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| WWII era German citizens knew - and did nothing |
I’m not sure we can know what the exact numbers were. But my guess is that the latter very heroic category was very small. The rest of the German people of that era shares culpability (to one degree or another) for what happened to us.
The German attitude of banality towards evil is one of the reasons Hitler was able to exterminate so many of our people. Evil triumphs when good men do nothing.
I would suggest that it wasn’t just apathy? I think they actually bought Hitler’s racial theories about Jews being an inferior race and evil people out to dominate the world. Hitler was surely a hero to the German masses.
Most Germans of that era were not all that unhappy about what was happening to us. They were no unhappy that their government was doing their dirty work for them. Not unhappy to occupy Jewish homes from which Nazis extracted us. Not unhappy to receive valuable Jewish possessions looted by their government as they rounded us up and sent us to the ghettos and camps.
‘The Zone of Interest’ is a movie that illustrated that point. It focused on the family life of a high ranking Nazi officer that implemented Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’.
Living right next to a death camp at the height of the Nazi mass murder his family could see the smoke coming from the crematoria, smell the burning flesh, hear the random gunshots on the other side of the wall separating that family from all that. They knew what was going on but were living quite normal upper middle class lifestyles in a beautiful environment filled with children, relatives, and friends. Right next to where genocide was taking place every day.
The father figure went to work every morning and returned every night for dinner to a loving and happy family. His job was mass murdering Jews on a daily basis on the other side of the wall. Without any guilt whatsoever. He saw it as a job - his duty as a military officer carrying out his duty to his country.
His family was depicted as mildly antisemitic. That Jews were being killed was a phenomenon that didn’t concern them. It had no bearing on their lives.
If one didn’t know they were living next to a death camp one would see a normal family. But they are nearly as responsible for the Holocaust as the Nazis actually perpetrated it.
This was probably the attitude of the actual townspeople that lived near the death camps. They too must have seen the smoke coming out of the crematoria and surely smelled the burning of human flesh on a daily basis. And yet they went on with their lives as tough nothing out of the ordinary was happening.
When Eisenhauer visited one of those death camps immediately after his troops liberated it, he was aghast at what he saw. He went into those nearby towns and forced the Germans living there to witness what their country had done. And then forced them all to bury all the dead bodies strewn all over that camp.
These Germans were not just good people that did nothing. They were evil to the core. True they didn’t personally participate in the genocide, but it didn’t bother them. And in some cases benefitted from it.
How should we feel about a people that embraces a leader who is openly determined to exterminate us? Many Germans like this were killed as collateral damage by the Allies during the war, should we have sympathy for them?
I sure don’t.
Palestinian indifference to what happened to their Jewish neighbors on October 7th parallels the German indifference to their Jewish neighbors during the Holocaust.
I have heard very little if anything from Palestinians about what Hamas did to us then. Other than cheering every time a Jew gets killed or hurt by one of the terrorists. Videos taken by Hamas as they were taking Jewish hostages into Gaza show Palestinians jeering at the hostages as they were being dragged through the streets of Gaza.
I don’t see the difference between the typical German of WWII and the typical Palestinian of today. They celebrate our misfortune. The greater the misfortune the more they celebrate.
To the best fo my knowledge not a single one of them has demanded that Hamas release the hostages. All they do is blame Israel for their misfortune when they must know that had Hamas not attacked us that day. none of thiswould be happening.
If on the other hand they would organize a major demonstration demanding their leaders release the hostages I might feel differently. But they haven’t they won’t. Not in Gaza, the West Bank or in their protests here.
30,000 dead human being killed in a war is hardly anything to celebrate. But the truth is that (according to Israel officials) most of them were Hamas terrorists and most of rest were the result of being used as human shields.
I do have sympathy for those that actually cared about what happened to us on October 7th. But I don’t think too many of them do.
They are not just good men who do nothing. They are men that celebrate our downfall. We need not celebrate theirs. But neither should we have any more sympathy for them than we did for the good man of Germany that did nothing in WWII.
Yesterday, during his State of the Union address, President Biden reiterated his deep support of Israel’s war against Hamas. But then he rebuked Israel for the high number of casualties - speculating that most of them were not members of Hamas. And then rebuked Israel for not allowing enough humanitarian aid to get through to Gaza.
I understand his concern. But I’m sure he was as equally motivated by the concern that he will lose the progressive left wing vote of his party. They have all been clamoring about the ‘genocide’ going on in Gaza. (There is no genocide going on in Gaza – even according to the antisemitic UN.) But I have to wonder if thoughts about just how ’innocent’ they really are - entered his mind? My guess is that the didn’t.