Nederlands Holocaust in Europe Perpetrators and victims

Bystanders

Retrospectively, we can establish that between 1933 and 1945 there was no need for a large majority of confirmed anti-Semites in Europe in order to persecute the Jews. Most important for the nazis was to minimise the protest against the persecution of the Jews. In the second part of his book, Nazi Germany and the Jews (2007), the historian Saul Friedländer passes harsh judgement on the role of the bystanders during the holocaust. "It is so self-evident that no one will fight it, and exactly for that reason the following fact is so important. No social group, no denominations, no research institutes, or trade unions in Germany or anywhere else in Europe declared solidarity with the Jews. (...) On the contrary, many sectors were directly involved in the dispossession of the Jews and very much wanted them to disappear entirely, whether or not out of greed. The result was that the nazis and their affiliated leaders pushed the persecution of Jews to utmost extremes without encountering any opposition."


18-4802 18-4879 18_0002 18-9776 18—96770
  1. People shopping in Berlin. The text on the poster says “Germans, protect yourself against atrocious Jewish propaganda. Buy only in German stores.” NIOD Collection, Amsterdam
  2. A German village indicating that Jews are not welcome within municipal boundaries. NIOD Collection, Amsterdam
  3. A page from the diary of Mrs. Huizinga-Sannes about the implementation of the Jewish star. NIOD Collection, Amsterdam
  4. A Jewish store in Bordeaux, France, 1941. By order of the French government Jewish shop owners were required to hang such a sign. NIOD Collection, Amsterdam
  5. Amsterdam, May 1943. Jewish complying with the call to report to the German authorities for ‘transport to the East’. NIOD Collection, Amsterdam
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