Government and Community Relations
Speeches and Presentations
It’s not an easy subject to study Sharon L. Dobkin, Ed.D. professor and director of the Holocaust Genocide Studies Project, Monroe Community College Democrat and Chronicle 11/27/2002 In October of this year, I participated in a program sponsored by Courage Italia, an organization dedicated to telling the story of those courageous Italians who helped Jews during the Nazi Holocaust. I agreed to try to put the story of rescue in historical perspective—no easy task—as rescue was a very complicated endeavor to say the least. In these troubled times, especially since our own collective experience with terror on September 11, 2001, people are eager to hear about heroes, people who risked their lives to save others. I just wanted to make sure that we did not miss the forest for the trees. I consider myself to be relatively knowledgeable about rescue during the Holocaust—although by no means an expert. I am aware that bystander intervention varied from country to country, depending on the degree of Nazi occupation, the local population’s willingness to collaborate or resist, the level of anti-Semitism as well as many other factors. I understand the various definitions for “rescue”—hiding a Jew, preparing papers for Jews to “pass” as gentiles, transporting Jews to safe places, and the like, which makes study of this particular behavior difficult to sort out. But mostly, I know that rescue is a very small part of the Holocaust narrative. So, if what we are interested in is revealing the “truth” about this horrific time in our collective history, why is it so tempting to gravitate towards stories of rescue? After all, the story of the Holocaust is more about murder, collaboration and inaction than rescue. Maybe as we unravel the many layers of the Holocaust narrative, we feel overcome by the enormity of what has been termed, by no means the only, but certainly the best documented example of man’s inhumanity to man. Maybe in our grief and attempt to salvage our humanity, we look to stories of moral courage in a time when most people were, either, perpetrators, collaborators, willing participants or witnesses. However, even though the stories of rescue are true, why bother to recount them? Aren’t we just making ourselves feel better about this monumental atrocity and affront to our sense of what it means to be a civilized people? And worse yet, isn’t it possible that the telling and retelling of the “good” part of the story only clouds the real issue? The hard truth is that most people stood by while millions of innocent people were systematically murdered. By focusing on rescue, we fail to confront the most important questions: “How could so many have been so ineffective in the face of so few? Why were most people, even those who were sympathetic to the plight of the Jews who were often their neighbors and friends, unable to do the right thing, and help those who needed them the most?” The real story, the story about how so many did not get involved, who were paralyzed by fear, intimidated by power and terror or even indifferent to the degradation and murder in their midst, is what makes this subject matter so difficult to endure. And yet, that is exactly what students at Monroe Community College do, semester after semester, year after year. They enroll in a semester-long course devoted to Holocaust and genocide. They read, they discuss troublesome topics and issues and attempt to confront their own capacity to remain a bystander in the face of true evil. And, they learn that heroes are just ordinary people like you and me, who appear to act extraordinarily. So maybe rescue is after all an important part of the legacy of the Holocaust, and just maybe, it is what we need to break the seemingly unending cycle of hate and destruction. Maybe as we continue to study and learn we will turn to stories of rescue because they can empower us and help us to act heroic when we feel ordinary. |
