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The Road to Auschwitz Was Paved with Collaboration

(New York Times) Rivka Weinberg - Anti-Semitism was entrenched in Europe for centuries before the Holocaust, supplying the Nazis with many collaborators. The local population, the police and the army often helped the Nazis. Where the local population was more anti-Semitic, they tended toward greater collaboration, resulting in a markedly higher murder rate. To kill people living within a population, you have to be told who and where they are. It's helpful when the local police do the rounding up for you (as some did in Lithuania, France and Hungary). In Bulgaria and Italy, where the culture wasn't as anti-Semitic, the local populations didn't cooperate with the murder of Jews; most Bulgarian and Italian Jews survived. Romania and Ukraine, on the other hand, had virulently anti-Semitic cultures and many Romanians and Ukrainians actively participated in murdering Jews. Few survived. Poland was also very anti-Semitic. Although there were Poles who sheltered Jews, many instead turned them in and looted their property. Some murdered Jews themselves. Very few Polish Jews survived. The writer is a professor of philosophy at Scripps College in Claremont, Calif.
2020-01-23 00:00:00
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