Uncomfortable Conversations with a Jew by Emmanuel Acho & Noa Tishby

Author:Emmanuel Acho & Noa Tishby
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: S&S/Simon Element
Published: 2024-04-29T00:00:00+00:00

15. THE HOLOCAUST, PART II

The (Very Real) Aftermath

EMMANUEL: You know Noa, a question I cannot get out of my mind is why didn’t anyone do anything about what was happening? What about the German bystanders? It seems like it was maybe a similar dynamic to what happened with slavery; there were people for it and people against it, but ultimately most were complicit.

NOA: I think that’s a really powerful parallel, and that’s what was at play here, too. There were many Germans who bought into Hitler’s antisemitism and agreed with his policies. And then there were Germans who, perhaps, didn’t agree with the Jew hatred but loved that Hitler was strengthening the economy. Or they could get a job in the Nazi war machine, which came with a lot of clout.

And, even if you didn’t agree—well, what did it matter? The Nazis could simply arrest you and send you to a concentration camp if you spoke out.

We should remember, though, that there were small groups of people who did fight back; some non-Jews helped Jews to hide or escape; and there was a Jewish resistance movement. A few brave souls, like Oskar Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg, went to extraordinary lengths that often cost them everything to protect Jews and other targeted people. But ultimately, the majority of people were willing to look away—even in the United States, which only got involved in the war because the Japanese, as part of the German coalition, had bombed Pearl Harbor.

Educators from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum put it in a chillingly eloquent way: “The Holocaust happened because of millions of individual choices.”

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