a small boy at the time, was scarred for life by this experience. But he lived!
The important aspect that the columnist forgets is that the Germans elected Hitler. He would not have come into power if they had not. Every German who voted for him is by definition a collaborator. This is a big lesson for November. It did not require heroism to vote against Hitler. It required sense.
We cannot forget that Hitler was ELECTED. Then, once he attained power through the electorate, he became a dictator. But he was elected first.
Did I mention that Hitler was elected?
8
Yes. The Dutch Resistance Museum in Amsterdam asks visitors to consider whether they would, in the face of evil such as that of the Nazis, collaborate, accommodate, or resist. While I want, with every fiber of my being, to believe that I would resist, deep down I suspect that I would accommodate. I want to believe that I would be heroic, but suspect that I'm actually a dyed-in-the-wool coward. What little comfort I have I get from the belief, which I think is pretty on target, that I would at least not be a collaborator.
Though I believe that it is entirely wrong to compare the current POTUS to Hitler for a number of reasons, the article reminds me of the current situation. Beginning in 2016 we have had a whole parade of folks joining the administration making the claim that they would somehow control this POTUS or appeal to his better instincts or make him more presidential or calm him down. They have tried to make a bad situation less bad in a variety of ways. They have failed over and over leaving in frustration or humiliation.
3
@Anne-Marie Hislop Maybe you could practice resisting now, starting in small ways, and tone your resistance muscles. You say you want to resist, but fear you wouldn't. Well, you might not be ready to run a marathon (fight the Nazis) but maybe you could take a few steps (interrupt a microaggression). There is a scale here, and it's not all or nothing.
You could go to a march.
You could donate to a cause that supports an oppressed group(s) and read their literature.
You could vote.
You could engage in a conversation - on the bus or in the grocery store line - with someone who is not (on the outside) like you.
You could read up on how to be an upstander, and look for practical tips.
If you truly long with every fiber to be an upstander, then be an upstander. It's okay to start small, but if you do nothing, will you be able to forgive yourself? And won't it feel good to think that you're doing SOMETHING, even if it's small? Those small steps can lead to big ones. But you're right, if you do nothing now, when big needs arise, you won't be able to meet those needs.
I think you can do it if you start small. I hope you do. Small steps might even lead to big ones.
2
@Kristina: Right, that's left out of the article, all the options between either quietly turning away, or dying (or getting fired) a hero. And there is something to what you say, that it's like exercising: one might start out just by reading newspaper stories all the way to the end, and being sure to vote, reading books, and maybe more publicly showing up at a meeting or demonstration. Even then some strident voices will criticize you for not doing enough, but that's not very helpful. Everyone should do what they can.
There is one more extremely important lesson that the Jews totally ignore and dispute. First consider this; "During the Holocaust, Jewish councils organized life in the ghetto and compiled lists of Jews for deportation, often thinking that they were helping Jews manage a nightmare. Ultimately, they helped the Nazis murder Jews by maintaining order and providing the Gestapo with the names of people to be deported and murdered."
Recently Jews were slaughtered in Synagogue in California and Pittsburgh. They were also slaughtered in a grocery store.
I must stop for a minute. I am Jewish and feel that I have the right and the obligation to criticize the Jewish people who are my people.
There are Jews who support Donald Trump and strongly believe that they are helping the nation of Israel and the Jewish people by offering their votes and support of Trump. There are also Jews that vociferously support extreme gun control including confiscation, permits to allow purchases, restrictions of magazine capacity and also banning of so-called assault weapons. Worst of all are the Jews who insist that speaking out against American Neo-Nazis and other white supremacists is enough and reliance upon the community, not ourselves is adequate protection against lethal violence. There are Jews too, who object to speaking out about Islamist extremists.
Jews are in denial. Our lives, our children's future and the future of Judaism in America is at great risk. Don't help the new Nazis in any way!
3
"Next time the murderers come, it’s understandable if it’s too much to ask for us to risk our lives, our children, or even our jobs, to save others"
Dear Rivka! That is terribly absurd! It is so ridiculously absurd I can't find words to express my horror and shame that a Jewish woman, could express and defend such thoughts!
Were it not for others we, the Jewish people would not be here. So many thousands, indeed millions died fighting the Nazis and their collaborators that it is inconceivable that you can offer such a vile thought that it is "too much to ask us to risk our lives for others." Fortunately that is what many people did. They did so unselfishly and probably scared to death too. They feared for their lives, their wives, children and maybe the loss of their economic security too.
I will not be an "up stander" or a bystander either. I'd be ashamed of myself. is your career and your bank account so precious? Is your life worth more than anyone else's? Wouldn't you sacrifice your life for a child? I would do it in a heartbeat and so would so many more good, decent and courageous Americans and others. Just not helping the bad guys but watching them conduct evil is evil in itself. It is reprehensible.
I don't know what kind of philosophy you teach but it is not what I subscribe to.
I also will not stand by and let you write with your special indifference without criticizing you. You need to explore depth of your own depraved indifference.
5
Almost 75 years ago my father was a PFC in the 9th Infantry Division's MP Platoon, at Nordhausen Concentration Camp. At the nearby larger camp, Dora, inmates made weapons for the Third Reich while being murdered. When they could no longer work, there were too many for the gas chambers and crematoria to handle. So many were sent to Nordhausen to complete dying.
General Eisenhower had ordered all adult Germans from nearby to see Concentration Camp corpses, and for this to be filmed. At Nordhausen over a thousand emaciated corpses had been left lying around, and the MP's supervised local Germans forced to give them a decent burial. My father remarked that almost all the Germans said they never knew. I looked up online reminiscences of other Americans who were there. Not only did Germans say they never knew, some claimed that it never happened, that this was all faked. Even the Trump administration must stand in awe at the considerable cheek of these Nazis.
They were lying. When I taught a course in. the history of the Second World War in Europe, in my researches documentation of the truth of the matter came to my attention. The concentration camps were dependent on the nearby communities in a many ways. Companies and individuals submitted bids for various work. Bidders pointed out why their designs would be better for murdering Jews.
We have not gone that far, yet. But the Family Separation policy was inhuman enough that nobody who enforced it can claim innocence, ever.
11
Americans believe that genocide cannot happen in the US. Yet, we have a president who hailed gun-toting neo-Nazis, shouting "Jews will not replace us" as fine people. In the aftermath, Jews have been murdered in synagogues by some of these fine people. There has been a huge increase in antisemitism since the president has been spreading hate for "others" every time he is on the campaign trail, which he has been since the last election. There are a lot of similarities between what is happening here and what happened in Nazi Germany. We have a leader who is legitimizing hate. We are all in danger.
3
We have already had genocide in the USA.
1
We should be very careful with blanket statements like "History shows that when you participate in an atrocity together with the perpetrators, in an attempt to make it somehow a little less horrible."
Would this statement apply to Joe Biden's "collaboration" with Southern white supremacist Senators? Would it apply to the middle aged engineer who knows the gravity of the climate change threat yet keeps her job at a refinery or on a project team trying to boost the efficiency a bit more on her company's internal combustion engine?
Sometimes attempts to ameliorate the effects of a terrible circumstance are the best that can be done. The storm sometimes passes and those who work to limit its damage do accomplish something good.
3
@tew I think the answer is yes, this would apply to Democrats who decided to go along with Jim Crow, in the interest of maintaining New Deal programs, or an engineer who works for an oil refinery (or tobacco company). That's what she's talking about. Of course, this shows that these things aren't absolute: if you shake hands with a racist, that doesn't mean that Hitler won the war and you're a Nazi. But it does mean something. You have to be constantly aware of which side you're on.
Equating an upstander to a hero is inappropriate. You can be an upstander without risking your life. The case cited of Kitty Genovese exemplifies the fact that an upstander could have called the police without being a hero and risking their life. The 2 words --hero and upstander are not synonymous.
1
@Mark Gelfeld It's worth mentioning, and I think she pointed it out, that the Kitty Genovese scandal was somewhat discredited. Yes, she was murdered, but apparently it wasn't the case that dozens of people were aware of what was going on and let it happen. (I don't remember the details.) Not that they wouldn't have, but in that case, apparently, that's not what actually happened.
Translating Weinberg's argument from lofty to pedestrian, I'd say that voting for Trump in 2020 would be collaborating; sitting out the election would be bystanding; and speaking and writing against Trump and voting for a Democrat would be upstanding and heroic. But maybe she wasn't talking about our current frightening, degrading culture.
4
Yes, exactly. That collaboration may be motivated by greed, as in Poland, but it is most pressingly activated by fear. And "All you need is fear," is our current administration's mantra. At the present moment, however, Jews are fortunate in that times are good. The world is prosperous. What will transpire when another financial panic sets in, one perhaps deeper and more long lasting than recent memory? I think we can make a good guess, and it is chilling. Bigotry is already on the march, politically abetted, and its banners proudly waved. The tinder just needs that spark of fear.
1
You should read 'Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee'. Plenty of bystanders mostly watching different groups of soldiers who had been posted on the western frontier to prevent settlers from violating various treaties, only to change their mind and slaughter.
3
I'm not sure the radicalism of the Holocaust is the right framework for this discussion, because there's a vast difference between confronting that, and standing up to an individual bully, or unfairness in the workplace. Percentages of those who survived the Holocaust depended to a great extent on whether they were in the east or the west of Europe, and how much the governments of Nazi allies or client states could be intimidated by Germany, not on individual "upstanding". Otherwise, a fine article!
2
Welcome back to Germany in the 30s. The names, the times, the places and the people may have changed, yet the strategies, tactics and results of hatred haven't. As we all know and fear, this is definitely not a matter of 'if' but 'when.' Anyone who chooses to stand up, even to just vote, is an immediate hero or heroine.
Never forget. Never again.
2
Would that the Republicans in Congress had even an iota of the courage the writer's mother had. Or they coud emulate the civil servants in diplomatic corps who stood up to the bully's shaming and spoke truth to power. As William Cohen said in an interview, these Republicans have to live with themselves all their lives and answer to their children and grandchildren. For shame.
3
I applaud Professor Weinberg's article. I have always believed and continue to do so that Hitler could never had been able to do what he did if he had not had the acquiescence of the people and the political and military bureaucracy that surrounded him. Even today, that we live in such messy moments, everybody I know tells me not to worry since we cannot do anything about it. Wrong! We can be guilty both by commission and omission and it is this inaction that makes post facto treatises possible.
Ms Rivka Weinberg's column is not only cogent, but cries out to recognize what is happening today, in our own country. Although having been alive during those years of the Holocaust, serving four years in the Navy in WW2, I have nevertheless resisted a too facile comparison with the horror of Germany's "road to Auschwitz" with what is happening today in our own country. . However, after seeing pictures yesterday of the men (by and large) with guns --marching in Virginia and seeing their signs about "Boogaloo' ( the current code for civil war to come) and then -- most of all -- recognizing today's enablers ---the McConnell's ,the Lindsay Grahams, the Cotton's and Cruz's --etc of Trump's fascism and goading his base to hate and racism---it beggars the comparison.
5
"History shows that when you participate in an atrocity together with the perpetrators, in an attempt to make it somehow a little less horrible, in the end you’re still participating in the atrocity — and it is no less horrible."
I do not see a modern equivalent to the Einsatzgruppen roaming America to round up undesirables (although Steven Miller's rants come close to the mark regarding the undocumented among us or those seeking entry at our southern border). But the Republicans who support this current administration seem to have made peace with their capitulation. Hispanic workers in Mississippi chicken processing plants or mothers who have been separated from their caged children now likely to never see them again would see little daylight between ICE and the Einsatzgruppen.
Marginalization and separation of people makes first deportation and ultimately extermination possible. Our national history includes slavery first and Jim Crow laws in its penumbra, internal displacement of Japanese immigrants and Japanese-Americans to camps and today the incessant use of color words to describe asylum-seekers ("pestilence", "vermin", "rapists", "an infestation"). We are not morally superior to Germans in 1930. We walk the same road to perdition. We just walk it less ardently and for a shorter time.
We can still change our path, but will we?
6
"Don’t perpetrate; don’t collaborate." Good advice , and would be equally applicable to the atrocities committed by Japanese at Unit 731 in Harbin, except that the Japanese medical experiments on humans were pointedly crueler than Auschwitz. The US exonerated, collaborated with and ultimately protected war criminals in exchange for Unit 731's medical records. Yet I I have yet to find a mention of Unit 731 in retellings of the holocaust. The holocaust was a horror that must never be revisited, but holocaust moralists and historians who are dismissive or indifferent to Unit 731 strike me as supremely hypocritical.
4
The Holocaust is multifaceted. People have a hard time understanding the Holocaust because it wasn't simply a Black and White issue. I can understand what Rivka is trying to convey here. Like Anne Frank: In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.
I'll take her argument further, despite the denials. It was the Christians in Nazi Germany, parts of Europe, who beat the Jews the hardest, were the most enthusiastic in carrying out the murders, turning in Jews to the Germans or German Allies. Why? Because like Ardent claimed that humans are all psychologically 'Little Eichmans' when she wrote The Banality of Evil. Some people are more prone and some are less prone to becoming a Nazi given the right circumstances. Sad.
2
While I respect the author's comments regarding the holocaust, I think Hitler may have prevailed if it wasn't in part due to 'heroes' from other parts of the world who invaded the European continent to depose him.
Similarly, I don't think that we can blame climate change, which some scientists believe could severely impair our planet's ability to support human civilization, on hatred or evil people; but rather on individuals, living and dead, who are/were too unknowing or ambivalent to care.
The hate necessary for a Rwanda or a Cambodia or a Holocaust, doesn't happen in a vacuum, first people have to be turned into non people on whom it's ok to commit violence. It's easier to make the transition to hate when an out group looks different or worships at a different church, but it's also entirely possible to perpetrate genocide based on almost anything at all, the one commonality is hate. Whether the out group are identifiably Jewish in NY or second amendment protesters in Virginia no one is deserving of hate.
2
It's a pity that the writer focuses only on the last phase of the process of the Holocaust. Wasn't antisemitism, where it was widespread, also built and then paved. It is on those levels of morality and world-view where individuals have much responsibility for the future. It is in small events, not just those facing an SS man on the corner of the block, where it takes determination and action to counter evil. So, yes to the upstanders of everyday life.
A well written piece and obviously timely. One of the problems with "upstander not bystander" is it assumes that people when faced with a moral evil, have the rectitude to stand up to it. Everyone when they look at situations where people failed to be heroes, look at themselves and say "Well, if I was there, I would jump in"..easy to say when you aren't in the moment.
However, that doesn't mean 'ordinary people' are absolved, the Holocaust was so deadly because anti semitism was so common in many places, that when Hitler and the Nazis came along they basically paid it no mind, or dismissed it as "rhetoric", and turned around and voted for the Nazis, ignoring the consequences. And yes, there are direct parallels to today's world, those who dismiss the idea that Trump voters are racists, that they voted for Trump because of "economic fears", are similar to those who say Volks Populei in Germany voted for Hitler out of desperation. What it leaves out is they ignored his anti semitism, even if they themselves may not be. The French bureaucrats and ordinary people who helped round up the Jews, could have been an obstacle, rather than helping.
The other problem was that people saw a benefit to Hitler (that Hitler would be a bulwark against Stalin&the USSR, whom they saw as the greater evil) and in the process, overlooked or dismissed what he was doing to the Jews. Some of it was anti semitism, a lot of it was not caring much about the victims, even bearing them no ill will.
"Terrible things happen when people collaborate with terrible perpetrators"
Well Senators....
I’m not sure on this. As an example, many years ago, the thinking on hijackers was to go along. Be quiet, submit. Then I heard about a hijacking where the hijackers took a U.S.Marine who was onboard and beat him to death while the rest of the passengers did nothing (out of fear)I was outraged. We now know NO! you gang up, and fight back. Think of the “shoe bomber” who was stopped by passengers. I’d rather die trying than live as a coward.
3
For me, so easy to see many parallels between this article and how Americans see and treat "Mexicans", blacks, Native Americans. American Jews focus on how America treats Jews, which is horrible, but with their economic power, I wish the Jews had some sympathy for other minorities, instead of joining the persecutors.
1
One would not know from reading Rivka Weinberg's column that most of the Jewish population of France actually survived World War II, the Nazi control of France, and its anti-Jewish ideology.
It was Germany's state sovereignty policies by country, and the attendent legal standing of various Jews in various places, not 'anti-Semitic' culture or levels of aid or collaboration that was the leading driving, relevant factor in the disparate Jewish survival rates by country.
Also, her making sweeping smears about whole countries, cultures, and groups of people is an effront to basic decency and responsible behavior.
Poles suffered grievously during the war, with as many Polish non-Jews being killed as Polish Jews. The Polish resistance government created the Zegota council specifically to aid Polish Jews, with a host of ethnic Poles acting for this council at great risk to themselves. This at a time when there were some Jews who were acting as Soviet or German de facto collaborators in injustice, and tens of thousands of half-Jews and quarter-Jews were serving in the German Nazi military.
5
Being Polish and raised in post war Poland I have a profound knowledge of Poland during WWII in relevance to the holocaust caused by the Nazi Germany. Poland unlike France, Slovakia, Norway or others did not have a cooperating with the Germany government during WWII. Poland suffered more than others among all European countries occupied by the Germans in terms of human lives and in general terms. Many Polish cities were destroyed to the ground and around 6 millions of Polish citizens died. The Slavs were going to be next as a subject of enslaving and extermination by the Germans. Polish Home Army the underground opposition to the Germans (by estimates more than half of million people) had a death penalty for Poles who denounced hiding Jews to Germans. My father helped two jewish people to escape ghetto in southern Poland, however, he did not know what happened to them later. Two of my father’s siblings were sent to the concentration camps in German as a result of anti German activities. They survived but many Poles died along with Jewish people. There were so many cases that the whole Polish families who attempted to hide Jews were killed along with their children or babies. Such was a punishment for hiding Jews in Poland occupied by Germany. The decision had not been easy for the Poles to help Jewish people.
8
The road to the holocaust was paved by the indifference, the helplessness, and finally; by the self preservation of Germans. Good people who were afraid to speak out or didn't know what to do or say to fight hate woke up one day to find it was too late. Weinberg fails to take into account the effect of fear. It was not possible to be a bystander in Nazi Germany. If people were not active in the party, including informing on their neighbors, they could be brutalized, arrested or disappear.
It is easy to say "don't collaborate" but what does this mean on the ground? Quit your job (in the German arms industry for example?) Stop paying taxes? Not very realistic. Right now all of us are participating in Trump's hate. All we can do is vote, most of us anyway. What will we do when he decides not to leave after he loses in November?
1
Dr. Winberg, massive moral crimes are happening in America today. The lessons of history are unknown to those Americans who learn distortion and lies from social media and a president who uses Tweets to make fun of American moral values. Bystanders, Dr. Winberg, and indifference have allowed America to slide toward white nationalism as they allowed the German genocide 87 years ago. Terrible things happen when citizens collaborate with genocidal leaders. We've seen this in Syria, Yemen, China, many other countries in our world today. "Never Forget!" Words that Americans. Gen Xs, Millenials and Gen Zs, born after WWII don't yet understand.
The Nazis invaded European countries with German troops as occupiers. Their occupation as it focused on the genocide of Jews wouldn’t have been as successful as it was if not for the collaboration of the majority population of each and every country. In that Anti-Semitism was a prime element that drove collaboration, the Nazis went further to make indifference a less desirable option. The Nazi overseers offered individuals personal benefits to be obtained from joining in as active collaborators. Incentives such as privileges and considerations not available to the general population. Better food and access to it as well as a more generous allotment of other material goods that were rationed, in short supply. Liquor being one of those commodities of great appeal and demand in countries with a hard drinking population such as Poland. It was a middle of the night raid with drunk Polish police rounding up children and the elderly who burst through my mother’s door in the Lodz Ghetto wrenching my 4 year old brother from his bed, taken away, never to be seen again.
2
Hatred has become an industry, not only here in the U.S. but around the world. And yet, we see the works of love and brotherhood everywhere in spite of the hate.
Were Fox, Sinclair, and the rest of hate media to suddenly be transported to another dimension I believe we would see a damping of the fires of hatred, at least here in the U.S.
But lies and propaganda are invented to fuel such things as fear and hatred, so someone somewhere can become rich and powerful.
185
@Bob Laughlin In the UK, we have had three years of corrupt media and lieing politicians resulting in leaving an economic bloc built from countries we have a very long history with.
Along the way racism and all the other anti this or that have reared their ugly heads. The result is a fractured society that is still split. The Fox Murdoch media and the Rasputin like character of Cummings have all played a significant role. In the election the voting for the Conservatives came out as the older you were or the less educated. I doubt the latter will get much from this debacle. Unless we hold media to account , including social media, there is unlikely to be another "fair" election here or in the US
8
Assuming hate is the sole motivator detracts from the driving motivations. If I am from the Little Red Hen culture while my neighbors are not, I can avoid conspicuous consumption, but I will never be able to plant, harvest, and share enough extra rows to satisfy the neighbors' appetite. Greed and sloth and power are major motivators for those who do not respect the life of another, preferring to enslave and feed from the bounty. To live, I must ban slavery, and I must see that each child and young adult is offered the opportunity to learn appropriate skills, and I must set aside a place for those who prefer not to live in a society where lives of others are respected.
Although not as horrifying as the collaboration the professor describes during the holocaust, but still very distressing and destructive for the USA (and civilization as a whole) is that Trump, through his leadership, words and actions gives people the PERMISSION to hate, to lie, to cheat, to ridicule.
Instead of asking people not to perpetrate or collaborate in moral crimes, Trump implicitly encourages it.
Who knows where all this could lead, but as the professor so rightly states: "Terrible things happen when people collaborate with terrible perpetrators."
7
Apparently this author, who is a philosopher, is unwilling to own philosophy's role in being a bystander in the issues that allowed genocide to kill millions of Jews. Here is a short history of some of these issues. When post Kant, we dropped the correspondence theory of truth, and did not fully embrace the pragmatic approach (William James helped birth this approach), then things like ethics and speaking of values, was kicked to the curb like a unwanted bit of trash. So truth became what I said it was, based on what I desire to be the case. And so here we are, a collection of Americans, each retreated into the private world of their technology, with no new information getting in. And it is this, that tragically just is the situation we find ourselves in. But the truth is, not all values or ethics is relative or situational; we simply could not function if we did not share some sense of values and of what is the right thing to do. Now, Trump, Trump's base, and progressives, are all practicing identity politics; meaning, the point of community is to allow me to self-actualize my individual self. Yes, but why you alone? Do you not know you can not find your self, alone in this way, without understanding we are part of a greater whole. The academic left has held that these ideas of sharing are part of the oppression of the dominate culture, the powers that be. They have screamed this long enough that Trump's base is now thinking like them. We must learn to work together, now.
46
@timothy holmes
Progressives are looking for minority groups to be able to self-actualize to the same degree, no more and no less, than the majority groups do.
And if you read their content, they do so within the context of supporting the entire minority community they care about, not including the majority since the majority is not "oppressed" by being the majority for whatever the given characteristic for which a group being discriminated against is.
(Using "majority" to mean the group in power, of course, as men aren't actually a numeric majority when considering sex-based discrimination.)
6
@LF "Progressives are looking for minority groups to be able to self-actualize to the same degree, no more and no less, than the majority groups do."
I have no idea what this means. It sounds like jbberish to me, but perhaps you could expand on what you mean? Self-actualization, as used by the OP, is really an individual process/experience, not a property of "groups", and not normally dependent on other "groups".
10
@timothy holmes As provocative as the original essay, Thanks!
We are not living in the 1930s anymore. With a growing arsenal of AI, face recognition, online surveillance, DNA databases, robotics and social credit systems there will be very little room left for the ordinary person to not collude in a system bent on crimes and genocides when co-opted by a fascist leadership. China's mass incarceration and cultural destruction of the Uighur population is a good example. Any mentioning of disagreement on social media by Chinese citizens will be censored and have immediate consequences once the social credit system is fully implemented. The goal is to make the punishment personal, immediate and direct to suppress even minimal dissent.
The NYT is reporting on Singapore today, where the government can decide what is "fake news", and what is not, and can impose fines and prison sentences onto anyone whose public dissent is inconvenient. These countries become political Amazon warehouses where any government-identified misbehavior is sanctioned. We will become experts in self-censorship with no room for stepping up against cruelty .
5
What a great article! Thank you for that refreshing viewpoint. With trump getting more autocratic and power-crazy every day, I think about civil disobedience a lot.
I've often said that if the soldiers just said 'nope, I'm not gonna murder them', the men who desire chaos and death would be stymied.
1
It's hard to believe that the U.S. is at this point, where we have an extremely venal president and administration. Besides voting against the murderers, which I've done since 1988, I don't know what other action to take. Join an antifascist militia? The Republicans have an army at their disposal, so that seems pointless. I suppose Prof. Weinberg's advice can be translated as, 'keep your head down until the bad guys are defeated.' Not sure what else to do.
Dutch Jews died in large numbers although the Netherlands had long been one of Europe's least anti-Semitic nations. Countries that kept registers of citizens that listed their religions were vulnerable, whether or not those registers had previously been associated with discrimination or not.
5
"Deep down in our non-violent creed is the conviction there are some things so dear, some things so precious, some things so eternally true, that they’re worth dying for. And if a man happens to be 36 years old, as I happen to be, some great truth stands before the door of his life — some great opportunity to stand up for that which is right. A man might be afraid his home will get bombed, or he’s afraid that he will lose his job, or he’s afraid that he will get shot, or beat down by state troopers, and he may go on and live until he’s 80. He’s just as dead at 36 as he would be at 80. The cessation of breathing in his life is merely the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit. He died …
A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true."
Dr. Martin Luther King
Selma, AL
March 8, 1965
1
This is an excellent article that makes an important point, a fundamental point, not as well expressed by anyone I’ve read: evil must be actively supported for it to thrive. Even merely standing by deprives evil of oxygen.
I marvel at all the people here beating their breasts and saying: wrong, you must do something, you must stand up.
This borders on delusion: if by standing up you mean organize a march, or write to your congressperson, or write an article, or make a speech, or even run for office, etc., all those are a nothing in our society - it takes little or no courage, and much preening, to decide to take those actions - but you will not go to jail or be killed. It costs next to nothing.
But how many of you would have thrown yourselves on the pyres of the Holocaust to extinguish them?
Very few. Very very few. In fact, I bet none.
Tue 9:25 am EST
9
"But how many of you would have thrown yourselves on the pyres of the Holocaust to extinguish them?"
Good question. In fact, Bernhard Lösener was himself arrested by the Gestapo in 1944, and, AFAICT, he was never convicted of any war crimes (he died in 1952).
Although not strictly relevant to the author's case, the author's omission of those facts hurts her credibility.
NB: There is extensive documentation about Lösener, including his own memoirs and Reich records. The Wikipedia article, "Bernhard Lösener", cites some sources. A web search will find more. See, in particular:
Legislating The Holocaust: The Bernhard Loesenor Memoirs And Supporting Documents
by Karl Schleunes
Routledge, 2018.
Professor, and interesting article.
The problem is that the next time a genocide comes along in a large modern society, the followers of hate will not need anyone to help them along.
They will have technology. Anyone who has ordered candles on Amazon for hanukkah will get a visit. That single point of data will identify the address of 50% or more of every Jew in the Country. Couple that with the IRS data on tax contributions and you get most of the other 50%.
The Data Century makes it so that collaboration is no longer necessary to round up a group of people. Like a General who is preparing for War, you are still fighting the last War.
At the end of the day, the only way for the targets of Hate to make sure it does not happen is to force the people on the sidelines to realize that if the forces of hate come, that the targets of hate will fight and that all those on the side lines will be in the cross fire with all the peril that will befall their families as well.
2
Thank you, we need more work on this problem. I feel that Trump might be the precursor to something much worse.
As our country becomes rougher and immoral. Our high politicians corrupt and in some cases criminal I fear for the safety of people that will be targeted as scapegoats.
It can happen here.
3
Generally speaking, the idea of 'not making waves' is a terrible moral leason.
Make some waves. Ignorance grows in darkness.
The road to Hate is paved with Rationalized Resentment.
More respect and understanding, and a lot less whining and slander.
Nothing limits free-speech faster than a man with a gun.
We want our Country back.
5
I don't think this is so good. apply it to racism in america. most whites are bystanders who benefit from discrimination against blacks. a few whites active!y encourage discrimination, and past whites set in place much discrimination that remains in place. I do not give a pass to the bystanders, or the phonies like kristof who talk a good game while pushing for an honorable platform for the racism of the odious Charles murray, all of which perpetuates discrimination.
Courage can’t be taught, but hate can be and is taught. When I was a child, other students accused me of killing Jesus. Later I was denied jobs because of my “race”. I have always had the feeling that, though born in America, as were my parents, I am a guest in this country until a convenient scapegoat is needed. This hatred isn’t genetic, it is taught so effectively by so many institutions that the slightest dog whistle will bring it to the surface.
3
Bystanders, as this piece points out, didn't enable the Holocaust: collaborators did. But that collaboration grew out of a level of tribalism in 1930s Europe we can't even begin to imagine from our current perspective.
As divided as we are today, and as much as we seem to be growing more divided every day, we will never feel anything like the visceral hatred the French and the Germans felt for each other in 1930 or the hatred so many Germans, Poles and others were taught to feel for the Jews.
And we will never be asked to be heroic on anything as big as the Holocaust: the majority in this country is never going to sink to the level where it will be dangerous to speak against it.
There was a time when Genghis's hordes, or Tamerlane's, could sweep across the landscape slaughtering anyone they pleased. There was a time when European kings could send armies to take land from other kings. There was a time when European ethnic groups could feel (wrongly) justified in attacking other European ethnic groups.
But all those times have passed. Nowadays such things only happen outside the G20 republics.
1
@Green Tea - "But that collaboration grew out of a level of tribalism in 1930s Europe we can't even begin to imagine from our current perspective."
Unfortunately, we can. And it is not at all too difficult to see that "level of tribalism". Just watch the poison that some Republicans inject into the minds of FOX News viewers, every time they appear on TV screen.
1
@Green Tea
You are an optimist. "It can't happen here" is not a reliable predictor. Look at Trump and his vitriol against Muslims, Mexicans, et al. And he's not a random hate-monger; he's our president. Look at at the pseudo-Christian laws against abortion being passed in many states. I hope it won't happen here, but "can't" is too strong.
1
I am not so sure we have to reflect on what our fathers and grandfathers did or did not do
We current admit thousands of Chinese students for post secondary education while their government interns an entire population in concentration and re-education camps.
I like to believe we would not have accepted a generation of Nazis into our universities four score years ago.
Plus ca change...
2
All too often the road to Auschwitz was paved with personal self interest and greed. A newly vacated Jewish apartment provided an upgrade for many non Jewish neighbours. This selfish greed overrode the obvious question. Why are my long time Jewish neighbours being physically removed from their homes by local police or Nazi agents?
5
Reminds me of the neighbors who prevented ICE from getting to someone they were targeting. As I recall ICE backed down. Those neighbors are heroes.
4
@Bailey Illegal immigrants should be deported. They have no legal or moral right to be here. Those neighbors were obstructing justice because it affected their friends. That's the recipe for societal breakdown.
1
History shows that Poland and other countries in eastern
Europe were under siege by Germany. They were fighting
for their lives and culture, not just the Jewish population.
And when the Russians liberated the camps many Jews
were then deported to gulags in Siberia, as well as others
deemed political prisoners. Having visited Auschwitz almost
thirty years ago I was struck by the sign in multiple languages: We must free the German nation of all Jews, Poles, Russians and Gypsies. Let's not forget the other
groups that were almost eliminated in Europe...Gypsies,
Gays, Clergy, and others who aided Jews and other oppressed groups.
4
@Joanna
We should remember the non-Jews who were murdered in extermination camps. Millions of Poles were murdered. More millions of Jews were, and probably even more millions of Poles did not help murder Jews.
3
Let's look at a scenario playing right before us.
By his own admission, Donald Trump systematically pressured the President of the Ukraine to make a public statement on US media that the Ukraine was investigating the charge of corruption again former-Vice President Biden and his son, Hunter.
Without condoning the despicable, but regular practice, of the adult children of politicians trading on the positions of their parents, it's obvious that the effort was aimed at knee-capping a Biden run in 2020. Truly, 2+4=4. Moreover, making the threat to withhold military aid to the Ukraine for this purpose arguably damaged US security (if one accepts the overwhelming of American diplomats and military professionals). That the aid was released doesn't wash away that Trump's actions were almost certainly in the interests of his own interests.
Senate Republicans know this, and know that this act is certainly in any meaningful interpretation of the Framer's intent, an act that violates the President's Constitutional duties, and just one example among many.
And yet they don't act.
So what is this column saying? That Romney, Sasse, Collins get a moral pass acting as bystanders?
The truly sad part of this is that they would risk so little by acting. Most are wealthy, and practically speaking, risk little.
3
These ideas are, in a way, easier to realise when one is within the ambit of what might be called cataclysmic evil. However, it is more difficult to be an upstander in the face of such relatively petty evil as workplace corruption where, in more immediate ways, we often have a lot to lose. Yet, if these petty evils are allowed to thrive then it is easier for the greater evils to flourish.
3
We now live in a dystopian world where the President of the United States, having a Jewish child and grandchildren, is at the lead in fomenting many long restrained hatreds, anti-Semitism included.
Where are the Republican legislators in pushing back against their party leader's statements of "fine people on both sides," "immigrant hordes crossing our borders," etc., etc? They are there in plain sight hearing and seeing all, yet in utter silence or even joining in the denials of the obvious foulness.
Today Senate Republicans start a mock Impeachment trial, having sworn impartiality, after swearing fealty and partiality to this decadent President only days before. Is this right?
I must disagree with the author. If we as Americans do not speak out against the President's outrageous positions now, we are not only complicit in this turn towards dystopia, our silence promotes it. In today's America we can still speak freely... I'm not sanguine about tomorrow.
5
Here in the US many governments and others have done everything they legally could not to help ICE round up undocumented immigrants. While ICE and the Border Patrol have not rounding up US citizens to be taken to concentration camps they are rounding up people subject to deportation to be deported even though many of these people are law biding and have lived in the US for many years and are actually a vital part of the US economy. While ICE and the Border Patrol have legal functions their work now is largely viewed as a manifestation of the hate stirred up by Donald Trump against non-whites. State and local governments should not cooperate with ICE and Border Control except to the extent required by law and Congress should minimize finding for these two police forces to impede their efforts as much as possible in order to fight back against the forces of white supremacy.
1
Though I suspect--pretty much believe--that some relatives on my Mississippi/Louisiana father's side (including him) attended lynchings for fun, I find no pleasure in imagining that some were merely passive bystanders in slavery, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow past and present.
The only really nice paternal relative I ever met--an aunt--said to me in 2002, when she was in her 80s, that she and her family had a cute and pleasant joke that a black man who sometimes did their household chores was "our slave."
Not funny, Auntie. Not then, not when you were young, not ever.
So glad that I was born and grew up in California!
3
@MLChadwick Yeah, me too. I used to think it absolved me, but now I see that I was guilty in other ways. Privileged for sure, and complicit probably.
As a person whose first act of "upstanding" was when, at two, I slammed a 4-year-old boy with my shovel after he'd knocked down a child playing in the sandbox with me, I say those who stand and watch -- frowning fiercely -- as evil is being done are standing on the side of evil. How much help is "risky?" How long can someone stand aside before we call him a coward? How many terrible things should we allow to happen in our lifetimes without moving to help? "Speaking up," in my book, is whining. You might as well save your precious breath.
1
I think the author should re-examine what an upstander is.
One need not be a mythical hero or Ms. Weinberg’s mother in order to be an upstander. There are big bullies and small ones; Hitler was a perpetrator but so were the guards, and Schindler was a hero but every German who said “I haven’t seen them” to the S.S. or continued to do business with Jewish people was not greatly heroic but still practiced upstander behavior. One can be an upstander without being large scale.
It’s not enough to do nothing or to simply refrain from active evil. We owe it to ourselves to take action, even if the actions are small. Small actions show is that we are capable of bigger actions,and we have to start somewhere.
My German family went along with atrocities and did not speak up. Two generations later, I am still trying to reconcile that. I wrote about it yesterday. https://kristinadahl.blogspot.com/2020/01/telling.html?m=1
5
@Kristina I just read your blog post, so glad I did. It made me feel happy. Please keep writing and telling your truth.
1
@Lisa B You made my day by taking the time to say that! Thank you.
One of the problems with studying the Holocaust and major evils is that far too many people seem to believe - in the face of overwhelming evidence - that they would have been a hero. I am comfortable enough with myself to say, simply, I don't know. And I don't know what I would do - no one does. That's an honest take. And perhaps in some situations, being an unhelpful bystander may be the best thing.
I wonder however about this notion that being a hero cannot be "taught." I believe sincerely in the evolution of the soul, that given enough effort and wisdom and patience, humans can become better. Perhaps I'm naive. But surely there is no real evidence that "heroism" or "upstanding" cannot be effectively taught. By my reckoning, we've only really started teaching children these lessons in the recent past. Perhaps - again, I hope - one day humans will be heroes naturally; that will become our default. Maybe not in my lifetime, but one, again, must hope.
1
Thank you so much for the thoughtful article. We love heroes. I have been one. Acting heroically is an instant act of protection of another. One can feel good about it. But is a more sustained and difficult heroic act to thoughtfully go through life becoming aware of how sly hate is. How it exists always. It is harder to be an everyday hero who recognizes how subtle hate is. It exists undercover. We begin to think it is no longer there. Being alert and not joining in when hate is expressed is active heroism. When a joke is told about a woman's body it is a manifestation of hate. Do not laugh. When someone says something like, "The homeless should all get jobs. There are plenty of jobs." Turning away from that person or simply saying that homelessness is a more complex issue than getting a job is heroism. These every day opportunities of not participating, turning away, speaking out in a simple way help push back a culture of hate.
4
To all the people who took jobs in the Trump regime thinking THEY could mitigate the horror that is this Presidency, all they did was enable it. And, as soon as he could get away with it, Trump got rid of the reasonable enablers, "the adults in the room" and installed, instead, totally compliant lackeys. Even Jeff Sessions stood on principles--William Barr has none. Jame Mattis stood on principles--Mark Esper has none . Rex Tillerson stood on principles--Mike Pompeo has none.
The list goes on and on. All those people who THOUGHT they could mitigate Trump's worst impulses did just the opposite: They laid a foundation of "legitimacy" that he could claim AFTER he got rid of them.
The author is somewhat wrong about one thing: Good people doing nothing IS enabling. You don't have to be a hero to be upstanding in the most important way:
Register and vote! Make SURE your registration is updated and valid and you haven't be "purged" by Republican vote suppression means, and if it has, re-register...And VOTE!
Vote them out of office! November 3rd may well be the last chance to save our Republic from tyranny and authoritarianism.
5
"Next time the murderers come, ......."
............see how many are women; count the number of times "god" is invoked; how often patriotism is challenged; how many of the old men who write the laws and cry the loudest march off to war.
Descendents of the old men who invented belief in an equitable afterlife as a means to control their enslaved population are running the show here while more pragmattic authoritarian men who don't bother wearing gloves or donning robes hold the throats of their citizenry in bare hands.
Men have been serving the same old gruel of testosterone enhanced governance for thousands of years and it is well beyond the expiration date.
1
It might be useful to add here, as a sort of corollary: the road to Auschwitz didn't start with killing; it started with lies, and progressed to cruelty. When the Nazis figured out what the German people were willing to put up with, Auschwitz was the logical conclusion.
2
Thank you for sharing this. Too often, locals claim innocence and ignorance, but in many countries, including Poland and the Ukraine many the locals participated in or ignored these tragedies.
My father, his mother, and his sister (all born in Poland) fled the Ukraine after receiving a tip from a non-Jewish family friend right before the round up of the Jews. A small deed went a long way.
Their trip East, took many months, through bombings and months at a time living in the woods, scavenging for both food and shelter. After the war, they ended up in a DP camp in Germany, but only after it was determined that they could not return to Poland or Ukraine because the anti-semitism that plagued those countries remained, making it unsafe.
My father later discovered that everyone he knew in Ukraine had been murdered - either there or in the camps. He never talks about it, but his experience alone revealed the very worst of people, while shedding light on how a small good deed can change someone's world.
7
I believe there is research that shows if normal people are told that they in no way bear any responsibility for immoral acts against others many will continue to participate even if. at the outset, they understand from their upbringing the behavior to be wrong. Not questioning authority.
I recently finished reading Defying Hitler, the posthumously published memoir by Sebastian Haffner, who fled Germany early on although he was an “Aryan.” He did not want to be complicit with the Nazis. One observation Haffner made really stuck with me: the norms and institutions that provided a framework for the rule of law and protection against extremism had fallen away quickly as Hitler ascended and as many stood by silently or were complicit with his drive for power; as such, many horrified individuals felt that they were powerless against the Nazis. We must all be vigilant and speak up to ensure that the rule of law and respect for democracy and civil rights are not weakened.
46
No doubt when faced with evil we all should be upstanding, but this point is superficial. "Evil" takes many forms and is a function of culture. If in Nazi Germany the prevailing culture was an indifference to Jews, then why should we expect people to stand up? The problem was not primarily a so-called anti-Semitism, but a social disconnect.
"Evil" must be defined in relation, not to culture, but to actual historical and social dynamics. Ms. Weinberg offered no such analysis of Nazi Germany thus what form of action needed to have been taken. To suggest that it was a gratuitous flare up of European hostility to Jews begs the question.
A feature of Nazism is the subsumption of civil society under the state and the exercise of violence against any who don't
submit (euthanasia of the handicapped, communists and unions, non-Christians, etc.). That, more than culture, is the context of the genocide.
The historical situation in which Nazism arose cannot be ignored: the socio-economic misery resulting in part from the Treaty of Versailles and in part from the capitalist depression. This suggests the conditions for Nazi genocide were nationalism and capitalism.
Appropriate action was defined well before the onset of the mass murder of Jews. I suggest it could only have been a united struggle by the mass of people to address the socio-economic ills of the 1920s and its causes. The struggle failed for a variety of reasons, only some of which were the fault of the masses.
4
@Haines Brown It’s more than Versailles and Great Depression. Economists Nico Voigtländer and Hans-Joachim Voth show that deep-rooted historical attitudes, expressed through German votes for anti-Semitic parties in the late Imperial period (1890-1912), for the Nazi Party in the 1920s and 1930s correlate with the prevalence of anti-Jewish views held in various districts of Germany today. They also econometrically establish a very long shadow of the past: German towns that murdered their Jews during the Black Death (1348-1350) were also much more likely to commit violence or engage in anti-Semitic acts in interwar Germany, nearly 600 years later. Racial hatred persists for centuries.
Prof Weinberg engages in a larger project of shifting Holocaust guilt from German Nazis, where it rightly belongs, to Poland, where it does not. This project, of Holocaust revisionism, has been ongoing for decades. It has various inspirations. It's hard for people to accept that modern, advanced Germany, a country so like us, could commit an atrocity as horrific as the Holocaust. It's easier to blame people more remote, more "backward," and, simply, more Catholic: Poles, especially Poland's rural, peasant population.
Yes, it's them. Dirty, uneducated, primitive, superstitious, "dumb" Polaks, peasants who do bad things.
To engage in this project, Prof Weinberg must obscure key facts. Nazis mass murdered handicapped Germans and Soviet POWs. The world did not intervene on behalf of these victims -- in spite of no "centuries of hate."
Also, Prof Weinberg ignores the significant differences between the occupation in Poland and in Italy. She also ignores that the Nazis and the Soviets had been working hard to decapitate Poland before the Holocaust began. Those Poles most likely to be able to help were in Auschwitz, Dachau, or mass graves. In Poland alone entire families were killed for any aid to any Jew.
Not a few Poles who had expressed antisemitism before the war, helped Jews during the war. Their pre-war antipathy did not translate into collaboration with Nazism. Yes, some self-identified anti-Semites contributed significantly to aid to Jews and resistance to Nazism.
12
@Danusha Goska Speaking of "Holocaust revisionism", the Polish government's attempt to spare Poles ANY responsibility for the mass murder of their countrymen - Jewish and otherwise - is a complete sham and a miscarriage of historical justice. You seem to want to help that revisionism rather than accept that there are terrible people in every country and culture, including Poland. The Germans have NOT tried to revise their history, at least not to date, and have accepted the responsibility for the creation of a murderous machine for ethnic cleansing. To the author's point, however, that machine required substantial help from collaborators to be most effective, and it got that help in too many surrounding countries. You seem to believe that the author (and the true history) blames ALL Poles for the slaughter in Poland, but I believe you're reading that into a piece that never suggests such a thing.
4
@Maryalice StClair Danusha Goska is right. The author makes the claim that the countries in which most Jews died must have made it easy for the Germans. "You don't just march into Poland or France from Germany and magically know who to round up and where they live." Not like Poland had a massive Jewish population or anything. Nope. Nothing to see here. Laughable. An alien could land in New York and clearly see there are lots of Jews and figure out where they live. The fact that this article was written by a college professor is alarming and disgusting, point blank. It would be wise to consult professors of history, not philosophy at a glorified community college.
3
it is going to take all of us upstanding citizens to beat back this scourge of hate that has taken a grip on this country. Resist.
11
This mirrors what my 94 year old mother, a Holocaust survivor from eastern Poland, has said for years. That is, she didn't blame people for not risking their lives and their families to hide Jews, but she blamed those who willingly and eagerly collaborated with the Nazis to betray those in hiding. My grandfather was exchanged for a sack of sugar by someone he thought he could trust.....
437
@AG It seems likely, although never definitely proven, someone betrayed Anne Frank's family in Amsterdam in 1944.
17
@AG
And after the war there were still Poles that killed Jews that returned from extermination camps to reclaim their property.
40
@AG Your comment brought tears to my eyes. I am sorry to hear of your grandfather's story.
30
And the road to the Occupied Territories was paved with the hatred of the other, defining "us" as the people, and "them" as inferior people hated by God. Once defined, not as a fellow human, but as an outsider dangerous to the community, all kinds of ghettoizing can take place.
Just saying...
Hugh
2
The enablers and supporters of nazism experienced no peril from their choice until Germany started losing the war. Activism is necessary to prevent another holocaust. There is courage in numbers even when lacking in individuals. A response to the red hats and neo-Nazi marchers could be provided by well-regulated and well-armed LGBTQ, Black, Hispanic, Asian and Progressive militias. Never Again!
2
I'm troubled by the first five words of the last paragraph, "[n]ext time the murderers come . . ." Is she talking about the United States? Other countries? A lot of us have had it with the upstanding mindset that marched us into Afghanistan and Iraq. Should we "upstand" against Iran because it threatens Israel? No thanks.
3
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Martin Niemoller
5
It’s too far of a stretch linking the school bully to a collaborative racist murderer. Many, if not most, boys go through a period of bullying. Likewise the mean girls. Most of these children outgrow these behaviors. Most do not end up racists. Most do not end up collaborative murderers. Standing up to bullying is low-risk (maybe a bloody nose) while standing up to a murder is dangerous. The former, everyone has witnessed; the latter, few of us will ever witness. We should encourage children to stand up to bullying. Doing so encourages, teaches, and values civility.
3
This is an excellent and timely contribution of contemporary relevance. But with a note of caution on its principal recommendation when applied to the situation today. When I see Donald Trump performing at any of his rallies it sends chills down my spine. It is so reminiscent of the Hitler rallies of the 1930s, but on a smaller scale. The tone and the cult engagement are the same. Many of the actions this Administration has been undertaking are for the most part sub-human, such that in our contemporary context it will not be enough for people to stand-by and simply not-participate. That helps but it is insufficient. Active counter-action is essential to keep peoples' minds focused on real societal values and priorities, and to obstruct the worst abuses of this regime, bent on destroying the very institutions, regulatory framework and the culture of rule of law that made the country great, being done to advance an authoritarian vision of Executive power that is very dangerous to the survival of democracy.
5
You are right and I suggest anyone who disagrees should read Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning. He shows how ordinary people so easily went along with the hate.
Even now we see people standing up to trump having their careers destroyed and their and their families lives being threatened. Hate is rising in this country and it is being fanned by trump and his cult. Things that once could only be said on the fringes is now being put into the mainstream.
Anyone who thinks it can't happen here is a fool.
7
Thank you Ms. Weinberg for your insights into human behavior and for reminding us that the mundane is never static - there will always be disruptions in the comfort zones of everyone. How we react to that disruption is the sine que non to your argument. But, the problem also is recognizing evil when it hasn't shown its face for three generations; when the first person narrative is diluted to hearsay or worse yet, a fable, an exaggeration that should be dismissed because its too disruptive to the present.
I grew up in a tenement in The Bronx and often saw two adult neighbors who had tattooed numbers on their right? forearms in the summer months and remember asking my mother (a single parent) what that was and remembered her reaction as much as her answer. She commented they were victims of the last war but it was her hushed voice, the church-whisper in which it was said that impressed me more: she unconsciously knew the evil that had been perpetrated (her husband, my irresponsible father had fought in Germany) and had lowered her voice so as not to awaken the sleeping monster that had caused it.
3
I agree with most of the thesis of the author but some facts are misinterpreted. When the author says that a few polish jews survived I can’t help noticed that this has something to do with Poland and its people.
I think we should add that no country had so many german’s concentration camps. Millions of people died in Poland not because Poland or its people, but the organized scale or termination set up by natzis in the occupying country.
6
I agree with Prof. Weinberg that it is difficult to require heroism from others. Her mother lost her job and prospects for further career. However, Poland was the only country in WWII, where people lost their life and that of their whole family for helping Jews to hide. They were obliged by Nazi law to report that a neighbor else was hiding Jews, under the threat of the same punishment. Whole families were executed, yet Poland has most people recognized by Yad Yashem. Those people were even more heroic then the Japanese consul in Vilnius. The majority of Jews in Poland and Lithuania (Vilnius was Polish before WWII) lived in their own communities and constituted the largest percentage of any country population in Europe. It was the result of the tolerant attitude of Polish kings and nobles. Therefore, it was easy for Germans to round up Jews during WWII, to close them in gettos and to transport them to concentration camps that were also built there by Nazi for convenience.
2
"The incorrect lesson upstander ideology draws from history ignores the fact that perpetrating vast crimes usually requires lots of help. "
How appropriate to post this today as the Senate begins its trial of Donald Trump.
8
The author commits the fallacy of equivocation.
"... hate crimes ..."
Those are statutory crimes in some jurisdictions.
"... moral crimes ..."
That's obfuscating rhetoric. The correct term is "moral wrong" or "wrongful act". Those need not be the same as _statutory_ crimes.
"[Bernhard] Lösener remains the lawyer who wrote the Nuremberg race laws, lending a veneer of legality to a crime."
The word "crime" in that sentence is ambiguous, rendering the sentence meaningless. Indeed, if the author means "statutory crime", the sentence is incoherent, because you cannot determine that a law is illegal without citing a higher law.
2
@WJA
I suggest reading a dictionary definition of "crime". That will help you overcome this mistaken literalism.
TZ: "I suggest reading a dictionary definition ..."
That's not helpful. The word "crime" has multiple senses, which makes it *ambiguous*. Philosophers are supposed to quash ambiguity.
"sense ... one of a set of meanings a word or phrase may bear especially as segregated in a dictionary entry" (Merriam-Webster online dictionary)
Note the word "set" in that definition.
Very insightful. Now - since we all know what you are talking about - let's vote them out of office. Fifty percent of voters in this country are seething to reverse it to a pre-WWII Jim Crow utopia for WASPs.
3
“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who perpetuates it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Listen to your Mother, Professor. She was there.
6
“Just don’t welcome the murderers, don’t help them organize the oppression or make it “less terrible” (that won’t work anyway), and don’t turn people in. That will usually be enough.” No, dear Ms. Weinberg, that's not enough. In America, today, oaths of loyalty to a President are only “enough.” As I read your considerations, I am considering the astonishing Terrance Malick film, "A HIDDEN LIFE." In this American moment: eve of the current impeachment trial, the most serious question of loyalty to a corrupt leader or to the constitution flares. The term “Hitler oath,” must leap to mind. " "Oath to the Leader — also often referred to as the Soldier's Oath or Soldiers' Oath —refers to the oaths of allegiance, sworn by officers and soldiers of the German Armed Forces and civil servants of Nazi Germany between 1934 + 1945. The oath pledged personal loyalty to Hitler in place of loyalty to the constitution of the country." The film I mention left me shivering, more than from this chill winter, but from the awful thought of bravery of one human standing against times too like our own which are rising. And, the loss of our humanity, each by each, to cruelty and obeisance to dark oaths, pierced, by beams of what? Goodness? I hope so. I hope so. I do not think we know...what is enough! We have not learned—nearly enough. With care for us all, for some light in our dark. Today. And in what future we may have.
3
"History shows that when you participate in an atrocity together with the perpetrators, in an attempt to make it somehow a little less horrible, in the end you’re still participating in the atrocity — and it is no less horrible."
Isn't this the 'excuse' that we have been hearing from all the (mostly now gone) 'guardrails' in this White House? From Priebus to Sessions to Tillerson to Matis, only Ivanka 'abides,' - and she has been such a big influence. Please Stop 'Helping!'
5
I wish my school system was teaching the up stander/bystander approach to witnessing injustice. If it creates a few more heroes and a lot more guilt, it will have been worth it. Coaching has allowed me to speak up to respectfully when friends are committing micro aggressions. It requires skill and practice. So let's start small.
2
Not resisting is a type of permissive collaboration.
The choice to act, to get involved, or to be an "upstander" must involve some personal risk of loss, injury, or even death, otherwise what would it be worth?
The question is what we are willing to sacrifice for strangers, or those unlikely to be willing or able to help us in return, or those who might even wish us harm.
It is a matter of choice, one that reflects what we hold most important.
When, and for whom, and for what, we choose to act and put ourselves at risk define our values and our beliefs, more than what we call ourselves, or who we pray to, or how we act in front of a flag.
MLK spoke about this:
“On the parable of the Good Samaritan: "I imagine that the first question the priest and Levite asked was: 'If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?' But by the very nature of his concern, the good Samaritan reversed the question: 'If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”
9
Not certain this is purposeful, but, the timing of this article-- appearing on the same day we will see a majority of Senators actively collaborate with criminal behavior.
138
Anti-semantic behaviors, overt or indifference, are rooted in the economics of self interest. Focusing society on a ethnic distraction as a reality is essential for extremists and supports that group’s blame for a perceived or real societal ill. Simplification of complex issues, without empirical proof, easily establishes a pragmatic belief system to address the ills of social standing and economic issues. Whether it is political power to control social standing or restraining economic mobility anti-Semitic thinking and actions look for an easily identified culprit for blame. This allows active participation, collaboration or indifference to pave the way to marginalization of ethnic minorities. And this does so in today’s world too.
7
Passive opposition to tyranny isn't enough.
Maybe you can do just a little.
Maybe you are weak.
Maybe you are powerless.
Maybe you are poor.
Unless you push in the right direction, you are pushing wrong (all living beings push one way or another).
4
What a brilliant essay, worthy of long reflection. It's rare that something comes along that promises to be part of your permanent thinking. This is one.
Tom McGuane
22
When when is threatened one has the choice of either giving you to fear, doing nothing, or finding a way to empower oneself. Acquiring and learning to use a firearm is very empowering.
5
Trump will probably be reelected thanks to American bystanders.
17
You fear too much. There are plenty of veterans who will fight an irregular war to destroy this government if we see them headed to concentration camps and oppression. We, as a vet, won't stand for it. You're in our hands. We swore to defend this country from all enemies - with our lives.
11
@Rocketscientist
I suspect there would be several vets on the other side.
@Rocketscientist There are migrant kids in concentration camps right now. The author's fear is justified.
1
@Rocketscientist
It is very easy to think/claim that, but there are plenty of veterans right now who are wholeheartedly supporting Trump and his demonization of people, his routine racist and other vile rants. Concentration camps and mass slaughter and oppression don't happen in a vacuum, they build up over time, and as the author points out, when people ignore what is going on, explain it away as many do with Trump, they set the stage for oppression, and one of the problems is people get so used to casual racism or anti semitism or whatnot, that they stop recognizing it as oppression, that is the big problem. No matter how good hearted someone is, no matter how committed they are to 'protecting the country', if they have become so inured to injustice, so used to routine/casual demonization of people, they won't recognize the real oppression when it comes. The Nazis didn't one day wake up and say "Hey, let's get rid of the Jews today", the process was one built on endemic anti semitism in Germany and elsewhere that grew and grew, one thing after another aimed at the Jews, until basically many didn't even notice the final solution happening. They asked people after the war what they thought when their Jewish neighbors and even friends disappeared, and the standard response was "I don't know, I just figured they moved away".
1
People collaborate with wrong because there are usually economic and material incentives to collaborate. For example, anti-Semitic collaborators in Germany occupied vacated jewish homes, jewish jobs and rose within the Nazi-Party. Not collaborating requires walking away from these incentives on moral grounds. A very difficult chain of reasoning.
In comparison, being an upstander or bystander does not require people to navigate such a complex moral and material calculus. Either you think it so wrong that you speak out (at your own risk) or you simply avoid any exposure to risk by being silent (the easiest path).
5
@Kumar Ranganathan Nonsense. Jews were less than 1% of the pre-war German population. Most Germans had no Jewish neighbors and didn't know any. The 500k Jewish community lived in the big cities that were decidedly anti-Nazi - meaning those who might most benefit from the destruction of the community were the least likely to support it. Hannah Arendt suggests that most Germans greeted Nazi anti-Semitism with indifference. There's no inherent economic basis to religious and ethnic hatred. Any social difference, not matter how insignificant, can be made salient by political entrepreneurs armed with propaganda for their own nefarious purposes.
4
"Next time the murderers come..." Sorry kids, they are already here. What happens next will largely be determined in November.
13
Nice article.
Too bad you continued the tradition of writing as though the Holocaust was the only genocide.
these genocides are happenig now:
TIbet -cultural
The Rohingya in Myanmar
The Nuer and other ethnic groups in South Sudan
Christians and Yazidis in Iraq and Syria
Christians and Muslims in the Central African Republic
Darfuris in Sudan
Muslim Uighur in China - mostly cultural
Never forget. Nice sentiment. The reality is the World prefers to cast a blind eye to genocide. It always has (Armenia, Harare, Namibia, East Timor are good examples of condemnation after the fact) and appears to continue that tradition today.
Remembering all genocide is essential if we are going to make the world a safer place.
Selecting one genocide as the poster child for genocide does no one any favors.
Highlighting the Jewish Genocide brought the horror to reality. Sadly the lessons learned from this genocide have not stopped other genocides.
It's time to put a face on today's genocides.
We can live in the past or we can work to make sure genocide becomes extinct.
32
@stephen rhymer
It's not genocide, but the awful conflict in Syria clearly counts as crimes against humanity. Kudos, then, to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum for having hosted "Syria: Please Don't Forget Us." That Mansour Omari - a human rights activist who was detained and tortured for about a year - managed to smuggle out scraps of cloth that were inscribed with the names of over 80 people, this by mixing their own blood with rust, using a chicken bone as a pen is nothing short of astounding. Just the act of naming and remembering is an act of defiance. The Museum has provided a potent voice for those whose tongues are being torn out.
2
@stephen rhymer
I believe you earnestly wish to call us to action on present day horrors, but why start with “Too bad you continued the tradition of writing as though the Holocaust was the only genocide.” It is raised in the article as a historic example; a particular circumstance as a point upon which to reflect. The author is not claiming primacy.
Not the point of the article, but Jews really do have concern about disappearing. The stats don’t look good. The Jewish Holocaust was very (horribly) successful. No culture should be singled out for mistreatment or driven to extinction.
1
This is why it's so important to totally brainwash everybody. That way you don't get opportunistic sympathizers, pretending to go along to get along while looking for a chance to stick a foot out and trip somebody at the right moment. There can be no tolerance of less than total enthusiasm. Kind of like a pep rally. Go team. I mean "Go Team!!!"
7
Being found to have unwittingly been complicit in perpetrating atrocities is often revealed in retrospect, when the dust has settled and the stories of the battle are told. This is especially true of "good people" who feigned indifference during the fight–for instance, to grabbing women by the genitalia, bribing foreign leaders to smear political opponents, and caging kids. As Ms. Weinberg notes, the only sure way to not collaborate with evil is to always be aware that evil is trying to collaborate with you. Sadly, it's the most important lesson of our time.
25
Might be a good thing if the people who added these responses start being more impartial to views they don’t like, such as the idea that one should encourage heroism and empowerment to people who feel threatened. Owning a firearm is the second amendment right and is definitely an empowering, even two very old people who feel threatened.
1
@Nat Ehrlich
The idea that arming people is the answer to oppression has little to do with getting rid of oppression and more about a political ploy to try and defend gun sales. Yeah, I have heard NRA types say "if the Jews had been armed, the holocaust wouldn't happen", but that is just plain idiotic. When oppression on the scale of the Nazis happen, no amount of guns would have protected the Jews against the might of Nazi Germany and the occupied governments.
More importantly, guns don't protect against oppression, they don't stop it. Oppression is stopped when people are aware of it and make sure those using oppression as a tool, like the Nazis or Trump with immigrants, don't benefit from it, make clear they won't support or vote for leaders like that. If it comes down to guns it is too late, because the oppressors by that point have the greater firepower.
2
@Nat Ehrlich
A 2nd Amendment Right?
Have you read the entire 2nd Amendment?
A State Militia is bigger than one person.
There is no personal gun right in the Constitution.
Repeating nonsense is how we got into this mess to begin with.
God didn't give us the gift of Reasoned Thought as a cruel joke.
Think rather than repeat, please.
I am watching some parallels play out at present in India. Mobs supported by the government, police, and military are attacking Muslim protestors opposed to new laws that may disenfranchise them. Thankfully, many non-Muslims are joining the marches and speaking up. They too risk being beaten, being berated, and losing jobs. It takes great courage to speak up for others at risk to ourselves. Yet, as we saw in the US Civil Rights Movement, it is only when non-Black Americans joined in the marches that we turned the tide. As MLK stated, "In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
17
Speak up directly and often when you encounter "the downward slide" of moral behavior. This article ignores how small transgressions lead to widespread normalization over time. We happen to be living this politically.
It is very dangerous, this normalization, this slippery slope. From all the people who did not speak up re Weinstein or Epstein to the disastrous Trump/GOP treacherous mobsters, there are those who do not speak out, who identify the wrong risk as personal rather than the democratic structure of their country. May their votes be marked on their grave stones.
17
Years ago I saw the Polish section of Lanzmann's Shoah and was shocked to find myself thinking, "It could easily all happen again here" because of the very things Prof Weinberg describes.
4
@LS
It is happening right now! Without the rule of law, there is no freedom, no republic. Whatever rationalizations people may give for inaction, the fact remains that our republic is under siege. Lies, corruption, racism, hate, money, greed and power are forces beating the average American at every turn aided and abetted by the dictator and all his fixers in the WH. What's the difference between events happening here and what happened in Germany under Hitler? White nationalism, hatred of other races, religions, political convictions, educational backgrounds and economic disparities proliferate and our leaders would have us "goose step" to all they propose. Those who don't live in fear of retaliation from "twitter" character assassination, loss of jobs, fear for family and certain knowledge that the great experiment known as "The United States of America" is being destroyed.
I am also a child of a Holocaust survivor, and I disagree with this author. I subscribe to these words of Elie Wiesel:
““Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant.”
The author offers no evidence for her support of “bystanding” to combat fascism and tyranny, only flawed conjecture. I believe that the experience of history proves otherwise.
25
@Daniel Neuspiel Thank you, Daniel. I'll add that the Professor's mother is correct. And further, while I'm not at all religious, Ms. Weinberg's mom's adage "'Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor!' she exclaims, channeling Leviticus..." is very much on point. Today, especially here in the US, we have way too many bystanders. Thinking good thoughts does not stop the likes of Trump/Pence. People need to get into the streets. There is risk, yes. But who wants to be part of the next generation of "Good Germans"?
2
One issue I see with your piece: Your mother’s examples of heroic “upstander” actions don’t sound instinctual to me — they sound like the kind of thing that can be taught. She didn’t instinctually decide to organize her co-workers; that was the result of carrying out her previous ideological commitments with careful planning.
15
@Elizabeth
The instinctual side is acting when you know it very well could hurt you, that is the point. The heroes during the holocaust, the righteous gentiles and so forth, knew they were risking their lives and their family's lives in helping the Jews, but they still acted. Her mom's actions took thought and planning, as did for example the people in Denmark with their rising up and helping their Jewish citizens escape, but the instinct set in where they were willing to face the consequences of doing so, knowing well that as an occupied country they would and could face severe consequences for their acts. People love to think it is easy to be a hero, that when faced with a dangerous situation they would be the one to dive in and rescue a kid who fell into a raging river or help the Jewish family escape the Nazis, but the reality is most people in those situations fail, pure and simple. A classic example of this was in France, where after the war the people who lived through it, and their families down the line, insisted that their family members were all members of the resistance (something DeGaulle promoted heavily), yet historians will tell you that during the entire war, less than 10,000 French people were part of the resistance, that there were a lot more resisters in Germany itself than there. Not to mention that not only not being part of the resistance, but many French helped the Germans in their horrendous task of rounding up the Jews.
I live in DC and have many friends who are working in various federal agencies, just trying to keep them functioning and as constructive as possible until the corrupt vandals and saboteurs of the current administration are out of power. I find this admirable. Yet, when I read
“History shows that when you participate in an atrocity together with the perpetrators, in an attempt to make it somehow a little less horrible, in the end you’re still participating in the atrocity — and it is no less horrible” and reflect on the fact that we are now putting kids in cages, wrecking international collaboration and condemning the world to long term climate suffering, I wonder how the above stance applies to those now working with the Trump administration and trying to make it a little less horrible?
29
What a thought-provoking column; I don't think I fully agree with it, although it packs a lot of background into comparatively few words.
What's missing is the fact that, while there are perpetrators committing a horrible atrocity and "heroes" resisting it, the great body of people in the middle are simply waiting to be led, and could arguably go either way.
Certainly come countries had more entrenched anti-Semitism, with predictable results. But when Italians and Bulgarians refused to turn in their Jewish neighbors, they weren't merely "not cooperating", they were resisting. They were making a statement of their values.
And when King Christian of Denmark flatly stated that in Denmark there were no Jews, there were only Danes, and no Dane was different from any other Dane, he was not only resisting, he was leading the resistance. The German death machine, confronted with that, pretty much perpetrated its Holocaust in places other than Denmark.
None of us can know what kind of person we will be in the face of great evil until we are confronted with great evil. I have hopes that most of us will be better than the author of this piece believes we will be.
36
@Vesuviano
That also raises a good point, about leaders. Ironically, in Italy Mussolini, with probably his only one decent action, resisted turning the Jews over to Hitler, and that may have helped sway the Italian people from keeping the Jews from being taken. In Denmark, the King Spoke out, the leaders of the State Lutheran Church spoke out, and the Danish people responded, when the Jews were forced to wear yellow Stars of David, almost the entire population turned out wearing them, and the people put together an effort to help the Jews escape to Sweden, risking their lives to do so. Ordinary people often will act, whether outright resistance of silently, when their leaders speak out. If the Catholic Church, in France and the Vatican, had spoken out against the actions against the Jews, french people likely would not have helped as willingly, it is why there needs to be leaders. When France railroaded Dreyfuss, the intellectuals and writers and artists spoke out, refusing to let an injustice happen to a man they otherwise would not like. You also need leaders willing to speak out, who instead of excusing the rhetoric of the oppressor and those who support it, call it as a wrong. When people excuse Trump nation as 'good people' and ignoring the ugliness of Trump and many of his supporters, they are doing just that.
3
@music observer
You and I are in complete agreement!
1
"being a bystander is often morally permissible; being a hero is exceptional and instinctual (not taught)"
This is an intriguing and logical essay, but I'm not sure about this particular conclusion. At the very least, those with heroic instincts are guided by culture and environment.
We need both heroes and bystanders that are adequately informed about history, especially our darkest moments, to help inspire the best behaviors of our heroes and bystanders.
Most Americans come out of our public school system with a reasonable understanding of the evil of Hitler and the Nazis- there is no powerful political force in this country to dilute or distort the horrors of the holocaust.
However, we tend not to do a great job of educating our citizens about our own historical sins and regional politics are often the problem.
Textbooks are tailored to these political prejudices to the point that students coming out of the Texas public school system will likely believe that slavery was not the principle cause of disagreement that led to the Civil War.
The education of the legacy of slavery and white supremacy isn't taught particularly well even in the public schools my son attended in NY.
Very little attention is paid to the Jim Crow era with its century of white supremacist terrorism and segregation.
We need to be united by a mutual understanding of our history to be united at all. Blacks and whites in this country tend not to share this mutual understanding.
17
Shifting the lens slightly, let’s consider the Resistance in France. It provides a better picture when the pressure to do evil is an outside force (in this case the Nazis). We can divide the French into five categories rather than the three used in the article. There were those who were actively involved in the Resistance, those who collaborated with the Resistance (perhaps helping cover for a Resistance fighter’s absence at work during an action), but did not take direct action, those who knew knew enough about the resistance to suspect who was a member and didn’t say anything, those who either deliberately kept their heads down or who were indifferent, and those that actively assisted the Nazis.
Using this lens, being a member of the first three groups should qualify as being anti-Nazi, and taking a moral stance. Those who knew enough had opportunity to do harm to the Resistance but didn’t. Collaboration raise the moral level, but included more risk and therefore more courage. While the active Resistance members raised both dramatically. The fourth group would include those who buried their heads in the sand, but did not do anything to help the Nazis. And because of this, they can claim no responsibility, but they turned away from having a positive impact, they were not anti-Nazi. And that carries some small degree of moral approbation.
6
This is laudable. It prompts us to examine what we must do about this administration's ongoing war against Puerto Rico.
7
The role and power of social media turns all on its head. The distinction between apathy and collaboration no longer has the meaning attributed to it in this article. Today, to be indifferent or apathetic is to concede a powerful narrative of hate and fear to the facism taking traction around the world. The elected republicans in our country are cowardly because of threats generated by social media. We have a presidency of one, "barking orders" that are being willfully executed without resistance. Social media is what is interceding between once was bad behavior of one and the conscience of another. The reflective power of the individual has devolved into fear of being devoured by an electronic mob. It seems there isn't even the mental space to contemplate what it means to survive or not survive. We are no longer the French citizen waiting in the country side for evil to fall on its sword. The collaborators of social media crosses all geographical and social boundaries; they feed the beast that grows and grows. We must find a way to be reflective of own beliefs, to speak out, to engage, and to find our voice that is not holier than thou.
6
Most people want to do what's normal - what other people are doing. This is how atrocities occur, by making them normal. People will also resist what their own community views as deviant.
One need only read Christopher Browning's Ordinary Men, a story of how a reserve military police unit in WW2 became mass murderers. Small crimes became normal, so bigger crimes became easier - and so on.
When Denmark evacuated its Jews, this was not the act of a few heroes. It was a community expressing its values in a tangible way. When the heroic is normal, we can all be heroes.
29
Cruel and unusual punishment is explicitly prohibited by the Constitution,
but separating children from their parents is being done in our name, by our government.
No Congressperson or reporter has born witness to any of the babies, toddlers, indeed any children under 12 years old who are separated. We only get to see the same two pictures of the older ones again and again.There has been only one recording of a pleading and weeping child from one of these secret, and sometimes for profit prisons. One. Secret prisons are also prohibited in the US.
Where are our lawmakers? Where is our “free” press? They are not getting inside, or even trying to.
They aren’t risking getting themselves arrested! We, the people, crossed the line into Third Reich level cruelty when this “policy” began.
18
"But one thing is clear: During the Holocaust, where the local population was more anti-Semitic, they tended toward greater collaboration, resulting in a markedly higher murder rate."
It is more complicated than that.
One of the highest murder rates was in the Netherlands, which was not a country with a strong anti-Semitic tradition. Here are two articles about how a clever use of deception was one important reason behind the high murder rate in the Netherlands compared with Belgium and France.
https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/go-in-depth/netherlands-greatest-number-jewish-victims-western-europe/
https://www.yadvashem.org/righteous/resources/rescue-and-righteous-among-the-nations-in-holland.html
There is even some evidence that in provinces with a strong resistance movement, the murder rate of Jews would sometimes be higher, as more resistance attracted more German razzia's, but I failed to find the link to that study again.
4
"Terrible things happen when people collaborate with terrible perpetrators". This is about to happen in the Senate.
17
What is the moral thing to do if you work in a detention center? Leave, because you don't want to be a collaborator? Or stay, because you care for the people (children) there and know it will be so much worse if you leave? I honestly don't know the answer.
10
@Molly B. What if you leave and then spread the truth, telling the media and everyone you know what you saw? Or what if you stay, but work with aid agencies to spread that truth, and do everything in your power to get the children reunited?
There are many paths, not just one or two, to helping. Each person has to find their own way, and there probably isn't a right way. But there is a wrong way: to do nothing.
1
"Antisemitism" results because Jews resist assimilation (intermarry, etc.) within their country's majority. It has little to do with religion and will happen to ANY minority group anywhere, which resists assimilation and is cohesive and economically/politically powerful beyond their numbers, as it did the first Chinese immigrants in the Philippines.
5
I am Polish and I am offended by some statements that the author wrote in this article. The author should remember that German government was supported by the German society where only few were in opposition. As the antisemitism existed in Poland and in Europe Germany is responsible for the holocaust. I was born after the war but was exposed to many stories about the holocaust. Poland unlike France, Slovakia, even Norway and others did not have a cooperating with the Germans government. The Slavs were going to be the next as a subject of enslaving and extermination. Polish Home Army the underground opposition to Germans (by estimates more than half of million people) had a death penalty for Poles who denounced hiding Jews to the Germans. Two of my father’s siblings were sent to the concentration camps in German as a result of anti German activities. There were so many cases that the whole Polish families who attempted to hide Jews were killed along with their children or babies. Such was a punishment for hiding Jews. The decision had not been easy for Poles to help Jewish people.
13
@KDz
That is admirable, but there were also many collaborating Poles. The story is mixed, as it was in all countries.
1
@Thomas Zaslavsky No, there were not many compared to the population size. The story is definitely not mixed, as in other European countries. That's actually insulting. Anti-Polish tropes, however, are clearly still far too common in Israel and New York it seems.
1
We are at an inflection point where we see our elected republican leaders lie daily to maintain power. They know Trump is terrible, surrounded by sycophants and corrupt people and yet they tow the party line. They go along while families are separated, babies are caged, children die in custody, our agencies dismantled, loyal workers are denounced and their reputations destroyed and their agencies (our institutions) dismantled - and still they are silent, complicit, and some go all out to spread the lies and the hate - they are the hacks and they must be stopped.
13
Every elected republican is complicit and therefore responsible for the dismantlement of our agencies and the deregulation that allows businesses to pollute without any responsibility. Elected republicans have empaneled hundreds of judges loyal to donors and not to the people or the constitution.
If you want to save this country and truly want change you must vote republicans out for their complicity. The past is prologue.
14
Edmund Burke might have benefited from the knowledge that there are no “good” people, or “bad” people. We’re all just people.
I’m only alive because a journalist in my family defied repeated warnings, issued to her by a member of the White Army, until she was eventually kidnapped.
The Cossack responsible for her abduction was dealt swift justice, prompting the remaining members of my family to flee Westward.
3
I now fear volunteer DNA testing is a way to enforce another ‘Master Race’.
3
The Bulgarians saved the Jews residing in Bulgaria proper from the death camps. Official, Church and popular resistance to the deportations was practically total.
Italy's Jews did not fare as well. Of the roughly 40,000 Italian Jews, approximately 8000 were exterminated by the Germans.
6
I could not disagree more!
Not one shred of evidence is advanced to support the argument that simply standing aside will prevent atrocities on a societal scale.
In fact, it is moral education--by the church or the family or the community--that instills ethics in children and cements a moral society, where it becomes unacceptable to act against the norms of decency. When these institutions decline, so does behavior that tolerates hate, especially organized and hierarchically institutionalized hate. There is always a deep fear of harm to oneself or one's family when a fascist government permeates all of society, whether that government is called communist or national socialist or absolute monarchy (tsarism). Failure to collaborate, to affirm loyalty becomes itself a crime.
Collective resolve to actively resist is the only effective deterrent to coercive pressure. Examples include the Danish
export of Jews to Sweden, Norwegian resistance to a Quisling regime, and Le Chambon, the Protestant village that sheltered Jewish children in the heartland of France.
In the US, communities and activists in Idaho, Montana, and Washington state reclaimed their towns from antisemitic, racist militias. We now need to actively resist using collective organization and ethical norms. Or else the Tea Party movement that joined with white supremacists and radical evangelicals will transform our country into a retrograde semi-fascist state that targets the vulnerable.
20
thank you. I understood that Trump was dangerous as soon as I saw the 2016 interview where he described immigrants from Mexico as rapists and murderers. I knew I could never vote for him. Later, it became clear that we had to take power away from the modern GOP.
I have been a lifelong Democrat.
4
Thank you for this essay. I never tire of learning about the experiences of ordinary citizens rising to heroic actions as during the Holocaust. I have never acted heroically , with my life in danger, but I would hope to be one who would not collaborate with such evil. Easy for me to say........ I only wish the author had ended this essay with a call to Republican congressmen and senators. We know who you are.
7
What Professor Weinberg writes rings true from my family's experience during the Holocaust. My mother and her parents survived the Holocaust in Vilna Poland (Vilnius Lithuania today), a place where the Nazis and their Lithuanian collaborators murdered 98% of the 100,000 Jewish civilians who liven in a city known as "The Jerusalem of Lithuania". My mother survived due to the covert, obstructionist efforts of the commander of her slave labor camp, a man named Major Karl Plagge. Plagge mostly played within the rules, giving work permits, arguing with the SS over the lives of the women and children in the camp saying that to "relocate them" would hurt unit moral and efficiency. However, he did not directly confront the perpetrators of genocide and tried to avoid actions that could get him arrested for treason. Ultimately his efforts saved the lives of 250 Jews. After the war, after remaining silent for over a decade about what he had seen in Vilna, he wrote a serious of letters to a Jewish attorney he met while testifying at a war crimes trial, saying "Perhaps in other places only a small amount of determination was lacking in order to prevent or decrease the atrocities. I never felt this needed special courage. It required only the conviction and strength that anyone can draw from the depth of moral feelings that exists in all humans".
10
Did Italian Jews do so much better, because Italians were less anti-Semitic, or because Italy by being an ally of Nazi Germany was not occupied? (Same for Bulgaria.) Consider the city of Nice, France. For a time it was under Italian control - it was pretty much a haven for Jews. In late 1943 German troops invaded and the persecution began. To believe Ms. Weinberg the population suddenly became anti-Semitic in 1943.
I read, "The truth about how massive moral crimes", "History tells us", "What history teaches us" : this essay is sprinkled with this kind of grand pronouncement, when it uses just one event, the Holocaust, however unique and significant it is, to draw its conclusions. It would have been better if the author had referred to other examples, indeed ones where the US was perpetrator, such as slavery.
6
I agree with this article. I guess The New York Times endorsing two women over seven men shows that we must all be vigilant. Oppression comes in all forms.We must celebrate the liberation of the horrific death camps in Europe in 1945. Millions murdered. Had they lived, a cure for cancer? I say this because such a productive bunch came to the U.S. from Eastern Europe. Don't lock yourself in a safe place. I used a trigger word. One day when all this silliness is gone, and we can see ourselves as human beings again, not a potential lawsuit, I will be proud of who I am . A white oppressor of the masses. C'mon NYT's, your influence is waning as individuals seek to survive, you exploit and whine, dare I say it, like a little girl. Now go sue Bob Dylan.
1
Oh, Ms Weinberg, there is no common denominator that explains the perfect storm that was the holocaust because there were so many contributing circumstances. Apathy, yes, but not to murder, because the murder was carried out in secrecy, and so unimaginable in a civilized and cultured society that no sane person would even think of it. There were sympathetic people, but what can an individual do to stop the 'system'? Nothing. There were at least two major enablers in Germany to the perfect storm. A large population of frustrated WW1 veterans who had crossed the threshold of murder and violence in war, and had a political ax to grind. An explosive political environment of polar extremes, and municipal residence registries, and fine record keeping in Germany for centuries, where magistrates can find anyone, and their background. Without any of these enablers, the holocaust could not have happened in Germany at least. In occupied territories other factors was a major contributing factor. Plus the nature of Europeans, including Germans, living in a corset of mass rule.
1
As I understand this thoughtful column, the message is do that which is within your means in the direction of what is right.
In other words, you don't have to go beyond your personal boundaries (or "comfort zone"); you simply need to move your behavior toward the edge of that personal boundary.
Different people have different personalities, so the resulting behavior will be different for different people. But it will all be in the direction of doing what is right.
The simplest act of kindness is a move in the right direction. There is no minimum, no maximum.
9
I have a friend, Anneke, whose parents, with some help from neighbors, hid eight Jews in their small home during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.
When asked later in life how they could do such a risky thing, endangering not only themselves but also their young children, the parents reply was often something like this: "I don't understand the question. How could we do otherwise?"
As this essay notes, many people willingly did "otherwise" as perpetrators and collaborators. Not every Dutch person had the moral strength to hide Jews in their home.
But that does not mean all the others merely watched, aware of the evil, and did nothing. On one occasion, when one of the Jews took sick, they had to call a doctor for help. The doctor came, treated the sick person, and on leaving said to Anneke's mother, "When I cross this threshold I will remember nothing of what I have seen." He, too, could have done "otherwise," but chose not to do so.
I have heard Anneke tell the story of her parents' courage and compassion many times. And one thing I take away is that there are many ways to make a difference in the face of evil, some large, some smaller, none trivial. If we agree we are in the presence of evil, the question should be, "If so, what can I do? What am I willing to do about it?"
581
This comment moved me nearly as much as the essay, itself. A nice distillation and example of what Rivka Weinberg was talking about—and food for thought about how one might comport oneself in both heroic and more ordinary ways when facing evil, today.
22
@Larry
I have a vivid memory of going to the Holocaust Museum and being transfixed by a wall that displayed examples of families who hid the Jews knowing that they could suffer as a result. Nothing else in that museum mattered to me and I came away knowing that such a thing is possible in the face of fear, and like Weinberg says, if we can be mindful of our own possibility there is always hope for us.
108
Thank you Rivka. I must admit that you are preaching to a member of the choir here. Nevertheless, having grown up among many Holocaust survivors, I learned we all need motivation to do the right thing. It is learned behavior. My father enlisted in the U.S. Army in September of 1939 when learning that Poland was invaded. He shared his 30th birthday on 9/1/1939. Poland was his ancestral homeland and some cousins remained. Age 30 was not the age of your average enlistee. Upon his return as a decorated veteran, he was lauded for his heroism. Like almost all of his generation, he never talked about it, nor take credit for it.
I learned of concentration camps by asking my parents why the grocery shop keeper had numbers on his arm. I heard the words of Hillel at a young age: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”
Lest there be any doubt about the veracity of your remarks in this essay, on the subject of "bystanders", I suggest everyone read 'Hitler's Willing Executioners."
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@USNA73 If morality-based society depended only on views at the extremes there would be few societies or places with societies to be applauded. We now have to wait until people "oppressed" by sane legislation and moral rules are willing to gather without weapons of war to discuss differences of opinion and to grant that they may themselves be wrong but agree that discussion is not just giving up something, but the only way, really, to begin the long road to the accommodation of differences of opinion. That, the necessary condition for accommodation of any kind is the usual, if not the only way, to create peace, not just to avoid open warfare.
3
This column is a helpful way of viewing what is happening, but I would argue that the ratio, if you will, of heroes (resisters) to bystanders necessary to thwart authoritarianism changes over time. At the very onset, no heroes are needed; if there are virtually no collaborators, then being a bystander is sufficient.
However, if there are enough collaborators to cause the budding authoritarianism to advance, then "good people doing nothing" is no longer enough to stop it. If that occurs, we need more heroes to stand up in defiance and resistance.
With McConnell, Graham, Nunes, practically the entire GOP, collaborating with Trump and his Cabinet, I am grateful we have leaders like Schiff and Pelosi stepping forward, and hope that their ranks swell until the threat to democracy and the rule of law is eliminated.
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While I welcome the writer's advice to "not be a collaborator", I tend to agree more with her mother's opinion that a decent person should not remain silent when they witness horrible behavior.
Let's first look at the impact of "don't be a collaborator", in terms of whom it would affect. Those who are already anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-gay, etc. are not going to lessen their support for a powerful figure who validates their own prejudices because some "bleeding heart liberal" asks them to play nicely. Those who are not anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-gay, etc. would be disinclined to collaborate, but might normally be inclined to "stand up" against such behavior. The author's advice gives those people a comforting excuse to remain in their comfort zone and do nothing to help the victims. I reject her argument that "upstanders respond instinctively" - a person may instinctively try to save a person who falls off the subway platform, but the urge to stop a mugger requires more calculation ("Will I get shot? It's just a wallet - maybe just let them have it"). The net effect of her advice is to decrease resistance to horrible actions being committed.
7
A very timely articulate piece that should frame every democratic citizen’s moral choice in casting their ballot, where you don’t have to be heroic and speak out publicly with how you cast a secret ballot, you merely need to not collaborate to collectively succeed in defeating injustice. Where even enough spoiled ballots nullifies the collaboration needed to commit atrocities.
6
Anyone who has been in the military - particularly those who have seen combat - can tell you that heroism can be trained. I have an award for heroism hanging on my wall and I can tell you the actions it recognizes did not come from some innate talent for heroism or even from a spur of the moment decision - rather I just did what I had been trained to do. This, of course does not detract from your main point: we should not help or encourage evil-doers.
18
As an undergrad philosophy/psychology major eons ago, I find this a compelling and insightful essay. As a former middle school student standing in a circle around a girl seizing on the floor with epilepsy and crying Help me! Help me! and to this day wondering why I did not step forward -- I find the essay's argument missing one position.
I didn't need to be heroic that day in middle school -- but I didn't need to remain a numb bystander, waiting for a nurse or administrator. I just needed to step forward, bend down, take her hand, or just do something rather than nothing.
Perhaps voting against Trump and the Republicans is enough these days. Perhaps waiting to see what fascistic moves will be made next is enough. Perhaps signing petitions or joining a march is enough.
But with mass incarceration especially of black people, the treatment of immigrants, and the rollback of legislation that is aimed at helping the poor -- surely there is something more than waiting for the murderers to come that can stir my conscience to action.
40
You could arm yourself and be ready to defend yourself when the murderers come. You never have to use that awful firearm that you can buy, but it’s better to have one and not need it then need it and not have it.
@SGK We have all stood by at the seizure (metaphorically). Every child has seen another child fall and scrape a knee and cry and not know what to do. As children - and I count your middle school years as childhood - we need to learn. It seems to me, you learned. If you are haunted by the vision of your classmate's seizure, then you must have vowed to do differently next time. Next time, it might be a victim of a car accident, or a mother experiencing domestic abuse, or a racist slur, but you've already decided what you will do. You can step forward. You can hold a hand. You can say "How can I help?"
If it's about society at large, you can: make donations to causes. March in protests and rallies. Reach out to your neighbors who are people of color or have a different religion than you do. Donate regularly to the poor. Vote. Shop at businesses owned by people who don't share your heritage.
If you don't, you'll be haunted. And if you do, you'll feel peace. You already know I'm telling the truth, because you're still haunted by that girl in middle school. You don't have to be haunted about this round of life - you can do something in the next five minutes. (Donate $5 to the Anti-Defamation League or NAACP or an immigrants' rights project or the local food bank. Money isn't everything, but it's a start! You're already sitting with the internet at your fingertips.)
3
Aren't we are all collaborators with consumer culture? Doesn't this pose an existential threat to humanity, and life on the planet? We are a species that travels readily in one direction only, toward more and better, yet we're largely unaware of the threat this poses. While we should live simply, so that others might simply live, we are accustomed to our lives, and change is stressful. By-standing is what we do! I, for one, find it very hard to remove myself from the strong current, and I don't want to isolate myself from family and friends. As individuals, there may be little we can do, but we CAN vote for strong government that will encourage us to take proper action. Greta: Thank-you, you are a true "up-stander."
And a belated Happy MLK day!
12
Our country's most influential institutions; business - are actively collaborating with the Chinese government while it builds the infrastructure necessary to monitor its citizens. Chinese citizens will soon not be able move without the government knowing it. Already, the government has instituted a point system to coerce citizens into compliant behavior. Collaboration on part of neighbors will be unnecessary.
Millions of Uighers are in camps as we write. Yet we just signed a trade deal with China. George Bush Sr. would not give most favored nation trading status to China due to authoritarianism and communism. Clinton did not have the moral decency to continue the policy (though it was the GOP in Congress that pushed most favored nation trading status). That trade has now enriched China so it can afford its high tech 1984 social control infrastructure.
So now with little personal risk, we as a nation are indifferent to the authoritarian infrastructure being built as long as semi-slave labor are coerced into building us I-phones. We are guilty.
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@kg And you think our government isn't building the infrastructure to monitor the citizens?
2
@kg
Our social network technologies have been in bed with the Russians, Chinese since they realized that there was so much money to be made. Those CEO's care noting for this country or humanity, I wonder why americans keep feeding the monster that will destroy us
I wonder why it is so easy to hate Warren the messenger than it is to stand up for ourselves.
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@Bill wrote: " And you think our government isn't building the infrastructure to monitor the citizens?"
Gee "Bill", I guess that depends on your definition of "our government".
Most often, I find “ The Stone “ to be boring academic drivel. Not today. This should be required reading for Students everywhere, and anyone with a heart and soul. You have captured my own thoughts in a very elegant and forceful fashion, and I’m grateful. This is exactly what WE need to discuss, when speaking about Politics and Trump and his Collaborators.
Thank You.
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I think our current situation is not the same as what existed before WWII, in that we still have (though maybe not for long) the freedom and ability to speak out. We are headed in a bad direction but all is not lost yet. In the current situation, the moral thing to do is to speak out with all your being, organize, vote, write letters, etc. If we don't, we may be faced with the circumstances in which speaking out may cost you your life. That is the situation the professor is addressing.
When my son J. was 5 years old, an older kid in his afterschool program repeatedly threatened to kill him. It was an empty threat I'm sure, but very scary. Some of the other kids - bystanders - organized the "J. Protection Club." The bully felt left out and asked to join. The kids solved the problem. I'm still amazed that this happened.
Bottom line, when you have the freedom to do something to help someone without risking your own or your loved ones' safety, do it.
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Preschool kids are the very opposite of what we face. The threats come from people who have fate control over us. Elected officials.
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@lulu wonderful story. On the other hand, my son was bullied, badly, in middle school and the "adult" in charge, the Vice-Principal (and someone lauded for her anti-bullying program) blamed my son for "starting it." Shortly thereafter, we had to move him to another school for protection. The author here makes an excellent point, but often, someone has to stand up and say "enough."
8
@Nat Ehrlich: You are giving Trump and the Republicans too much credit. Watching the demeanor of the top Republicans during the House impeachment hearings is certainly reminiscent of uncontrolled, immature and sometimes malevolent behavior. Yesterday,
on MLK day, Trump, once again, made it all about himself and lied blatantly about African-Americans via his unrestrained tweets.
If I mention that Trump acts like a two-year old, my comment will not be published, or will it?
3
Great column. The burning question is why the Republican party has become collaborators. Talking Points Memo posited a few months ago that a combination of extortion and blackmail on key politicians may extend to perhaps just a few, perhaps many vulnerable Republican politicians beyond Trump. Seems plausible that Putin would have thick files on all politicians who have been in public life for any length of time, and a party that runs on pursuit of self-interest over the common good would be full of grifters with something to hide. If true, the ordinary citizen cannot "fix this" by heroism, much less common decency, and we must not beat ourselves up for our inability to do so.
19
Perhaps Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts should read this and see the parallels to his job in the Senate.
No doubt there are some Republicans in the Senate and House who will read this and see their reflection.
11
I believe that Stephen Miller, Brad Parscale and Jared Kushner are making a list of every person in America who has spoken/written/acted against their king, the 'man who cannot be questioned'. Not hard to do technologically.
If Trump 'wins' a second term (or term for life) with no guardrails, all Americans who are not 'straight white males and their obedient spouses' will be considered 'other'.
I'm 68 years old and have been watching for this kind of horror to appear in America. And here it is, almost upon us. I live with a dread of it and on my worst days I plan on fleeing - alone, older woman in a new country - on my best days I behave as an activist fighting against it. Or my imagination takes me to living deep in rural Maine and just keep my mouth shut, my fingers stilled from writing my thoughts to the world and hope I will be ignored.
Hard article to read. It is making me think. Thank you.
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It will be OK. HIS Collaborators are about to get an extremely well deserved thrashing in November. As for the Creature, HE will be indicted and awaiting Trial in New York State, next year.
Seriously.
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@sophia
I am 70, and have seen racism much much much worse. I have seen a culture change and correct itself. Yes, Trump and particularly the Republican tunnel vision and narcissism, are a danger to our democracy. And there are a lot of guns around and old men just waiting to use them, but they'll have to get off their butts first, and that won't happen. The US is not Germany, the holocaust can't happen here, neither will racism regress to its worst case.
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@sophia
This is a brave comment.
Nobody (with their full wits about them) is fearless, and a sober look at the current situation is as upsetting as you say. But I think honestly wrestling with the fear--while keeping in mind what is very likely to happen if people do not rise to the challenge--is part of overcoming it... which you seem to be doing.
4
Your facts on Kitty Genovese are not accurate..please read the latest uncovered facts. People did call.
As to the rest, it is an interesting premise. However, even the meekest among us, can do more than non-collaboration when residing in is a society that still permits it..whether it is voting, encouraging voters or donating what one can or by not supporting dangerous wannabe demagogues because one might receive a short term personal gain. Please do not trade moral and ethical lapses for the wrong reasons.
3
@Ben read the sentence on Genovese again. You are saying exactly what the author wrote.
6
@Ben Says right there in the article that the reporting on Kitty Genovese was false...
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@Ben THe author specifically states that the narrative about no one calling for help for Ms Genovese is false.
1
Maybe I’m dense but I’m unsure what the author is advocating. It seems she presents an excuse to not actively opposing tyranny and genocide, but seriously just a series of anecdotes. What does she proscribe as necessary action? How does it apply to our society?
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@bakereast Don't collaborate. The whole republican party has turned into a bunch of cowardly collaborators. Many independents are still considering voting for trump's ugliness. The message is clear.
1
The best influences on our lives are those who ask of us more than we believe ourselves capable. This is true on all levels, from the most intimate to the most public. Humanity, societies, communities, families and individuals do not improve without such inspiration. This morning, I find I'd have much preferred millions of NY Times subscribers read a piece by Professor Weinberg's mother, who better recognizes we not only owe our lives to heroes, but that the debt is paid when we, ourselves, do not shrink from opportunities to be upstanding.
15
Professor Weinberg’s remarks are salient in so many ways regarding the state our country is in and in the ways our young people will be affected by our collective misdeeds. Sure - there are people who are standing up for what’s right but we are learning the hard way that our institutions and our laws are only as relevant as the people who are charged with upholding them. We need a new constitutional congress to strengthen the bylaws of our country and to shield it from the onslaught of leaders who bend our long held laws and norms to their will. In regard to Professor Weinberg’s mother - too bad that we don’t have more like her — and think of the whistleblower who risked much to come forward. That person has been harassed and disrespected. Who will want to stand up in our future? Who?
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@Susan Landino
We have laws now, that Republicans feel do not apply to them. Today, Tuesday 1/21, they are ignoring their own laws and rules regarding impeachment, and a clear cut case of withholding congressional appropriation for purpose of extortion. Laws are only effective if people obey them. Republicans have long been a magnet for white collar criminals. Yet, people keep electing them.
10
This is a wonderful article that has given me a new perspective on being or not being heroic.
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i believe that willingness to go along with the leaders of one's own group and indifference to and suspicion of the Other are fundamental hardwired parts of the human psyche most people are unwilling to see in themselves. man is a social or group animal and what defines a group is not who is in but who is excluded. what all people must learn to do is to expand who they consider as part of their 'human' group in order not to be indifferent to and even willing to participate in the persecution of those not like themselves.
6
To slgulick of Ontario—-I, for one, do not think that survival of any human social group is hard-wired, as you seem to claim. This puts us at the level of animals, who function without the benefit of a highly developed brain which clearly can distinguish between right and wrong. Who have a conscience. Survival as the only priority relieves the animal of feelings of guilt, of remorse, of responsibility for their actions. Comfortable, in a limited sense, but not human.
@Norma Gauster decades of research has shown that humans prefer their own groups over others. As to the why there are various theories, one is that it preferring one's own group (in the context of how we evolved for 99.99% of our time on hearth as humans) was in small, travelling bands, on the lookout for threats was adaptive and enabled some to survive.
A very thought-provoking piece. I will long think about its honest presentation of the moral dilemmas we all face. Are our decisions different according to the culture we live in? Can morality be situation-based, ever? In a police state, you don’t speak up at work for a colleague because you are responsible for your family. Would you be similarly constrained if you were asked to betray your neighbor, knowing he would die as a result? Aware that your family’s security depends on your answer.
In a democracy such as ours, small decisions can be the building blocks of a repressive regime or the bulwark against it. Most people know the difference between right and wrong. Under the rule of law (yes, I know it isn’t perfect), we can act morally without fear of the State. There are, of course, consequences socially, sometimes personally costly, but usually not life-threatening. Lately, this has been changing, a disturbing phenomenon.
We know it is wrong for innocent people to die because of race, religion, political party, economic injustice...We know that those who incite or condone violence or repression, no matter their status, are immoral. What is our responsibility? History has shown us the inevitable end of unconstrained power, as recently as WW2. It didn‘t happen overnight. It has happened repeatedly the world over. Has the cycle begun again?
5
I agree with this article. I confess I'm not "heroic" most of the time. I attribute that to my upbringing. I was taught to sit down, shut up, and not question anything. That has been so ingrained in my mind for so long that I'm basically conditioned to silently accept what's happening. Heroics are way too much to ask of me. But not collaborating is easy, and it's quite a relief to hear that's enough.
15
@AJE
That's not enough, and the fact that you "confess" to doing nothing proves you know that.
3
We should also mention the behavior highlighted in the Stanford Prison Experiment.
Many people, VERY many people, will obey authority even when ordered to do awful things. This is a specific type of cooperation, based not on hate but on obedience and deference to authority.
Maybe we can't expect everyone to be a hero. That is after what makes it heroic rather than ordinary. Not everyone deserves the big medals.
However, we can educate to resist authority giving awful orders.
Many of the instances cited in this article were in fact pure hate, motivated and quite willing, even eager to help doing awful things.
However, in the real world, resisting awful orders would be a help. How big of a help? Let's not be forced to find out, but I suspect it would be a real effect.
The Stanford Experiment disclosed a real effect, and it surprised people that so many would be so weak. That we can try to fix.
16
@Mark Thomason Read the latest on the prison experiment. Turns out the whole situation was manipulated and the much reported results are wrong.
6
@Mark Thomason It is a bit off-point regarding Weinberg's excellent essay, but regarding the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE), I think that Thomas Carnahan and I made a strong case that those who volunteered for the SPE were aggression-prone students, not random, representative students. See https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167206292689.
2
With respect to Professor Weinberg, I believe that while her message may be helpful for the timid, even they should be exhorted to do something--make a phone call to authorities, write a letter to a lawmaker. Something.
Our longtime family friend, a distinguished professor of law and holocaust survivor, escaped annihilation by pure caprice: he and his mother were separated from his father at a railhead, seemingly at the whim of a single guard (whose decisions were not necessarily aligned with age and sex). The young boy ended up in a prison camp and was ultimately not murdered--but his father and millions more were killed, in some substantial part by the inaction of millions of Germans, Poles, etc.
I have intervened--perhaps recklessly as regards my personal safety and fatally re: my employment status--many times over the years when I could not stomach what I was witnessing. My father's career was upended more than once--such as when he agreed to organize and advise student Vietnam War protestors at the University of Utah Law School. Like my father, I do not believe that I am a hero, but something reflexive in us demanded action--and we knew that inaction was tantamount to contributing to a vacuum quickly filled by hatred, and simply not an option. Respectfully, Weinberg is wrong.
30
When you have a sufficiently large segment of a society willing to collaborate or look the other way crimes of varying degrees of seriousness are going to be committed. How else to explain 100 years of Jim Crow in this country and the infinitely worse events in Europe during the 30's and 40's. It's happening in this country and other societies today and we don't have the excuse that the state is in control of the means of enforcing conformism as is the case in China or Russia or looks the other way as is the case in say Israel or Brazil. The reality is that politics is where a nation's values are decided.
24
@John : My one child, a daughter who is 33, has the resources to leave this country and go anywhere and I've encouraged her to leave - especially if Trump 'wins' 2020. I want to see her out of here. Her response is that it's happening in so many places, the right wing authoritarians are rising everywhere or so it seems, so she'd rather stay here. But it doesn't alleviate my worry about her safety and her future in a country where 'non-mainstream' may be punished.
10
My wife's aunt, uncle, and cousin were saved during the Holocaust by Oskar Schindler. Many years later, when the film Schindler's List was being shown, I spoke with my wife's aunt about her experiences. She said: "We should have no bitterness about what happened. Instead, we should find people today who need help, and we should help them."
Before a culture slides into the abyss, those steps she outlined could save lives later.
86
This article much wisdom to impart. Weinberg's interpretation of “collaboration” is particularly thought provoking. Sadly, one can’t help apply the concept as it relates to the position of senate republicans at this very important moment in America’s identity and history. Unfortunately, it appears that most republicans don’t pay heed to the lessons of history. Is it ignorance? Is it indifference? Is it collaboration?
40
Professor Weinberg's argument, boiled down, turns doing nothing in the face of something terrible into a virtue. What do, "Don't help the organizers" and "Don't turn people in" mean other than to go about your life as if what's going on around you isn't going on? There's a time to keep to yourself and a time to act. Figuring that out might be difficult, but it's far more pressing for all of us than parsing what constitutes moral courage.
28
I believe her point there was that, at a minimum, we should not cooperate. At a bare minimum.
6
The difference today is technology, money, and freedom.
Computers, telecommunications, transportation, a free market for everything that could make bombs or bioweapons or surveil the population - all of it is readily available to anyone with a modicum of money. The default in the West for any activity is freedom; it takes an act of Congress in response to overwhelming public pressure for any regulation. All these have made it possible for a tiny number of people to run large corporations, militaries, and research facilities.
The same is true for evil. It takes very few collaborators today -- too few to believe we can stop evil by reducing the supply of collaborators.
The only alternative is to fight: be stronger and faster and smarter.
Nice is necessary, but not sufficient.
8
The only alternative is to vote. Voter registration and voter turnout and voter engagement. 90 percent of Americans didn’t benefit in any significant way from the 2017 Trump tax break that exploded the deficit. They will be hurt by another Trump term that will seek to change Social security and Medicare and Medicaid to save their tax breaks. Vote like your life depends on it because it does.
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@we Tp The huge problem is that most good people do not have a "modicum of money". Civilization, even in our beloved democracy, un-equate money and power. Until the disjunction between money and power can be figured out in social theory, political theory and economic theory will become an absolute corrupter as it has in the United States.
In the United States their is a second corrupter which is conjoined with money connect with money and that corrupter is religion. At least one political party has made the connection of money to religion and quite a bit of false dialog supporting the connection is generated. One myth used by religion to excuse the accumulation of huge pools of wealth among individuals and businesses is that the wealth creates jobs which furnish the means of survival for ordinary folks. If the myth was anything but a myth citizens would not have lost the benefits of good wages, good health care, good working hours with overtime pay, safe working conditions, retirement packages, etcetera over the forty years when conditions were changed in industry that created the rust belt and deprived workers of the unions. Unions were only voice that means anything for the common man the Washington. They have no meaningful voice now in our democracy. Money first and religion second have reduced the wealth held of the common man and corrupted the nations leadership.
3
@Dennis
Your response is filled with so many points I agree with.
Yes, the Republican party connects religion (Christianity) and wealth, so that if one is poor, the R's seem to say, then one is not religious enough.
Yes, the destruction of unions robbed the working class of a critical voice.
In regard to the heroism needed as a citizen in today's America, we all must do what we can. Living in a Republican state while holding decidedly un-Republican beliefs can be isolating and possibly dangerous.
Recently I participated in two rallies at our state capitol building--one to impeach Trump and the other to oppose war with Iran. I knew I'd catch some flak for my actions, but I couldn't NOT participate.
I don't kid myself. 2020 Alabama is not 1939 Poland--not by a long shot. Still, I hope I will continue to do what I can to oppose the current move toward Fascism by our party in power.
I am not convinced. Heroism is not "instinctive," as the good professor claims. It results from a heroic character, or simply a good character, which is (as the ancient Greeks knew) the product of a good upbringing. One must be habituated to respond appropriately (virtuously) in the face of danger. It strikes me as a pious hope that doing nothing (not collaborating) will avert a moral catastrophe on the order of the Holocaust. At the very least we must actively disapprove of evil; better still to oppose it in whatever way we can. To be sure, merely voicing opposition to a murderous regime can be dangerous. Dissenters risk imprisonment, even death. But conscientious dissent can also awaken the consciences of others, informing those who inwardly question the regime that they are not alone. By all means, we do well not to collaborate with evil. But when evil blots out the sun and darkness fills the land, the right thing to do is light a candle.
72
I would argue that terrible things happen when a leader or government does terrible things, but people accept it, assuming the leader has legitimacy, therefore, while he can make bad policy, he doesn't break laws and is allowed to break laws. Think of the lawyers rewriting laws so Bush could torture or claiming Trump can use congressionally-appropriated funds to extort Ukraine for personaal political gain.
179
Ahh, there's little I enjoy more than a philosophy professor lecturing me on how to live!
6
As a therapist I very much appreciate and agree with this perspective. Expecting people to act against their own or their loved ones best interest is often asking too much. Acknowledging the difficulty and offering realistic courses of action are a first step in addressing the problem. I expect we would all like to think of ourselves as heroic but when faced with an unimaginable situation we can never know how we will react. What we can all do is address our own hatreds and prejudices and by example teach others to do likewise.
56
@Sam I respectfully disagree.
When I vote to spend tax dollars to support the homeless in my community, I am voting against my own interests. I'm a homeowner, not homeless, and I will pay for someone else's problem as a result of my vote. I'm not alone in this - it is part of liberal philosophy to do just this.
But it's a mistake to say that I'm voting against my own interests. I'm voting for myself, despite what I've just said.
I want to live in a world where people speak up for me if I'm experiencing injustice. And I want to go to bed at night aware that I've done what I can to be a deeply good and moral person. It makes me feel good. Doing good makes us feel good.
My grandfather wore a Kriegsmarine uniform and became a perpetrator. He died an old man in America, wealthy, yet likely the most miserable person I'll ever met. He never admitted his failures, but he carried them with him every single day of his life, and wasted his life as a result.
I speak up because to do so gives me hope and peace and joy, and to remain silent makes me feel frightened and powerless. I speak up because I like what I see when I look in the mirror afterwards.
It is not asking too much of me to allow myself to feel peace from my behavior. We should demand this for ourselves, not tell ourselves it's too hard. To not speak up is ultimately far too difficult, too high a price.
3
@Sam Thank you for your insight. I think the most powerful thing we can do to understand and push against hate is to address our own biases and hatreds and by example teach others.
1
@Kristina
Very well stated. I too contribute to my neighbors, whoever they are, because I want to live in a world where we all care for one another and none are left behind. I help educate the young because I want to live in a world of people who can DO things and understand one another.
I'm afraid this essay will discourage positive activism by conflating it with life-threatening heroism. This is untrue. There are simple, practical actions one can take--at least in our current context in the US--to be an upstander rather than a bystander: Call your elected officials and let them know your concerns about injustices you see. Write letters to your local newspaper. Contribute to or volunteer for organizations and candidates that have the resources and knowledge to do the heavy lifting that you can't. In short, be an informed, engaged citizen.
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@FeliciaL The day when letter writing and phone calling become equated with 'life-threatening heroism' is the day we will truly need heroes.
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@FeliciaL But when your elected officials are Republicans, voicing your concerns on environmental, humanitarian, and tax issues is futile. So after my stated concerns have been continually ignored by the powers-that-be, I realize that the only path is to vote, and to canvass my fellow citizens.
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@FeliciaL As an educator and former participant at Facing History and Ourselves (where I first learned the term Upstander), I thought the same as you. I like expanding the idea of being an Upstander to small acts of bravery; maybe using the word "heroism" might be too strong here. Once my students learn to recognize and behave in ways that are more courageous, they -- and we -- can see how important it is. I agree with you: volunteering may be your ultimate act of being an Upstander but it can be as important as standing up to a bully.
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Professor Weinberg thoroughly covers the case where one is not a cog in the wheel being used by the evil-doers. The case where one is a cog in the wheel is different and needs to be discussed.
In many ways, the example of her mother is closer to the case of the cog in the wheel. At least she was immediately adjacent to the wheel.
Are the people working within the process who object to the current machinations of the process compelled to leave, compelled to speak out, compelled to stay and obstruct (hero), or is just doing the job that you're told (bystander) good enough?
Great article, but several cases are missing.
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@WJL There's a nice (pre-1993) article by Alexander Kronman on being a cog in the wheel.
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Although, as a parent, I have struggled with the burden placed on our children by requiring "upstander" behavior, Professor Weinberg's analysis of the holocaust seems simplistic. Both Italy and Bulgaria were allied with Nazi Germany during WW II and thus had more leverage in protecting their Jewish citizens. Occupied Holland experienced a 75% murder rate of its Jewish population, while in France, which collaborated (and where much of the country was unoccupied), the murder rate was only approximately one third as high. I don't think it's reasonable to believe that the Dutch were so much more anti-semitic than the French (nor than the Danes who were able to rescue most Jews), and, in fact, it was the Dutch, not the French, who staged protests against the initial anti-semitic laws imposed by the Nazis. Wasn't the collaborationist Vichy government (which, one could say, "welcome[d] the murderers") more able to protect French Jews? In occupied Europe it would, in fact, have taken moral courage to avoid participating in evil. In addition to organized resistance and religious leadership, political factors made a substantial difference (such as American pressure on Vichy France). It's not "effective and easy enough" to stop atrocities, particularly under a military dictatorship. We here in a safe democracy can't--or won't--stop the death and destruction carried out in our name. These three prescriptions are not "enough." Much more is required.
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Thanks for this. I too was wondering about the author’s interpretation of WW2 death rates, particularly since, as you suggest, the Netherlands was probably one of the least anti-Semitic countries and yet had the highest proportional loss of its Jewish population.
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@Critic
I think you are right, the Dutch were no more anti-Jewish than the French.
Netherlands faced peculiar circumstances, it seems, that because of the evacuation of the queen and ministers to Britain, the Germans inserted themselves into the resultant Netherlands government at a much higher presence than in the governments of any neighboring lands, such as Denmark, Belgium, or even France.
This was the main reason the Netherlands Jewish survival rate was relatively poor compared to the rest of Western Europe. Tragic and paradoxical, given the wonderful anti-Nazi witness given by Netherlands' Catholic bishops.
Simplistic theories, along with tropes about various non-Jews do not paint an accurate picture of what happened and why.
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@Critic "France, which collaborated..." What, the entire country?
"...and where much of the country was unoccupied" You are as misinformed about history as Ms. Weinberg. Germany occupied southern France in early November 1942. Until then unoccupied Vichy largely protected French Jews. It also tried to facilitate the emigration of thousands of Jews from France, and would have succeeded with many thousands more if it had not been for American immigration restrictions. (Vichy France did however deport non-French Jews back to their home country in August, September, and October 1942. If you read testimonies from the few Jews who experienced these deportations and survived, you will learn that at that time no one imagined the Holocaust, and pretty much everyone thought their future consisted only of particularly rigorous work camps.)
I believe that Prof. Weinberg's critique of the "perpetrator, bystander, upstander" categories is incorrect and saying that they are not useful teaching categories is fundamentally wrong. First of all, their main use is to point out to people today that each of us have choices of how we act in the face of evil and wrongdoing. Consciously rejecting collaboration is, in fact, one way to resist and be an upstander, and might even be a "heroic" act at some time. "Martyrdom" is not a category that is suggested or mandated by teaching about the choice between being a a "bystander" or "upstander," as Weinberg implies. There is one other (sub-)category that I would bring to Prof. Weinberg's attention that I add to the others when I use them in my teaching: "Organizer." Individual acts of "upstanding" may be necessary at times, but group acts are generally more effective and often safer. An "organizer" invites others first to see that something is wrong, suggests that resistance or change is possible, discusses a range of strategies and identifies options for action, involves the group in making a plan, then taking collective action, and afterwords re-group to plan further actions. Let's really be clear, Prof. Weinberg's looking back is not really helpful for those of us trying to look forward and needing how to deal with the evil we see growing all around us today.
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An interesting and different perspective. I think she only needed half the length, though.
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A very thought provoking piece that I appreciate the NYT for publishing. Good parenting instills character in a child and experiences create character as an adult.
Character gives you the strength to be a hero, to jump in front of a mass shooter to save others, to walk miles with the sound of barking dogs to lead people to freedom, to have a belief that there are religious forces more important than yourself.
We are put on this earth to care for each other. There are no independent thinkers in the GOP Senate only enablers for they care for nothing but themselves. They are the best friends that evil can have.
The rest of us should not keep expecting that they will act for the good of the country or for their fellow man for they will not.
We must do what we know what is morally right, protest, send letters to their office even if they are not read, attend their town hall meeting and when the time comes vote them all out of office when there terms are up.
WP"Democracy dies in the darkness" only if we let it. Evil thrives in the corners and we must shine a light on the evil of the GOP and dictators across the world.
We are smarter than the evil that is roaming the earth and we need to do ensure that the next generation has a chance to taste democracy grow and prosper in a world that is welcoming for all, or what is the point of saving the planet?.
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@Tony
Referring to the GOP, "They are the best friends that evil can have".
A very moving and terrifying statement. And absolutely correct.
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The example of Prof. Weinberg’s mother is the most important part of this piece. The easiest way to ‘learn’ to be an upstander is to be ‘saved’ by someone else. A simple example- If a colleague stands up for you, you are more likely to stand up for the next person. Quietly saying what is right needs to be more common.
This is a wonderful, thought provoking piece.
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@Wilson Yes, learning to be an Upstander because you or your loved ones were saved by one is so true. However, Jared Kushner's own grandmother was a victim who was eventually saved and able to come to the US. I wonder where he learned to be a collaborator? Certainly not the lesson from his grandmother!
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It is amazing that this essay was published on the day after Martin Luther King Jr Day! King--who said that the real enemy of racial justice was not bigotry but the apathy of the White moderates--would have been appalled. While Professor Weinberg's point that "upstanding" education is a shallow and technocratic response to the problem, I don't think that the solution is studied indifference. Years ago, the government recommended three 20-minute sessions of vigorous exercise (heart rate at the 80% range) a week. Recently, it lowered its recommendation to five sessions of moderate exercise (such as walking for 30 minutes) a week, largely because people considered the original plan beyond their reach. Professor Weinberg has similarly lowered the moral bar. In this age of relentless self-interest and self-promotion, our moral leaders cannot even imagine asking people to be self-sacrificing or to resist evil. Instead, they can only suggest: "make sure not to help".
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@David
Thank you, this is on target. Ms. Weinberg is clearly well-intentioned, but is doing serious harm at a moment when frankly, the passivity of the great majority of people (or confining activity to what is "safe" and "comfortable"--voting, or at most an occasional protest) IS paving the path to horrors--which are already taking place. People right now should be swarming to DC, demanding that Trump and his crew must go, refusing to stop until they're gone.
An additional point--in the real world, the logic of "I don't have to be a hero" will lead people to collaborate, because under a fascist regime, collaboration is not "optional."
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It seems that saying what people should *not* do is helpful, but I would like to know what people *should* do.
Perhaps examples of everyday heroism in NYC are worth looking at. NYC might be a good example because it's full of different sorts of people and yet for the most part small acts of heroism happen daily. But let's look at a big act.
The author defined heroism as "upstanding" to help a stranger and risking your life. One example that comes to mind is the not-all-that-rare occasion when someone ends up on the subway tracks. Unless you are not injured by the fall, and not panicked, and know ahead of time to go to the end of the platform where there's a ladder, it's nearly impossible to get out of the tracks. This is because the platform overhangs the tracks. There's a lip. Without upper-body strength, and are tall, you can't pull yourself up. If you're injured, your situation is worse.
Time and again (if you read the tabloids) you read stories of total strangers jumping into the tracks area to help others. The lesson here is that NYers share a sense of belonging to that person. I'm not sure if it's a sense of common culture or identifying with that person's plight in the moment, but it exists. And so perhaps the larger prescriptive lesson the author could include would be to teach how much we are all alike and that we share culture. You are me and I am you. That seems to be something current rhetoric on both the left and the right could use more of.
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@Alive and Well As a newcomer to the state, I totally agree, especially the last paragraph. It was culture shock to experience this sense of "You are me and I am you" so consistently. And having been so often on the receiving end of it, I have happily, payed it forward. Care and kindness breed more of the same. Love this state!
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@Alive and Well
I'm not downplaying heroic acts such as these, but subway rescues happen everywhere there are subways. Those who rescue are not injured, are usually men - yes, those creatures we love to vilify today - with upper body strength, who are not panicked and who take the risk without thinking of themselves. It is not a NY thing. It is everyday men doing what they do best, jumping into dangerous situations to rescue people.
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This is a thought provoking piece, but it does not address one key issue: in many cases people do not have the option to be bystanders: they either must collaborate or face consequences. In such situations collaboration is not driven by hate but my self-interest, even self-preservation. When a person fails to collaborate they may lose privileges, livelihoods, liberty, even life. In such circumstances it is easy for persons to rationalize that they have no choice or that resistance is futile, since if they do not collaborate they and/or their loved ones will face consequences while someone else will do the bad deed anyway.
As the author says, in cases of “forced collaboration” it is hard to be a hero; often the best one can do is to do the job as badly and as indifferently as self-preservation will allow. And in some cases, people must be upstanders and say that I accept the consequences of resistance because the evil I am being forced to do is so horrific that personal sacrifice is the only moral course of action.
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As I read this essay, I thought about how one of my cousins was saved when a Polish farmer helped her hide after she jumped from a transport train in 1943. But here we are in 2020 and I keep hoping that some of the Republican senators will find a way to not collaborate with Trump. If they vote with Democrats to let Bolton and others be witnesses, they will go down in history as heroes.
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@BSR I agree with Prof. Weinberg that it is too much to ask for Republican senators to act as heroes. The question then becomes how not to collaborate with the current president. In attempting to answer that question, I discover the weakness in Prof. Weinberg's argument: it's too much to expect heroism from the "ordinary" citizen; just don't help the problem along by collaborating. How can you "not collaborate"? Isn't it like trying to "not communicate"? Is it true that if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem? If so, unless you're ACTIVELY involved in the solution, you're PASSIVELY involved in supporting the problem.
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@BSR I don't think asking the Republican Senators to allow for witnesses is the same as asking them to risk their lives, especially when 70% of the electorate agrees. They won't be heroes they will be doing the job we elected them to do.
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@Laura Perhaps some events are more important than politics? Perhaps some comparisons aren't worth being made?
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We had close friends who survived the Holocaust. Both are gone now, but the lessons they taught will always be with us. Yet, although this column is extremely well-written and Prof. Weinberg very eloquent, I wish there were more specifics on how to fight back against hate. I struggle every day with the knowledge that to reach the place we are now, there was a deep vein of racism and hate that I misguidedly thought was lessening in this country. What can one citizen do against the knowledge that in the eastern European countries, the movement toward racist dictatorship and racism was often slow, chipping away at basic human rights of particular groups, first marking them and then isolating them? Why is there no tangible recognition of the growing threat here, where hate crimes have risen significantly in the last year? Why should there even be a question about the re-election of the politicians who have accepted and thus perpetrated this? Why do we not learn the lessons of Nazi Germany and how Hitler was handed power, partly through massive rallies of blissful citizens chanting hate messages but also through democratic election? Why? But thank you, Prof. Weinberg for putting out the challenge. We need to be ever mindful of the grave consequences of silent collaboration, as well as the overt tactics of so many.
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@kay, I don't think there was a deep vein of racism and hate lying dormant in America. I do think that these dark impulses were cultivated and groomed by special interests that stood to gain by fomenting division and fear. Weapons makers, religious fundamentalists, immoral politicians (& their parties,) infotainment corporations, professional social media trolls and malign foreign interests have all been laboring mightily, ginning up anxiety and resentment in the minds and hearts of the American people.
This dark spasm may have to run its course, but we can still oppose it at the ballot box come November.
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@kay I think that, in many ways, you have answered your own question. You fight back against hate by calling it out when you see it -- assuming that you can do so safely in a particular situation. You educate your friends, family, and neighbors to the extent you can. You join and support groups that do recognize the growing threat here and fight against it.
And you don't fall prey to the dangerous fallacy that your vote doesn't matter. It is important that we have leaders who themselves repudiate hate and discrimination -- as opposed to the current administration, which gleefully fans the flames.
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@cds333 Well said
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Hear! Hear! This is an important piece. You don’t need to be a hero, you just need not to be part of the problem. Perhaps this year this means that you just need to take the low risk action of voting against the President who is part of the problem. Don’t stay home on Election Day.
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@Nick - I don't know about that Nick. What about all the white southerners during the Jim Crow era who never participated in a lynching and maybe were against segregation but who never spoke out against it? Were they not part of the problem? Are their hands clean because they only stayed silent when innocent people were being murdered instead of participating in the act?
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@Sallie I think this has been addressed in the piece - it is the core message, even. Those who did speak out against lynchings or interpose themselves likely took an important risk, for themselves and for their families. They were heroes. You can't expect everyone to be heroes. When was the last time you put yourself at risk of physical harm by standing up against injustice? Most of us never have.
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The people whose voices and actions would make a difference- our former leaders, our former presidents- are shockingly silent on the dismantling of our democracy. Isn’t this the least excusable form of bystanderism?
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