Why? by Peter Hayes

Author:Peter Hayes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

CHAPTER 6

HOMELANDS:

Why Did Survival

Rates Diverge?

IF JEWS COULD do relatively little to deflect or break the force of the Holocaust, what of their non-Jewish fellow citizens in the countries affected? What did they try or fail to do, and why? Does the relative incidence of courage or lack thereof on the part of individuals explain why the survival rates of Jews diverged so widely by country?

Everyone knows or should know that freedom is indivisible; when taken away from someone, it can be taken away from anyone. But few people dare act on that principle—or think they need to do so—even under the best of circumstances. The temptation in times of persecution is for those not immediately subject to it to try to ride it out until the horrors end, and in the meantime to look away or to take advantage. This was all the more true in German-occupied Europe, because the Nazi regime made sure people understood the risks of helping Jews. In Western Europe, these included being sent to a concentration camp. In Eastern Europe, concealing or hiding Jews could result in the execution of one’s entire family. Such penalties lie behind one of the most uncomfortable truths of the Holocaust. For all our appropriate attention to the Righteous Among the Nations memorialized by Yad Vashem and the brave individuals who risked their lives to hide or otherwise save people, no more than 5–10 percent of the Jews who survived the Holocaust did so by virtue of someone’s individual heroism.

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