Help answer this question below.
That would have to depend upon the individual case.
But just what could an individual have done against the Nazi Party? It took hundreds of thousands of men and women and many nations acting in concert, over the course of years, to "do" something about this horror.
No, I think that is taking it a bit far in regards to prosecuting or taking legal action against people like that.
Put it this way, Should people who ignore the situation today in Dafar share responsibility with what is happening there?
They do. A whole generation of Germans feels a collective guilt. They turn places where Hitler spoke into peace parks. They ban the sale of Nazi paraphernalia and jail people who deny or attempt to downgrade the Holocaust.* They really don't want to talk about those years because they feel shame. That's more than enough. As several people have pointed out, they could have challenged their own government and been taken into the camps themselves.
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*I can't get behind the jailing thing because I am so much in favor of free speech but it's their country, not mine.
Morally? Those who survived the holocaust probably do feel guilty or responsible on some level. But, like everything else evil or unjust that a government does to its people, the ones enlisted to enforce that action, and help to accomplish that crime, do not even know how their small part in doing so relates in any way to the actual crime. Each person in the chain is only privy to their specific little responsibility and doesn't have or even know the whole plan, or see the big picture, if you will. It is a 'need to know' basis that keeps that person ignorant of the overall result of their actions. They don't see that their little part, seemingly innocent and harmless to them, is just one step in the evil plan.
Much like the mafia, and how it works. Most of the little players at the bottom don't even realize that they are actually working for the mafia.
If those people should be responsible in part for knowing of the death camps then, it would follow that the people today who know about the Fema camps, and what they actually are there for, would have to share some responsibility for what the future is about to unleash on its unsuspecting public, wouldn't it?
I know the camp of Dachau which is near where I live.
The people knew very well what was a concentration camp because the Nazis told everybody n big campaigns in the press that they existed.
Everybody in Germany knew very well that these camps were existing. The first prisoners were about 100 or 200 hundred German people who were suspicious of being opponents to the Nazi Regime and so soon everybody in Germany knew very well that only a joke or a wrong word could bring him to one of these camps. And everybody knew that these camps were anything else but a vacation camp.
Already at the beginning many people were tortured to death and very often the Nazis widely published that prisoners were killed on the run.
Everybody knew what this meant.
Being in such a camp you were completely rightless and there was no court which could ever help you.
In 1934 (one year later) som e10 thousands of Germans were imprisonned to the camps after the "Grumbler decree" which meant that all those who were seen as grumblers or opponents were arrested by the Gestapo.
The Gestapo was wilfully arresting people in the widest public at their workplaces or inthe public so that as many people as possible could see it.
This made an extreme effect to most people and everybody was thinking very close what he said or what he did better not say. And there were denunciations of course.
So what could have a single person bee able to do?
A mother of 60 years who had lost her husband and a son in war was saying to the postman as she got the message that her second son was killed in action, that she would hope that this damned Nazis would now lose the war after they were taking away her husband and her two sons, this woman was decaptivated 1 week later for this remark.
People who knew about the death camps must take some blame, imagine if you knew that a bomb was about to go off at a local shopping mall and you decided not to tell anyone, when the bomb went off a large measure of blame would rest with you because you had the power to stop many innocent people being killed, its the same with the death camp, people who didn't have the courage to speak out are not innocent just because they decided to keep quiet. Silence is no excuse.
I believe so. I understand it must be very hard to of stood up to the Nazis, but living in silence was not the answer. I mean, if you saw a girl being bullied at your school, just because you are not the bully, doesn't make it right to just leave her, does it?
Not a lot could be done, unless you wanted to die. So no, no-one except those responsible were due for punishment.
I am on the fence about this. I don't think there were proper resources to do anything. I don't even think they could escape. I have read about the Gestapo, and Germany killed many of it's own citizens who were not considered "useful." I think there was overwhelming bigotry and fear.
God must judge the masses.
One of America's generals made townspeople walk through one of the camps after it was liberated, I can't remember which one. He even made them help with the bodies.
To say that the German everyman should have stood up against the Nazi death machine is really not very fair. We don't know what it was like. For one to not risk their own death, they would have had to revolt en masse. Hitler showed very early on what he would do to his own party members if they organized against him (Ernst Rohm.) What would he have done, and no doubt did do, to some average citizen that went against him?
Morally, and in hindsight, it is easy to judge those that stood idly by, and to believe they felt nothing about it.
Those who dared to speak out disappeared into the camps as well. Amid the carnage of the war,the German people were caught in the middle of the opposing forces. They faced a predatory government,death on the battlefields,Allied bombardment,starvation,and occupation. The innocent should not be held responsible for crimes they were powerless to prevent,or for trying to survive,even in the worst of times.
Do you think Hitler and his cronies could have pulled off the Holocaust without Joseph Goebbels, his propaganda minister, or someone equal in skill to Goebbels?
by Arisztid in a COAT of Rromani awareness on December 7th, 2009
| 12 people like this
What is the final solution?
by anonymous on June 12th, 2009
| 1 person likes this
Why do some people not believe in the holocaust?
by anonymous dreadski3 on June 15th, 2009
| 1 person likes this
How did the Germans know who the Jews were during the holocaust? Was it a characteristic like eye color or something? Or did they just guess?
by LMHS on August 19th, 2009
| 3 people like this
What's with all the holocaust deniers on Answerbag lately?
by Fiddle Playing Creole Bastard on October 5th, 2009
| 13 people like this
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