Confronting Complicity: Exploring Ordinary Germans’ Roles in the Holocaust

The boys in this photo were more than just neighbors-they were playmates, even friends before the Nazis took power. Unbeknown to them then, hatred and prejudice would destroy their bond. Two were brothers and would flee Germany after their mother’s murder in an antisemitic attack, while another would become a guard at an infamous concentration camp.
Complicity among ordinary Germans took different forms in the Nazi regime’s early years. While some embraced the new anti-Jewish policies, others looked away as the Nazis isolated, impoverished, and assaulted Jews. Join us as we explore the complicity of many Germans in the Holocaust.
Host: Dr. Edna Friedberg, Historian
Guest: Dr. Patricia Heberer Rice, Senior Historian
Learn more about the complicity of neighbors, friends, and other Germans during the Holocaust:
exhibitions.us...
Learn about the experience of German Jews during the Holocaust:
encyclopedia.u...

[@eddavis1832]

Thank you for the excellent presentation. If you haven’t done so already, I strongly suggest viewers of this podcast read Daniel Goldhagen’s, “Hitler’s Willing Executioners” to gain an even deeper insight into the “ordinary German citizen” during the Third Reich.

[@rachael_grey]

I think "Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland" is much better. Personally, I thought Goldhagen did a bit too much "mind reading," and appealing to some strange idea that antisemitism was uniquely intrinsic in Germans themselves. That's a pretty extraordinary claim.

[@jameswight6259]

It’s worth reading both books as the two historians have specifically responded to each other’s differing views.

[@yvonneplant9434]

His book, Hitler's Willing Executioners, is a hard read...small print.

[@yvonneplant9434]

​@@rachael_greyNo it's not. That's exactly why he wrote it. Please stop trying to "remove" their guilt.

[@tulaernst6879]

​@@yvonneplant9434 would you please elaborate on your second reply? For instance, I'm not sure what you're referring to when you say "no it's not" and not to relieve the guilt, etc. Thank you...I'm just trying to expand my own understanding.

[@suemeyer8989]

Thank you for presenting such a tragic and touching program-can’t imagine what a young fella felt when he lost all those childhood friendships.

[@user-tu4rn8ui9u]

What a terrible time. Heartbreaking. There is a lot of complicity happening now, and fear is being used as a weapon to support silence and exert pressure to conform, even to ways of thinking we know are wrong. Makes this talk much more important. All the lives lost in the Holocaust and at the hands of the Nazis were not in vain - their memories remain to remind us, to show us the way. Thank you. 🙏 ❤

[@user-vi3jd7mm1k]

Can you provide an example?

[@carmenhanna7867]

Thank you for the presentation. I'm glad the museaum is committed to expose and bring these tragic events in the open. I love the Holocaust museaum and everything they do to bring justice and remembrance to all Holocaust victims. Please don't ever stop.

[@robertafierro5592]

Heartbreaking story

[@chetyoubetya8565]

Germans?? We all knew about Cambodia, Rwanda, and Bosnia, and 99% did nothing about it. This was not just a German society issue it still is alive and living in 2024 around the world. The truth is once all social controls are removed, we revert to being animals once again. The amazing part of all of this is the people who had so much to lose yet helped others.

[@user-jc7ep2xp1c]

Genocide is a tool the so-called elite use to cull the herd. The trauma induced keeps the survivors fearful and weak. Are you fearful and weak still?

[@jimfladwood4393]

Thank you so very much for the opportunity to understand more. I lost my great grandfather and two brothers to the holocaust.😢

[@MrKotBonifacy]

_"The choices some ordinary Germans made in the early years of the 'Nazi regime'"_ can be, albeit with difficulty, sorta "understood" or at least "rationalised" (to a degree) - after all it's Germans - therefore the statolatry, law over morality and "Ordnung muss sein" - but those choices they made AT THE FINAL WEEKS of the war, when some of them embarked on so called "Zebra hunting" (no, not in Serengeti - on their home turf, and those "zebras" walked on two legs, and Uncle Google is yer friend), so THOSE choices makes your blood run cold and think "what kind of MONSTERS are they? Are they even a human beings?"

[@sanders7789]

In a word, no

[@MrKotBonifacy]

@@sanders7789 That means "we have a problem"...

[@TheMijanou]

It's only too easy for various regimes to manipulate people, especially when their country is in a difficult economic situation. Many people, especially the young ones can fall for these manipulations. Evil starts to be so opressive that good people are afraid to speak up for the ones who are opressed and they remain silent. The choice is simple: either you back up the regime (or at least keep silent) or you lose your job, your family and your life.

[@caiomarciorodrigues1551]

Thank you for this precious interview. Pretty clarifying and informative. Wish you success in your Museum and Projects. From Sao Paulo, Brazil.

[@ulrikeberndt8573]

Thank you for this very thoughful presentation. I'm German, living in Germany, and I still wonder about what it was like for my family. To be honest, I didn't press my grandmother on the subject because she used to react in a bad way. Her beloved father apparently was an early Nazi follower and he died in a Soviet concentration camp three years after the war. It's not clear if he had done anything punishable because those camps not only had Nazi prisoners who really took part in crimes and persecution. There were many prisoners, teenagers even, who just ended up there accidentally. There were no investigations or anything of the sort. So I don't know. I will apply for information at our national archive about the Nazi history of my great-grandfather but I wish I could go back and see for myself. I guess he was an opportunist like many others, too unimportant to be of real consequence. But given the chance may be he would have done atrocious things too. It horrifies me to see how nowadays the far right in Germany use similar language and try to push politics in that direction. And too many people see nothing wrong with it.

[@kleineroteHex]

People made choices, the reasons, they will justify. My dad was not asked if he wanted to be a soldier, but it was rather clear that you got shot if you refused. Dad never subscribed to the war, his older brother however was full on! So different in one household.

[@isabellrc]

I never fail to learn something new, however horrifying from someone who bared witness to these atrocities. I have been thinking about complicity in all that led up, into & the aftermath of the Holocaust. How many non-Jews were too afraid to get in-between, especially dealing with the evil of the Nazis? I started wondering if that would have been me? I cannot imagine being cruel to the Jews, or anyone the Nazis wanted gone and worse. I have fantasies and dreams of hiding innocent people; where, how? That particular war machine was vast, capable of destroying humanity with a click of a finger, and one shot of a weapon. This haunts me… I, too live in MD. I still have not gone to the museum in DC. I know I will weep!!!

[@judyevans3434]

I watched a documentary on this last weekend and I can’t stop thinking about it! Man’s inhumanity to man is things that most people couldn’t imagine in a million years. People who were there talking about the stark reality of the butchery that the Nazis could come up with is beyond comprehension of a normal person!

[@user-vi3jd7mm1k]

Pray to God for his divine strength and guidance. We need sensitive, caring people willing to stand up for innocents. Next the elites are targeting Christians, after they terminated the Jews. It is biblical prophecy and it is coming and already here.

[@kevinmarch4259]

Such a sad time in history. Both sets of my great grandparents moved to western New York from Poland. I have always wondered if I had family members who fell to this horrible fate, and if I still have family in Poland. Last names were Marzec and Ostrowski

[@haroldmaio407]

Without closed captioning it is difficult for some of us to follow.

[@billharpster7968]

Not that long ago. One lifetime. My dad’s generation.

[@voulathomacos-lagonas8445]

Thank you ❤

[@Keith-FarFromTheMaddingCrowd]

It is a terrible thing to watch and thank you so e much for standing testimony to what happened, but it is equally evil to see how religion is used by all sides to separate them form us.

[@thechuckjosechannel.2702]

Some day, These Camps will come back in the form of Jails.

[@judyevans3434]

People are not aware that there are “ Dark” prisons in our country! People put there have no rights! No access to an attorney, no phone calls, no visitors. Sometimes no charges or they are there for long periods of time before they are charged. They are often picked up without anyone knowing. These prisons are operated by our government. They are deguised as something else and some are literally under ground. Research it

[@sharonfoley2610]

Fear and self preservation

[@Kat-ks4yw]

did this end at 30 minutes? I can't get back to the event. I can only see the recording; it's starts at the beginning of the presentation

[@lumberlo]

This event seems to only be 30 minutes long.

[@jonathannixon8652]

I seem to never catch the Livestream 😕

[@robertafierro5592]

I subscribed to this channel and hit the notifications button ON! Hopefully, theyll.letbus know.

[@annechildress2721]

How do we participate in future presentations?

[@holocaustmuseum]

If you would like to receive notifications about upcoming episodes in the Stay Connected Live series, join our email list: engage.ushmm.org/2021-livestream-confirmation-social-ads.html

[@JFDA5458]

Does anyone know if Yiddish or Hebrew would have been spoken by Jews in France and Spain in the twenties and thirties?

[@roxanneswanson8305]

Jews in Spain & France likely spoke Ladino, which is a mixture of Spanish, Hebrew, & Aramaic.

[@stephenfisher3721]

Why do you want to know? There were many Yiddish speaking Jews in France. They were the most vulnerable and the first to be persecuted by the Nazis.

[@stephenfisher3721]

Old Jewish families in France were very assimilated and only French would be their spoken language except for those in the Alsace-Lorraine who also knew German. Significant numbers of Jews from other countries had immigrated to France, heavily Yiddish speaking but other languages such as Russian and Polish. Hebrew was never a spoken language but used by some for prayer and religion.

[@stephenfisher3721]

​@@roxanneswanson8305 Old Jewish families in France were very assimilated. Spain had expelled their Jews. Ladino could have been the language of immigrants to France and Spain, from North Africa and the former Ottoman Empire. Significant immigration from North Africa did not take place until after WWII.

[@mn4169]

the german people were just that complicit.

[@d.robincottrell3405]

Pay attn to Maduro..the ONLY country Harris traveled to to supposedly curb the border influx..which only worsened... And now Maduro emptied his prisons ..sent them here..and now announced his plans to use those now emptied prisons to jail his political opponents. Sound familiar...!? It should: remember the Democrats Squad .. suggested that in 2020..to " reeducate" Republicans. And Harris and Waltz express ways it be furthered by indicating it be " considered". Pay attention America .

[@RenateMtV]

I live in Bremerhaven now, and except for a few shields with explanations and a lot of stolpersteine, not a lot is remembered... There is still a street called after a mayor that became a nazi-partymember 😡😡😡 (Walter-Delius-Straße, just found the corner from us).

[@daisy7630]

😢 💔

[@JohnShecter-zk9ph]

What does that say about humans in general? That we can all be influenced to become Nazis?

[@sjgrodsky]

Susan from Potomac, MD

[@guillaumecoatalen6835]

Unbelievable, customers killing his mother.

[@wendylynn7605]

I've always been under the impression that people who sympathized with and helped Jews during this time risked receiving the same fate as Jews - so for many, fear might have been what kept them from acting or speaking up.

[@utemartin2930]

😭😭😭

[@AJSupremeYT]

I was a here

[@carlospargamendez4784]

The German complity with this genocide was terrible. A horror. The American and German complicity with the genocide in Palestine, too.

[@carmenhanna7867]

What genocide in Palestine from Americans? Don't forget the genocide was commited against Israel last October 2023. The Hamas still continue the genocide with some of the Jewish hostages. That is genocide. Get the facts.

[@somersetdc]

The Palestinians should have taken note: War is a horrible thing so it's a very good idea not to start one.

[@carlospargamendez4784]

@@somersetdc to start one? This lying rethoric....🤦 Expelled from their homes, their homes and lands were stolen -the absentees law of 1950-, with the IV Geneva Convention violated every day by israel, the UNO resolutions villated, hundreds of Palestinian civilians murdered every year....and the Palestinians started a war!!!!

[@user-wb1kd9kq5p]

​@@somersetdcokay, jew.

[@butchseals6891]

😢