They saw it as a race. To find out if you practiced, they’d have to ask and I doubt it would get that far. So you and I would both be screwed. Even if they hadn’t looked at it that way, I doubt they had a soft spot for atheists.
With my current set of views and ideals, would I resist (to the death) participation in such a thing? I hope so. Really - I hope I would be brave enough to shout ‘fuck you!’ in the face of the big evil machine, even though it would ultimately make very little difference.
It’s a lot harder to answer the question when, say, my children are implicated - if I knew that my resistance would result in not only my death but the death of my children, I honestly don’t know what I’d do; possibly commit suicide if I could do it without attracting retribution upon my family. I’d rather die than commit murder.
Of course, I realise this is terribly selfish; the people in the death camps are also someone’s beloved children. The whole thing is too horrible to consider dispassionately.
That’s partially true. I did use a broad generalization. However, I wanted to point out that people often overgeneralize in the other direction, i.e. that every single german knew about the Vernichtungslager and was hell-bent on exterminating the jews. THAT is a “preposterous Fantasy.” The army did commit atrocities, but the systematic death camps were run by the SS, not the army.
Also one should not forget that Germans were the first victims of Nazism as well as the first to stand up against it.
I would like to say I wouldn’t do it, but I’m sure I would.
I have always referred others to the Milgrim Experiment when discussing this topic – why would I be able to resist authority so much better than everybody else?
I also agree about the importance of the culture at the time. Last night I saw a documentary on LBJ that struck a parallel chord with me: they were exploring President Johnson’s contributions to Civil Rights. During the program, they showed many important people from the era on film talking about African Americans as if they were a blight on the landscape to be eradicated – the mayor of Los Angeles (immediately after the Watts riots) repeatedly stating how the riots were caused by giving too much slack to “those people” and so forth.
I can’t help but accept that I would have had little chance of avoiding being seriously prejudiced against blacks had I been born fifty years ago in the South: My mother would have been saying “Don’t play with Jimmy, dear. We don’t associate with those people.” My father would have been cussing while reading the paper, using the N word left and right as he enumerated society’s ills. My schoolmates and teachers would have taught me in direct and indirect ways that black and white don’t mix. On top of that, I would have been hearing important leaders, like that aforementioned L.A. mayor, speaking in ways that made it clear that discrimination was just peachy fine. Not to mention that there were laws condoning it.
Why should I imagine that these factors would not have been present in Germany during my tender formative years?
Apparently Dr. Blass (the fellow who runs the OPs linked site) doesn’t agree:
I like to think I would either refuse, or take “alternate” duty somewhere else, but given the sort of conditioning (brainwashing) people were subject to, or the willingness to “look the other way”, the only honest answer I can give is… I don’t know.
I suffer from an anxiety disorder and I’m part Polish. Most likely, I’d have ended up at the camps that were kept for Poles and other Slavs.
I like to at least give people-the average German citizens the benefit of the doubt, because most likely, they were brought up in an entirely different world, and speaking out would have meant a death sentence-not just on yourself, but your family. And the camps were kept hidden from the average citizen. I mean, they knew SOMETHING was going on, but I don’t believe they knew exactly how horrid it was. We do have the benefit of hindsight-back then, this was the Holocaust, after all. We know all about it, so we’re able to expect such a thing, but they were not.
Would I participate? I don’t know. I like to BELIEVE I wouldn’t. At the very least, I tend to be very, very squeamish about blood and smells and such, so were I stationed at a camp, I’d probably end up vomitting all over the place. That, and I have a HUGE contrary streak in me-I have a tendency to want to do the exact opposite of what I’m told.
Plus, I’m a woman, so most likely I’d be some simple little German haus frau, keeping to kirche, kinder und kirke (did I get that right?)
But…I don’t know. And that scares me. 
I’ve thought about this over the years. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’d say something stupid and get myself shot.
“I can’t get on the train, I don’t have a ticket. Oh, it’s free? Is the food in the dining car kosher?”
“You want to tatoo a number on my arm? Three things. Ein My family would never let me get a tatoo. Svei if you want to give me your phone number, you could just write it on a piece of paper. Und drei, I’m flattered but I like girls. Don’t be sad though. Keep asking, and I’m sure you’ll find yourself a nice boy.”
It would be only a matter of time before something like that bypassed my common sense and made it out of my mouth.
Ralph124C
There was a thread in GD on whether the resources devoted to the camps prevented Germany from winning the war. The consensus was that the attempted invasion of Russia used up more resources and is arguably what cost them the war. But remember, various German generals did disapprove and kept trying to assassinate Hitler.
I certainly like to think I would have resisted taking part in such things. But it’s also quite easy for me to sit here and say that I would be brave enough to resist helping the horrors of that place and time. Never having been confronted with something so deadly serious for such a length of time, it’s a question I can only answer abstractly.
I do find cruelty to be amongst the traits which I abhor most, so I couldn’t reconcile acting that way to others without experiencing a pretty profound cognitive dissonance.
Not bloody likely.
To make myself clear, I avoid trouble if at all possible, but when the situation forces me into a course of action I don’t hesitate to pick the one that fits with my personal morality over one that avoids unpleasantness or pain.
Threats to my family wouldn’t work. When my sister’s boyfriend, who is bigger than me by quite a bit, threatened her in my presence I gave him a look that must have adequately conveyed the extent of my rage. He backed down and never, ever did anything remotely like that again. I’d be more likely to attack someone who threatened my family or myself than to do what they demanded in the hope that we’d be left alone afterward. I’ve never had any doubts on any level that placating someone who threatens harm is a stupid thing to do. My first instinct would be to eliminate the threat.
I’m also willing to sacrifice myself for my convictions. I have placed myself in danger–and have the scars to prove it–in order to protect others.
In a “Religion in Literature” class, I was the only person to have a different opinion when the teacher asked, “Assuming that the situation in Camus’ The Plague was a literal, not metaphorical plague, what would you have told your friend if he said that he intended to escape from the quarantined city?” Everyone else expressed variations on, “I would trust his judgement” or “I would trust him to make the right decision.”
My response was, “I will kill you, if I have to, to prevent you from leaving.”
When they got over their shock enough to ask me why I gave that answer, I explained that I could not stand by and allow someone to place others in a position of danger if there was anything I could do to prevent it. I would first try everything I could to avoid such drastic measures, but I would literally kill or die to protect others from being hurt. I would rather take the risk of suffering guilt and anguish over killing someone than to let that person harm someone else. If he chose not to leave, no problem. If he tried to leave, he’d better have the strength of his convictions and good reflexes, plus more tenacity than I’ve got. And I’ve got quite a lot.
If my judgment was wrong, there was no need for the quarantine, and I had had to go to the extent of killing him to keep him from leaving…well, I’d just have to live with the guilt for the rest of my life. If I let one person die because I didn’t take action when that innocent was in danger, I could never live with that.
If it was a choice between gassing “undesirables” and taking the risk that my family would die, I’d probably go for choice C: stop them from killing in any way possible, including the use of violence if necessary. Thoughts of myself and my family would probably come second to the immediate threat. There is no way I would kill an innocent. Period. They would have to kill me first, and I can guarantee I would not go without an honor guard.
Some things I’ve never been able to understand are: Why there were not more riots and uprisings when they were carting everyone off? You also hear of people meekly lining up to get shot in field executions. Why did they not rush the soldiers, who were reputedly almost always outnumbered? It’s not like they had anything left to lose at that point.
Keeping in mind that this is all words and words are cheap, I’m not at all certain that that is such an admirable thing to say. It has been a while since I read the book and read about Camus, but Camus was precisely known for the one in the intelligencia who wasn’t swept away by the totalitarian zeitgeist that was all the rave at the time (and for which he was ridiculed by Sartre). I think this perfect willingness to trust his fellow man, and not think he himself possess all the answers, is actually a very appealing, if somewhat naïve, trait of The Plauge. You also remember, I trust, that the reason the character so desperately need to flee Oran was because of love. By all reason the person wishing to leave Oran would represent the repressed minority fleeing the totalitarian (if necessary) laws of Oran. Certainly a person willing to trust and act in the interest of the individual and go against the laws of the state even in such desperate times will never be a willing executioner.
I also notice that you choose to act in the interest of the majority against the wish of the individual and were the only person in the class ready to use violence to force your will to rule. Violence and the rule of the majority over the individual being the left and right hand of any totalitarian regime including Nazism.
This alone IMO reveals you more as a person likely to have been a Nazi or Stalinist or whatever that the person standing up against it.
They did not rush the soldiers because they had all the cards stacked against them, their families to protect and they could scarcely be expected to fathom the extreme evil that awaited them when we sixty years later with all the facts at hand can scarcely fathom it. And yet, undoubtedly there were many forgotten and undocumented instances or courageously revolt.
[hijack]
I believe there was one organised, armed revolt in Auchwitz. They made a movie about it called The Grey Zone link
Ironically, for the purposes of this discussion, the attempt to destroy the ovens was carried out by:
[end hijack]
You know, a LOT of my relatives on my father’s side “participated” in the death camps during WWII, and I expect if I had been there I would have “participated”, too, right alongside them…
… in the boxcars, showers, crematoriums, and ashpiles.
The professor of that course deliberately put the question on a literal level to escape the bounds of the interpretation of the text you’ve given above. Fleeing a totalitarian regime is not the same as leaving a quarantine when you are potentially a carrier of a lethal disease. Frankly, someone who is willing to take the chance that they might infect thousands of people with a plague just so he can see his girlfriend doesn’t really deserve to be called a human being.
I have always thought that existentialism has some good points in that it shows respect for the individual but at its core is not much more than mental masturbation. Your freedom to act as an individual ends when the imposition of your will affects other people. And it affects other people constantly. Every single choice you make impacts the world around you.
These same people in class who said things like, “I would trust him to make the right decision” would also, by their own admission when I asked, not risk their lives to save someone. Violence would never be my first choice, but when someone’s life is at stake I will use it. I would not allow someone to die because I was involved in some existential angst.
Words may be cheap for you, they are not for me. I broke both my arms saving a child from being hurt in a schoolyard accident. I put myself in between a man with a gun and my little sister. I knew when I did it that one of us, he or I, would probably die in the next few seconds. No one got hurt that time. I was lucky.
Would you stand by and allow your friend to put people in danger? I wouldn’t. I would try everything short of killing him first, but there is no way he would leave that place while I was still alive if I thought he was a plague carrier.
I would never be a willing executioner. I would break any law and any social convention to protect an innocent from being hurt if it was in my power to do so. That includes violating my own personal morality which holds that killing another is the ultimate harm, not because killing in itself is wrong, but because killing takes away all choice from the other person. I could more easily live with the knowledge that I acted wrongly than the knowledge that I could have acted to prevent harm and did nothing.
Those of you who have said that you would have participated as a victim of the Nazi machine have dodged the issue.
The question will remain unanswered for me and not knowing is part of the burden of being older and not so cock sure as I was at thirty.
There were some very courageous people in those days, and some of them were very young. A small group of college students in Munich were known as The White Rose. They are some of my heroes. One of them, Alexander Scholl, was executed the day before I was born.
Thanks for that link, Zoe. It is always edifying as well as challenging to read of such bravery.
If you’re not familiar with it already, Defying Hitler by Sebastian Haffner provides insight on Hitler’s rise to power and one German’s revulsion at those who allowed it to happen.
Yes - you had to be hand picked and volunteer for the SS, but No in that many of the camps were run by the SS, but most of the guards and executioners were from other coutries as well as prisoners themselves. The SS was not the ‘pure Aryan’ brotherhood most people assume; almost every country invaded by the Germans provided troops to the SS (even British ones! but there is some evidence that the British troops were just in it to survive and had a laugh at their officers the whole time). There were whole divisions of the SS that were not even German, except for their officers.
Another thing to keep in mind is that when the execution squads first started up, they were small groups of SS troops that would move behind the larger German army formations while invading other countries, especially on the Eastern Front. This duty was found to be so destructive to the morale of the troops that they were given special rations of liquor and huge amounts of amphetamines and cocaine injections to overcome their natural human squemishness around killing innocents in such numbers. And it was part of the reason the more highly organized and far less human death camps were designed. I’m not saying the Wermacht was innocent by any stretch, but the organized murder of non-combatants was too much for many soldiers to bear.
Also, once in the camps, the people who had the most direct contact with those to be killed were most often prisoners themselves (SonderKommando), the guards forced many Jews to organized the newcomers to the camp, walk them into the showers, and once the victims were killed, take the bodies out the other end to the furnaces. This is the way Aushwitz was run.
Finally, remember that most of the camps were not in fact ‘death camps’ but labour camps. Many of the prisoners died from starvation and disease, as much as from being worked to death, and again, their fellow prisoners had to dispose of them as well as organize the laborers. Of course, there was always a strong SS contingent to keep the ‘trustees’ in line.
Back to the OP - no, I don’t think I would have taken part. I grew up in a highly racist area of the US, but don’t hold racist feelings myself and have been active in fighting racism in college and beyond. So I think I am strong minded / stubborn enough to say no. I know, I know, it wasn’t nearly the same thing, but after hearing awful things about minorities my whole life, I think if I can not think that way now, I might have been able to not think that way then.
But I also kinda doubt, in the climate as it was, that I would have actively resisted the government. I would likely have tried to leave as soon as I was able, but I doubt I would have stayed to fight Hitler. As for choice - there is always a choice to participate or not. Oskar Shindler proved that, as did many many others. You didn’t have to participate at all, you always had other options; even as a soldier, you had the option to not do as others did even if that decision cost you your life.
Zoe, I know I was dodging the issue when I answered, or at least the greater issue. In terms of the specific example of the Nazi persecutions, had I lived there, then, I would have been a victim with no choice about it. But, you’re right, the greater question, could I have participated in a generic genocide, was unanswered. I don’t really know.
My family history with regards to Germany of the 30’s is applicable, I think. My grandfather, on the gentile side of my ancestry, came to the US in 1933 knowing not one word of English. He left Germany both for economic opportunity, and to avoid a government that he couldn’t stand. With that kind of familial background, I like to think that I may have been able to avoid being a willing executioner, and even involved in protecting and smuggling out victims.
But, then again, the Nazi propaganda, as I understand it, enshrined those kids who turned in their parents for crimes against the state. I can’t say that I’d have been able to fight that kind of background noise.
Your example of the The White Rose is a good one of the kind of resistance I’d be amenable to joining. A better one, for my views, is the example how the Danes dealt with the attempt of the Germans to extend the Halocaust there. Granted, it would not have worked had there not been an external enemy to keep the Wermacht occupied, but… <shrug>