The roots of evil: The origins of genocide and other group violence

by Ervin Staub

  – affected Jewish fate under most conditions.

  Hungary is an example of a country with long-established anti-Semitism. A voluntary ally of Germany in the war, it had introduced legal discrimination against Jews already in 1920. Jews were stripped of equal rights and the entry of Jewish students to universities was limited. Between 1920 and 1938, Jews were excluded from jobs in government, the police, and the schools. They were identified by ancestry in 1938, following the example of Nuremberg laws. The dominant churches – Roman Catholic and Lutheran – both approved this “Jew law,” although they attempted to protect converts. The fascist parties received about 45 percent of the popular vote in 1938.7 During the war, groups of non-Hungarian Jews residing in Hungary were rounded up and massacred. Jewish men were conscripted into forced labor battalions. Hungarians had much opportunity to progress along a continuum of destruction.

  To stop Hungary from concluding a separate peace, German troops occupied it in March 1944. Widespread cooperation in Hungary enabled Eichmann, eight SS officers, and forty enlisted men to deport over four hundred thousand Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz in the spring and summer of 1944. In October the Hungarian Nazis, the Arrow Cross, took over the government. Their identification with the German Nazis and thus their vicarious participation in German activities added to their evolution. They brutalized and killed Jews: they lined up and shot groups of them at the river Danube.

  In Poland as well anti-Semitism was deep-seated, with many pogroms in 1918 and 1919. After 1935, Poland enacted discriminatory laws. There was widespread support before World War II for Jewish emigration as a solution to Poland’s Jewish problem. After the German invasion, the Poles suffered terribly; many in the leadership and educated elite were killed, and many deported for labor in the Third Reich. It is not surprising, however, given the history of anti-Semitism, that this did not lead to the experience of “common fate” and solidarity with Jews. Perhaps also, as Sophie said in William Styron’s book Sophie’s Choice, Poles were glad when the attention of Germans focused on Jews as their victims rather than themselves. Poles helped the Germans supervise the ghettos. Some searched out Jews hidden by other Poles to blackmail them or their rescuers or for the cash offered by the Germans for such information. Members of the right-wing National Armed Forces fought Germans, but also attacked Jewish partisans. The underground Polish Home Army refused to accept Jews and repeatedly refused to help them fight the Germans.8

  A contrasting example is the resistance of the Danish population and government, including the king, against treating Danish Jews differently from other Danes. Most of the Jewish population there survived. In Italy, a large percentage of Jews survived because officials and citizens sabotaged efforts to hand them over to the Germans.

  In Bulgaria, a German ally, the government attempted to deport Jews, but many elements protested: the bishops of the Bulgarian Orthodox church individually and collectively and professional organizations of doctors, lawyers, and writers. A member of parliament introduced a motion against the anti-Jewish policy of the government. Probably in response to these pressures, the king intervened on their behalf. As a result, 82 percent of the Jews survived in the larger Bulgaria that included territories annexed during the war. Bulgaria was ruled by Turkey until 1878 and there were many minorities: Turks, Greeks, Jews, Armenians, and others. There was no sharply drawn differentiation between the Bulgarian ingroup and these outgroups. Anti-Semitism was also limited, perhaps, because Jews did not fill important roles in finance and commerce, which in other places evoked envy and resentment.9

  In Belgium, the German policy was the same as in other occupied territories: requiring Jews to register, stripping them of their rights, property and jobs, and segregation. Press control, propaganda, the organization of collaborators, and brutal reprisal against resistance promoted these policies. In spite of this, “the Belgian public exhibited an ‘aversion’ to the acquisition of Jewish real property.”10 The Belgian government in exile declared transfers of such property illegal. The universities and bar associations resisted pressures to exclude Jews. The Belgian cardinal and the queen both protested an order that Jews report for forced labor. (We can contrast this with the behavior of the German public and institutions or even with Vichy France, where the government introduced anti-Jewish legislation before German demands.)

  When the Jewish council (see the section entitled The Jewish Councils in this chapter) set up by the Germans delivered call-up orders of forced labor to Jews, the Belgian resistance movement burnt the card file of registered Jews. When this did not stop cooperation, they executed the official in charge of the call-ups. The warnings by the resistance deterred Belgian Jews from reporting, and many were hidden by their Christian countrymen. The Jews joined the popular front resistance movement, creating the Committee for the Defense of Jews. They petitioned and appealed, infiltrated the Jewish council, and acted to help Jews in danger, placing three thousand of the four thousand children who were saved in the country into private homes and institutions disguised as Aryan Belgians. In spite of their high visibility – a large majority of them lived in Antwerp and spoke Yiddish – 53 percent of the 66,707 Belgian Jews survived.11

  The passivity of the outside world

  Foreign institutions and governments did little to deter Germany or save the Jews. There were only a few boycotts. An extremely effective form of Nazi manipulation was the threat of immigration by large numbers of impoverished Jews. In 1938 the Evian Conference, called to discuss the rescue of German Jews, collapsed because nations were unwilling to allow Jewish immigration.

  The official SS newspaper, the Schwarze Korps, stated explicity in 1938 that if the world was not yet convinced that the Jews were the scum of the earth, it soon would be when unidentifiable beggars, without nationality, without money, and without passports crossed their frontiers.

  A circular letter from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to all German authorities abroad shortly after the November pogroms of 1938, stated: “The emigration movement of only about 100,000 Jews has already sufficed to awaken the interest of many countries in the Jewish danger Germany is very interested in maintaining the dispersal of Jewry... the influx of Jews in all parts of the world invokes the opposition of the native population and thereby forms the best propaganda for the German Jewish policy.... The poorer and therefore more burdensome the immigrating Jew is to the country absorbing him, the stronger the country will react.12

  In the United States there was strong resistance to immigration, even of refugee children. The number of immigrants actually allowed into the United States during the war years was well below the number that could be admitted without special legislation. The legal quota allowed sixty thousand immigrants a year, but only about six thousand actually got into the United States. An official obstacle course successfully kept them out. As David Wyman has shown, the U.S. State Department and the British did not want to rescue Jews; they did not want to worry about where to put them.13 The same was true of Canada. The Roosevelt administration did not establish the War Refugee Board until 1944, when threatened by scandal over the administration’s inaction. Britain blockaded Palestine to keep out refugees and returned those who were caught. The pope did not speak out and the International Red Cross showed little daring. American Jewish organizations, in part because of their anxiety about the prevailing mood of anti-Semitism in the country, did not press the U.S. government hard enough.

  The Nazis, in secret correspondence, used such euphemisms as “solution possibilities” and “special treatment,” which limited even their own awareness or facing of what they were doing. The victims themselves used euphemisms, such as “final act of the drama” and “tempting fate” (the fate of being gassed).14 The bystander could evade awareness of the victims’ fate by inattention.

  The U.S. press wrote little about the genocide during the war years, even though the facts became known in 1942.b How different might the U.S. response have been if newspapers had reported in
huge headlines the incredible fact that millions of people were being gassed in death factories? (See Chapter 17 for a discussion of press self-censorship.)

  A request by some Jewish organizations to bomb the gas chambers or the railroads leading to Auschwitz was not seriously considered.15 The reasons given were the unavailability of aircraft and the overriding need to bring the war to an end. These justifications were belied by the bombing missions against factories near Auschwitz and flights bringing supplies to surrounded Polish partisans who faced certain annihilation.

  How can we explain the conduct of the United States, Britain, Canada, and other countries? Individuals and groups preoccupied by their own immediate needs and pressing goals are inclined to ignore others’ need and pain. But resistance to helping began before the war.

  One cause was cultural anti-Semitism, rooted in a heritage of Christian anti-Semitism. This was intensified by the worldwide depression. In the United States, workers feared that immigrants would take away scarce jobs from them, and so they scapegoated Jews and other minorities.

  A second cause was the perpetrators’ ability to increase already existing anti-Semitism. The whole world was exposed to Nazi propaganda representing Jews as evil and bent on world conquest. Serge Moscovici’s research suggests that extremely negative statements about groups are not discredited; they can affect basic, general attitudes and beliefs more than moderate statements. His findings imply that people would not immediately accept the content of such statements – for example, that Jews are murderers and seducers of children – but would devalue Jews in a general way in response to them.16 The 1930s and early 1940s saw a worldwide increase in anti-Semitism. According to public opinion polls, anti-Semitism was at its highest point in the United States between 1938 and 1944.c17 Fifty-three percent of Americans believed that Jews were different from other people and their behavior should be restricted.18 In the United States the wildly anti-Semitic radio programs of Father Coughlin were highly popular until it was discovered that he was repeating almost verbatim statements by Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister.19 It was not what he said that was opposed, but that he used the words of a clearly defined enemy.

  A third cause of inaction was that the passivity in the course of the increasing mistreament of Jews resulted in changes in people, institutions, and governments. In the end, many people probably had a vague, inarticulate feeling that the Jews somehow deserved what was happening to them. A final reason for passivity is that states have traditionally not regarded themselves as having moral responsibilities. In Part IV I will discuss the need to change this.

  The inaction of other countries and their unwillingness to help Jews confirmed the Nazis in the Tightness of what they were doing. “At bottom,” Goebbels wrote in his diary in December 13, 1942, “I believe that the English and the Americans are happy that we are exterminating the Jewish riff-raff.”20 Resistance and pressure might have focused the attention of the Nazis on moral values and caused them to worry about the effects of their actions on themselves.

  Jewish cooperation, resistance, and psychological experience

  Forceful resistance can make the mistreatment and murder of a group both physically and psychologically more difficult. Although Jewish resistance to the Nazis was substantially greater than early reports indicated, it was not strong enough to deter perpetrators. Resistance was also limited by other victims of Nazi Germany and victims of other genocides. Russian prisoners of war did not rebel until nearly the end of the war, even though they were soldiers and even though half of the six million held by the Germans were killed or died of starvation and overwork.21 Facing overwhelming, brutal force, people follow commands and accept suffering in the hope of saving their lives and the lives of people they love.

  Helen Fein classified rulers or masters of a conquered people as oppressors, exploiters, or enemies. Enemies seek not only to debase, oppress, or exploit, but also to destroy. The Jews’ definition of the situation was crucial in determining their response: when and where they became aware that the Nazis were enemies, they did attempt to escape and, under certain circumstances, to resist.22 Resistance required accurate perception of Nazi intentions and a cohesive group. Individual resistance was futile and brought collective retributon: the killing of family members or of large numbers of other Jews.

  The Jews survived many centuries of persecution through yielding to their persecutors. Sometimes they even anticipated and fulfilled demands (such as fines) before they were made – in the hope of avoiding greater demands and worse persecution. They believed that if they did not resist, their troubles would blow over; they would be allowed to stay in their homes and retain at least some of their property; in pogroms some would be killed but many would live. In the face of Nazi persecution they initially followed the same blueprint for survival. However, in their history, Jews had faced all three types of threats – oppression, exploitation, and destruction – and responded accordingly. They responded to intensely violent pogroms in Russia by escape. Between 1888 and 1914, 2.5 million of them emigrated to the United States.23

  The Jewish councils

  In medieval Germany, the Jews had been led by Jewish councils (Judenrdte) made up of respected members of the community. The Nazis reconstituted the Jewish councils and used them to control the Jewish population and help fulfill Nazi goals. What was the degree and nature of “cooperation” by Jewish councils and what was its consequence?

  They story of the Jewish councils is complex, and it is still being told. Starting as early as 1939, the existing Jewish leadership and new leadership groups created by the Nazis were turned into Jewish councils in every country the Nazis occupied. First they were to transmit and execute orders. Later, they became instruments of what Hilberg calls the destruction “process” or “machinery": identifying Jews, selecting deportees to fulfill German quotas, and assembling them for transport. They made the Nazis’ job easier.

  The motivation of council members varied greatly. Many hoped to limit Jewish suffering by maintaining order and effectively executing German orders. Some believed that they might save the people by making the ghettos economically indispensable to the Germans; that they might save people from retribution by suppressing Jewish resistance; that, when they helped in deporting Jews, by sacrificing some people they saved the lives of the rest. Some council members hoped to gain security for themselves and their families. A very few had megalomaniacal ideas, glorying in their power. Many filled the role involuntarily.

  Hannah Arendt stressed the cooperation of Jewish leaders.24 But from the start the Jewish councils varied in cooperation depending on many factors, including the amount of non-Jewish cooperation with the Germans and the degree of local anti-Semitism. The willingness of Jewish leaders to serve was also a response to the conditions and needs of the Jewish population. “Jews in all German occupied states before 1943 were progressively defined, stripped [of their rights and livelihoods], and segregated.... [This created] a ‘welfare’ class... needing public assistance to survive. The Judenrat was employed to dispense such assistance.”25

  Even though this endangered them, some Jewish leaders refused service in the councils. Of those who served at the start, a substantial portion did not fully cooperate with German demands (one-third according to Helen Fein, and one-third fully cooperated). Most of those who did not cooperate were killed, were deported and died in the camps, or committed suicide. They were replaced by others more malleable. The elimination and replacement of members of the councils continued, as needed to fulfill SS designs.26

  Another reason for cooperation was that the SS did everything possible to camouflage the ultimate fate of Jewish victims. Victims were told that they were being deported for resettlement or that the weak would be deported, but the strong would be allowed to stay (or vice versa), using all possible means not only to mislead but also to divide people. Psychological defense mechanisms were essential to make an unbearable situation bearable and contributed to cooperation
(see the section on the psychology of victims, pp. 162-5).

  Hannah Arendt suggested that organizations within the totalitarian system that compromised with the system became ineffectual in opposing it and ended up helping it.27 Although cooperation by Jewish councils was in response to strong threat and adverse conditions, past cooperation made it difficult to change: to stop, to cut losses, to give up hope that cooperation will save people. An added block to resistance was that it had only a remote chance of success in saving lives.

  The actions and attitudes of the councils influenced the Jewish definition of the situation and diminished resistance. How much did such cooperation contribute to the fate of the Jews? In all places, the Germans attempted to isolate and concentrate Jews. According to Fein, when Jews were segregated, more of them were destroyed; segregation accounted for both Jewish vulnerability and the existence and cooperation of Jewish councils. “In most cases, such councils were imposed in states in which the Jews had already been isolated by the native population, shunned, and/or singled out as targets of attack.”28 As noted, a past history of anti-Semitism and highly developed anti-Semitic movements were associated with cooperation by the state, national leaders, churches, and populations with Nazi aims. Jewish councils were more accommodating when Jews were isolated and abandoned, surrounded by enemies.

  Jewish actions

  Not only Arendt but also other scholars regard Jewish passivity as a contributor to German success in killing six million Jews. Bettelheim suggests that the response of the German people might have been quite different if it had been necessary to drag each victim down the street or shoot every Jew on the spot; others wonder whether it all might have been different if the Jews of Stetten, the first German Jews to be deported in 1941 to the east, had been unwilling to move, so that they would have had to be bodily dragged from their houses, shouting and screaming.29 This focus on the victims’ passivity may partly be a result of just-world thinking: the victims brought their fate on themselves, not by deserving it but by not fighting back.d