White, brown hair, gray/green/blue eyes, of German descent. In theory pacifistic, and liberal on most issues, but the only thing I would hope I would not compromise is being Roman Catholic. I know Catholics were killed but it doesn’t look like they were an official category?
I’m not disabled but do have a mild case of cerebral palsy. That probably would have been enough to do me in.
If not, being a Christian would have gotten me killed, as I would have hid as many Jews in my house as possible.
I’m an able-bodied white guy of mostly Northern European ancestry. I’d like to think I’d resist, but really I’d probably keep my head down. I am married to a South Asian. Not sure how well that would go over. Of course, if I’d lived in Nazi Germany, I probably would not have had the opportunity or inclination to marry a non-white.
In the introduction to his great novel Mother Night, Kurt Vonnegut writes:
In March, researchers from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum announced the results of their 13-year effort to catalog all the concentration camps; ghettos; killing factories; “forced labor camps, where prisoners manufactured war supplies; prisoner-of-war camps; sites euphemistically named ‘care’ centers, where pregnant women were forced to have abortions or their babies were killed after birth; and brothels, where women were coerced into having sex with German military personnel” in Europe.
They counted **42,500 **such sites.
Millions of ordinary citizens knew of these places, kept quiet, and later feigned ignorance. Would I have done any better? I seriously doubt it.
Blue eyes, extremely fair, and red hair. I think I probably would have been fine physically because I know you didn’t really need to be blond to get a pass. And though I’d like to think I’d fight injustice, if I was a thirty-six-year-old woman in the 40s, I’d probably have 3 to 6 kids I’d be super worried about to keep me from shooting my mouth off, you know? So…I’d have likely keep my head down.
If I’d survived the war, and been in what was to become West Germany – I hope I’d have had the smallish amount of courage necessary (with worst consequences, being disliked by my fellows) to admit that I’d been well aware of what was going on, but had been too frightened to do or say anything against it; to say how guilty I felt; and to do what practical stuff might be possible, to make amends. But, Mr. Brave I definitely am not – so, I don’t know.
I’m ethnically Germanic and Slav, with a German surname and light hair/blue eyes. And I don’t tend to be vocal about my political beliefs or affiliations. So I’d probably be fine. I’d like to believe that I would be part of a Resistance cell, or that I’d help hide Jews and get them out of the country, but who can say how they’d act in that kind of situation? People who think they would be good end up being cowards and people who think they’re crap end up being heroes.
I likely would’ve got myself into trouble. Some of my mother’s Polish ancestors fled from the Soviets in 1920 after one of them, a teacher, was hung from a lamppost for speaking out.
My grandparents barely made it through along with my father and uncle. The British almost shot my grandfather. He had maps that he used to get from Antwerp to Lier. My grandfather was a Belgian accountant and scholar, he was fluent in English, German ,French, as well as flemish.He was moving his family to Lier because they thought there would more food. A nurse with his group stopped the Brits from shooting him. I probably would have survived if I kept my mouth shut. We come from a long line of survivors.
I have a hard enough time surviving in corporate America. I don’t relish my chances if the people at the top had the power to kill me, not just fire me. (Imagine if Adolf Eichmann had Excel).
Actually, I’d wind up in the soap dish anyway, having had one Jewish grandparent. The other grandparent on that side was Miskwaki tribe, which makes for a coincidence because the Jews and the Miskwaki are the among the few genocides ordered by heads of state: Hitler and Louis XV, respectively (most genocides have been more spontaneous actions, or ordered by field commanders while their rulers looked the other way).
I have extremely pale skin, so I’d be okay despite my Native American heritage. But my very dark skinned brother would not survive.
Strangely, altho certainly dark skin might not get you into certain SS units, it wasn’t something that discriminated against.
And yes, I know, most of us were raised in 20th century America and would be considered smartasses and too outspoken back then. But assuming you were born back in 1920’s or 30’s and you wouldnt have the worldview. Hell, even Americans raised back then didn’t all have that attitude.
If I had been born in the 1920’s or 1930’s I wouldn’t be me, I’d be someone else. The person who I define as “me” is a product of my time and place as much as a product of my genetics. Either I imagine myself in Nazi Germany with exactly the same personality I have now, or I imagine a stranger who superficially resembles me but is not “me” in any real sense of the word.
Dead. I look Aryan but I’m part Ashkenazi and part Native American and I’m a mentally ill alki. And even in the darkest times I probably still would have yelled “Weenie!” at Hitler.
I could survive but I would have to change my ancestry from Mexican( Native American and Spanish) and Anglo to Italian or Spanish. Also I would be miserable and my parents would be imprisoned or sent away. So most likely I would try to runaway to another country.
Good point, but remembering that movie Europa Europa, whoever I am differently as I time-travel back then and there, I’d better retrieve my foreskin for the journey.
Patterns of Childhood is a good address of this issue. It’s about a post WWII German family, the parents grew up during the Nazi years and answer some very pointed questions from their kids. A lot of the time the answers boil down to, “You had to be there to understand how and why it happened.”
You know who else had brown hair?
Yeah, I’d probably get by just fine. Ethnically, I’m a European mutt with who knows how many different ancestries, but most are northern European and so I’d be OK. No known Jewish ancestry, and although raised Catholic, most of Bavaria is, too. No physical problems, and no homosexual tendencies.
You guys who don’t think you could keep your mouths shut are giving yourselves too much credit. When you grow up in a system, you learn to survive.
Can answer this with certainty. Lived in both Berlin and Hamburg in 1933 and 1934. I was too young to remember very much, but my Father and Mother had no problems. Dad was an engineer employed by an American company (Winkler, Koch) to build an oil refinery for the Germans. Have got a lot of neat photos from those days.
Germany was on reasonably good terms with the Spanish, and there was nothing special about being a American Indian.
Appearance-wise, I’d be okay: female, blonde, green-eyed Aryan-looking. The problem would be, as it is in real life, self regulation. However, I suspect the prospect of being summarily shot would have an amazing effect on my ability to STFU.
On my first visit to Amsterdam as I wandered around the city I tried to imagine what it would be like during the Nazi occupation - how it would feel to come out of a shop and see a couple of storm troopers standing on the street corner. It didn’t take much imagining to work myself into a sweat right there on Leidsestraat on a nice spring day in 1992.