The Morality Of Bystanders In The Holocaust

Fearing abuse, bystanders did not want to stop and try to help the victims of the atrocity.

Holocaust had a big impact on people lives because of the indifference and injustice of the people. The story Night by Elie Wiesel, The Boy in the Stripped Pajamas, and secret life are the sources that tells us how bad the holocaust was and how we should stand up when we see people suffering rather than staying aside and be an observer. Being indifferent and an observer encourages the tormentor which is the opposite of what we should want. By speaking out and acting against injustice we can change what’s going on with other people’s lives that is unfair. In this essay I am going to support my opinion of how people show stand up for themselves and other people and how you should act against injustice by giving facts from the three sources.

Holocaust. A word of Greek origin that means sacrifice by fire. The Holocaust is a terrible event in our world’s history. During the course of the Holocaust six million men, women and children of the Jewish faith were murdered by Aolf Hitler and his Nazis in concentration and death camps across Europe. “Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere.” Elie Wiesel----cite correctly with Ms. G. By remembering the victims of the Holocaust we are breaking the silence and honoring the lives that were taken too soon.

In the world during the time of the Holocaust, there was indifference towards the suffering of millions of Jews. When individuals reflect about the Holocaust, the majority of the time the responsibility of the terrible events is placed upon the perpetrators. However, bystanders and witnesses indirectly affected the victims of the Holocaust as well. The silence of these people played one of the largest roles in the Holocaust, they influenced it by avoiding any type of involvement and by becoming blinded towards the suffering of others. In his Academy Award acceptance speech, Elie Wiesel says, “the opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference”. This exert from his speech reveals the importance of the role that bystanders played in the

When many think of the Holocaust as a solely negative experience, and while it may seem easy to write the event off as a dark time in history that seems remote and unlikely to affect us today, there are some positive results, including the lessons that it brings for current and future humanity. The lessons that the Holocaust brings are applicable to every person in the world. While many of these lessons do focus on the negative aspects of the Holocaust, like what circumstances permit such a vast genocide and how many people can die because of widespread racial hatred, there are also those that focus on how some people, in all parts of Europe and throughout the world, retained their good human nature during the Holocaust. For example, what made some gentiles in Europe during that time willing and able to help Jews. Currently, Yad Vashem has recognized 26,513 rescuers throughout the world (Names), and the actual number of rescuers could likely be close to twice that amount (Baron,1). It is important that we analyze the reasons behind these rescuers’ choices to be upstanders instead of bystanders because we can learn about our own motivations when we face decisions between helping others and protecting ourselves, and possibly those we love, from harm. Fulfilling one’s self-interest was a potential motivation for helping Jews that will only be briefly addressed. This type of rescue potentially benefitted both the Jews and the Gentile rescuers; these Gentiles only helped Jews survive because they found personal gain, likely social or economic, in the action (Baron). However, in the situation that existed while rescuing the Jews, most efforts included the high possibility that both the rescuer and the rescued would end up worse off than they had begun with no potential for personal gain on either side. So those rescuers’ motivations are less easily explainable.

The Holocaust, a morbid atrocity that made people question humanity, was the cause of millions of deaths. One of those victims of this brutality was Anne Frank, a young Jewish girl who hid from the Nazis along with her family. Although she was merely ordinary, Anne Frank kept a diary which became a significant, historical artifact in the modern world as it details her account of concealing her identity from the outside world. Her story, told in an innocent perspective, allows individuals to reflect the dreadful events of the Holocaust and acknowledge how far we have come since then. Even though she died along with millions of other victims from the Holocaust, her spirit still exists thanks to her articulately written words in her diary which is now considered one of the most famous works of literature. Anne Frank’s legacy still lives on today because her story provides a primary source of a dark period in history, insightful contemplation of humanity, and motivation for people to stand up against unjustified persecution.

During times of war, people's humanity is negatively affected without them even knowing. People cause suffering by doing nothing - by not interfering with bad things that happen, self-proclaimed ‘good people’ allow others to undergo misery. Elie Wiesel speaks about the world’s lack of intervention during the Holocaust in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, angry, “that the world did know and remained silent” (Document B), and goes on to explain how, “neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented” (Document B). Wiesel is anguished that so many people stood by and watched as others were systematically murdered by their own government. Regular citizens were so stricken with horror

Being a bystander does not help for for the good, but it only helps the bad. In the Elie Wiesel Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, he said, “Who would allow such crimes to be committed? How could the world remain silent?” The United States waited about twelve years to stop the holocaust. We need to learn about this because we cannot just watch and do nothing if people are in danger. Many people died in those twelve years, if they never stop the holocaust it could lead to more deaths even could conquering the world. Let everyone be equal so help others who are in

My goal with my research is to look into the resistance of both the Jewish people and the others in European society who assisted in Jewish escapes. The perceived image of the Jews during the Holocaust is of “lambs to the slaughter.” The pictured painted of the rest of European society is one of either knowing accomplices or silent spectators. The Jewish people had many forms of resistance, some small and some large. While many of their neighbors were silent spectators, but many people were actively resisting the tyrannical Nazi government by assisting Jewish escapes. Each of these individuals risked their lives and the lives of their families and friends to aid these hunted individuals. They all deserve to have their stories heard and honored. In a time of complete chaos and destruction many people would not have the ability or fortitude to save the life of another person. The people that I will discuss in this paper were not only able to take that step, but put themselves and their families in real and eminent danger for the life, at times, of a complete stranger.

I.The bystanders were those people alliance, agency stood by and watched as a results of the atrocities mounted throughout the globe.

A quote from Albert Einstein states “the world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything”. As difficult as it is to describe the terrible deeds of those who were part of the Holocaust, it is true that those who did nothing are at fault just as much as those who carried out the actions. When one thinks of the Holocaust today it is difficult to picture that such events were done by human beings. Societies have advanced but it is important to acknowledge the reason as to why many bystanders refused to help or why they were so indifferent to the pain felt by the Jews. “The psychological mechanisms used to come to terms with the suffering of another appear to be very similar, whether the person is standing right before us or is 2,000 miles away. (Barnet:118) Barnett explains that ideological and moral principles also come into play, as do self-interest and the weighing of the possible consequences of our actions. We try to establish what is or is not possible. In the end, our decision will be determined not so much by whether we actually have the power to change a situation, but whether we have the will to do so. (Barnett, 118). In the case of many of the individuals who chose to become bystanders rather than change the situation they were not willing to get involved. Although not every German was a bystander, those who

It is a challenge to reconcile human beliefs in compassion and morality with the actions, or inactions, of bystanders in the Holocaust. How is it possible that hundreds of thousands of people stood by while millions faced pain and suffering? Before exonerating or condemning all of them, it is necessary to consider the differences in bystanders. For the context of the Holocaust, a bystander is someone who was neither a target of the Nazis or a Nazi themselves. Putting all of these people in the same group is an oversimplification, because it ignores the power system in place during the Holocaust and the various positions of bystanders in that system. The wealthy business owner is not the same as the working-class mother of four. In this situation, one has considerable power and ability, and the other does not. Applying a blanket statement, and calling the latter unjust when they are ordinary people in a time of horrific war is contrary to reason. It is also necessary to consider the extent of bystander’s actions. Have their actions merely helped to ensure their own survival, or do they directly hurt Holocaust victims? The magnitude of each situation is varied. In conclusion, to gauge the morality of a bystander’s actions, they need to be judged on an individual basis, with two qualities in mind: that person’s ability to act and the effect of their actions.

The year is 1943, you’re walking in the streets of Nazi Germany. The streets are covered in anti-semitic propaganda. While walking you see a Jewish family with the Star of David on their chests, they look like they would be going into hiding. You want to speak up and help them, you really do, but can you? You have a family, you have friends, you have your own life. You want to help them, but can you risk it? In the documentary, Witness to the Holocaust, Miles Lehrman, a Holocaust survivor, says “A perpetrator is not the most dangerous enemy. The most dangerous part is the bystander because neutrality always helps the killer.” While this quote is viable it does not acknowledge that speaking up in such difficult and dangerous situations is far

Nobody really can get through life without help, eventually along the way there is something thrown our way that we cannot deal with alone. When you look back at one of the most confusing and unfair times in the world's history, the Holocaust, you can see that this was true for all of the families affected. George Gottlieb, Krystyna, and Elie Wiesel all needed help from upstanders on their road to surviving the Holocaust,and without it survival would have been nearly impossible, these are three different cases that all have one glowing similarity, that being the contributions of others to help them fight the persecution, and from all of these testimonies we can draw something that should be applied today.

The most important thing that can be learned from the Holocaust is that having indifferences can and will lead problems and civil disputes. This can be applied to certain places in the world today where there are still incidents of ethnic cleansing today. I’ve always believed that “Those who kept silent yesterday will remain silent tomorrow” (Wiesel, Night), after all that's what happened to me. But if we find the courage to stop being shy, stop keeping to ourselves, and stop being silent, we could change the world through losing our indifferences. But then again sometimes having indifferences keeps us alive.