Table Of ContentP L
robing the imits of
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ategorization
War and Genocide
General Editors: Omer Bartov, Brown University; A. Dirk Moses, University
of Sydney
In recent years there has been a growing interest in the study of war and geno-
cide, not from a traditional military history perspective, but within the framework of
social and cultural history. This series offers a forum for scholarly works that reflect
these new approaches.
The Berghahn series Studies on War and Genocide has immeasurably enriched the
English-language scholarship available to scholars and students of genocide and, in
particular, the Holocaust. —Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions
Recent volumes:
Volume 27 Volume 22
Probing the Limits of Categorization: The Genocide on Settler Frontiers: When
Bystander in Holocaust History Hunter-Gatherers and Commercial Stock
Edited by Christina Morina and Farmers Clash
Krijn Thijs Edited by Mohamed Adhikari
Volume 26 Volume 21
Let Them Not Return: Sayfo—The The Spirit of the Laws: The Plunder of
Genocide Against the Assyrian, Wealth in the Armenian Genocide
Syriac, and Chaldean Christians in the Taner Akçam and Ümit Kurt
Ottoman Empire
Edited by David Gaunt, Naures Atto, and Volume 20
Soner O. Barthoma The Greater German Reich and the Jews:
Nazi Persecution Policies in the Annexed
Volume 25 Territories 1935–1945
Daily Life in the Abyss: Genocide Diaries, Edited by Wolf Gruner and Jörg Osterloh
1915–1918
Vahé Tachjian Volume 19
The Dark Side of Nation-States: Ethnic
Volume 24 Cleansing in Modern Europe
Microhistories of the Holocaust Philipp Ther
Edited by Claire Zalc and Tal Bruttmann
Volume 18
Volume 23 Judging “Privileged” Jews: Holocaust
The Making of the Greek Genocide: Ethics, Representation, and the “Grey
Contested Memories of the Ottoman Zone”
Greek Catastrophe Adam Brown
Erik Sjöberg
For a full volume listing, please see the series page on our website: http://berghahnbooks.
com/series/war-and-genocide
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robing the imits of
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ategorization
The Bystander in Holocaust History
Edited by Christina Morina and Krijn Thijs
berghahn
N E W Y O R K • O X F O R D
www.berghahnbooks.com
First published in 2019 by
Berghahn Books
www.berghahnbooks.com
© 2019 Christina Morina and Krijn Thijs
Support for finalizing this volume came from the
Duitsland Instituut Amsterdam/German Studies Institute Amsterdam.
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages
for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book
may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information
storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented,
without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Morina, Christina, 1976- author. | Thijs, Krijn, author.
Title: Probing the Limits of Categorization: The Bystander in Holocaust
History / Morina Christina and Krijn Thijs.
Description: First edition. | New York: Berghahn Books, [2018] | Series: War
and Genocide; 27 | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018041887 (print) | LCCN 2018042145 (ebook) | ISBN
9781789200942 (ebook) | ISBN 9781789200935 (hardback: alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Moral and ethical aspects. |
Bystander effect--Europe--History--20th century. |
Accomplices--Europe--History--20th century.
Classification: LCC D804.7.M67 (ebook) | LCC D804.7.M67 M67 2018 (print) |
DDC 940.53/18--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018041887
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-78920-093-5 hardback
ISBN 978-1-78920-094-2 ebook
C
ontents
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List of Illustrations vii
Introduction: Probing the Limits of Categorization 1
Christina Morina and Krijn Thijs
Part I. Approaches
Chapter 1
Bystanders: Catchall Concept, Alluring Alibi, or Crucial Clue? 15
Mary Fulbrook
Chapter 2
Raul Hilberg and His “Discovery” of the Bystander 36
René Schlott
Chapter 3
Bystanders as Visual Subjects: Onlookers, Spectators, Observers, and
Gawkers in Occupied Poland 52
Roma Sendyka
Chapter 4
“I am not, what I am”: A Typological Approach to Individual (In)action
in the Holocaust 72
Timothy Williams
Chapter 5
The Many Shades of Bystanding: On Social Dilemmas and Passive
Participation 90
Froukje Demant
Chapter 6
The Dutch Bystander as Non-Jew and Implicated Subject 107
Remco Ensel and Evelien Gans
vi Contents
Part II. History
Chapter 7
Photographing Bystanders 131
Christoph Kreutzmüller
Chapter 8
The Imperative to Act: Jews, Neighbors, and the Dynamics of
Persecution in Nazi Germany, 1933–1945 148
Christina Morina
Chapter 9
Martin Heidegger’s Nazi Conscience 168
Adam Knowles
Chapter 10
Natura Abhorret Vacuum: Polish “Bystanders” and the Implementation
of the “Final Solution” 187
Jan Grabowski
Chapter 11
Defiant Danes and Indifferent Dutch? Popular Convictions and
Deportation Rates in the Netherlands and Denmark, 1940–1945 206
Bart van der Boom
Chapter 12
The Notion of Social Reactivity: The French Case, 1942–1944 224
Jacques Semelin
Part III. Memory
Chapter 13
Ordinary, Ignorant, and Noninvolved? The Figure of the Bystander in
Dutch Research and Controversy 247
Krijn Thijs
Chapter 14
Hidden in Plain View: Remembering and Forgetting the Bystanders of
the Holocaust on (West) German Television 266
Wulf Kansteiner
Chapter 15
Stand by Your Man: (Self-)Representations of SS Wives after 1945 291
Susanne C. Knittel
Chapter 16
“Bystanders” in Exhibitions at the United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum 309
Susan Bachrach
Epilogue I: A Brief Plea for the Historicization of the Bystander 336
Norbert Frei
Epilogue II: Saving the Bystander 343
Ido de Haan
Index 355
i
LLustrations
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Figure 3.1. Józef Charyton, Egzekucja (Execution), 1945–1963.
(From the collection of the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish
Historical Institute, Warsaw.) 61
Figure 3.2. Józef Charyton, Z˙ydówki przed egzekucja˛. Wys-Lit
1942 (Jewish Women before the Execution. Wys-Lit
1942), 1945–1963. (From the collection of the Emanuel
Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw.) 62
Figure 3.3. Fotografowanie na pamia˛tke˛ (Photographing for a
keepsake), 1945–1963. (From the collection of the
Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw.) 64
Figure 4.1. Typology of action in genocide. Highlighted areas are
those types most usefully pointing toward a zone in which
bystanders are positioned. (Figure created by author.) 79
Figure 7.1. Photo by an unknown press photographer, Berlin, 10
November 1938, New York Times, 11 November 1938. (AP
Images/Hollandse Hoogte.) 132
Figure 7.2. Photo by Josef Friedrich Coeppicus, Baden-Baden, 10
November 1938. (Stadtmuseum/-archiv Baden-Baden.) 137
Figure 7.3. Photo by Josef Friedrich Coeppicus, Baden-Baden, 10
November 1938. (Stadtmuseum/-archiv Baden-Baden.) 138
Figure 7.4. Photo by Josef Friedrich Coeppicus, Baden-Baden, 10
November 1938. (Bundesarchiv.) 139
Figure 15.1. The Woman at His Side (post-performance Q&A),
Filmtheater ’t Hoogt, Utrecht, 1 September 2016. From
left: Sabine Werner, Inga Dietrich, Joanne Gläsel. (Photo:
Kári Driscoll.) 303
viii Illustrations
Figure 16.1. The “wall of the rescuers” in the museum’s permanent
exhibition lists the names of the “righteous” who helped
Jews. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Photo:
Miriam Lomaskin.) 311
Figure 16.2. Visitors study the Niemöller “bystander” quotation in
the museum’s permanent exhibition. (United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum. Photo: Max Reid.) 312
Figure 16.3. A panel from Some Were Neighbors provokes visitors’
reflection on the role of ordinary people—here, German
customs and tax officials—in the Nazi persecution of
Jews. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Photo:
David Y. Lee.) 317
Figure 16.4. A display from Some Were Neighbors evokes the registries
of cards containing the names and addresses of Jews.
Such registries aided police during the roundups of Jews
in France and other countries where officials collaborated
with the Germans. (United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum. Photo: Miriam Lomaskin.) 322
Figure 16.5. A display from Some Were Neighbors that includes a
quotation from the diary of a Dutch shopkeeper imposed
over a photograph of a roundup of Jews in Amsterdam.
The shot was taken clandestinely from someone’s
apartment window. (United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum. Photo: Joel Mason-Gaines.) 323
Figure 16.6. One of the historic films in Some Were Neighbors showed
young people participating in the shaming of their
neighbors, Bronia and Gerhard, who violated racial
decrees prohibiting their relationship. (United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum. Photo: Miriam Lomaskin.) 324
i
ntroduCtion
P L C
robing the imits of ategorization
Christina Morina and Krijn Thijs
R
T
he term “bystander” has gained as much traction as it has stirred
controversy in recent years. The reasons for this surged interest
are manifold. In part, they stem from the fact that among the three
categories used to analyze the role of individuals in the Holocaust—
perpetrators, victims, and bystanders—the category of the bystander
is the broadest and vaguest. At the same time, it hints at an elemental
aspect of human life, namely that people in conflict situations take on
various, often ambiguous roles. A scene in Erich Maria Remarque’s
novel The Night in Lisbon (1964) aptly captures this ambiguity by
steering the reader’s view away from the perpetrator and the victim
toward the hesitant “onlooker”—Joseph Schwarz, the author’s fiction-
alized alter ego:
The SS men cast furious, challenging glances at me as they passed, and the
prisoner stared at me out of paralyzed eyes, making a gesture that seemed
to be a plea for help. . . It was a scene as old as humankind: the minions of
power, the victims, the eternal third, the onlooker, who doesn’t raise a finger
in defense of the victim, who makes no attempt to set him free, because he
fears for his own safety, which for that very reason is always in danger.1
