Beyond the ‘Bystander’: Social Processes and Social Dynamics in European Societies as Context for the Holocaust

Abstract

At heart, the Holocaust—the mass murder of European Jews that took place in the course of World War II—was a political process originating in National Socialist Germany. It was essentially the result of political-ideological decisions made by the Nazi state leadership, who developed a practice of mass extermination that became increasingly radicalized. But the events of the Holocaust were also part of a social process. Raul Hilberg, the doyen of Holocaust studies, once formulated three basic categories that might apply to those involved, and these have attained wide usage: people might be ‘perpetrators’, ‘victims’ or ‘bystanders’. These categories still have validity as rough differentiators—ultimately the Holocaust entailed one group of people murdering a larger group of ‘others’, while a majority of their contemporaries belonged neither to the first group nor the second. Therefore, in this volume, the multifarious forms of action and behaviour in societies are searched out and investigated. Through that prism, a whole range of human reactions comes into sight—extending from enthusiastic acceptance, complicity, opportunism, adaptation, acquiescence to self-distancing and resistance. The focus on that prism, demonstrates the relevance for an analysis of social practice and social processes, when attempting to understand how the persecution of the Jews came about.