This Week's Services

Services for Kids

Shabbat

Divrei Torah

Sukkot
Shemini Atzeret
Simchat Torah
5769/2008

High Holidays
5769/2008

Tisha B'Av
5768/2008

Tzom Tammuz
5768/2008

Shavuot
5768/2008

Yom HaShoah
5768/2008

Pesach
5768/2008

Purim
5768/2008

Return to D'var Torah Index

Interfaith Yom Hashoah Remembrance Service - Silver Spring Presbyterian Church

Given by Neil Newman on April 22, 2007 (12 Nissan 5767 )
Bystanders During the Holocaust

Thank you. I am honored to join you all today as we remember the Holocaust.

Allow me to introduce myself. I am not a Holocaust survivor, nor thankfully were any of my parents, grandparents or close relatives victims of the German atrocity. But my People were. I volunteer at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum here in DC to guide students, law enforcement and private visitors through the Holocaust experience, and I am and always will be a student of the Holocaust.

Elie Wiesel (professor, author, Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor) has observed, "The Holocaust can not be understood but, for the sake of humankind, must be remembered." And he has further noted that "For the dead and the living we must bear witness."

And so today we gather together to remember the six million innocent Jewish men, women, and children (1.6 million children 15 years of age and younger) who vanished, disappeared, or were killed by the Nazis and their collaborators. From 1939 thru 1945, the Holocaust was the state-sponsored and systematic persecution and attempted effort to exterminate an entire people -- European Jewry. It was the first and only industrialized and mechanized genocide.

No matter how many times we relate and note this loss of humanity during the Holocaust, the number of victims defies our ability to comprehend. If we take all the people who live in Washington DC and Baltimore, and all who live between those cities, we will not have 6 million.

The Nazis took an incredible number of photographs of their victims (many of which we have at the Holocaust Museum). I ask those whom I guide through the Museum to look at the faces of these victims and think of those individual persons who almost certainly perished during the Holocaust. There is a photo, taken by the Nazis, of two young brothers from Hungary, so frightened and confused as they were taken from the cattle car to the gas chamber. I see them all the time - even now as I speak. We can, must and shall remember.

As we gather this year for our joint Holocaust remembrance observance, we will not talk just of the victims, or the perpetrators and their collaborators - the many vicious neighbors of the Jews in the other countries of Europe who aided, abetted and participated in this truly incomprehensible horror and atrocity. Today we will turn our attention to a short study of the others. First, those who resisted the power of the Nazis and those who rescued and liberated the surviving victims.

In recent years we have learned more and more of those Jews who resisted -- in the countryside, in the ghettos, in the concentration and death camps. And also of the non-Jewish rescuers and resisters. Individuals such as Sophie Scholl of the White Rose - a young, upper middle-class German college girl who, with her friends, spread the word of the Nazi crime and was captured and guillotined. Or the heroic citizens of Le Chambon - a southern French town who saved the lives of all the Jews of their town.

We have gathered the magnificent stories of heroism of the Righteous Among the Nations - the non-Jewish men and women who risked, and in many cases gave their and their families lives to save Jews - the 21,300 identified to date by Yad Vashem (Israeli's Holocaust Museum). Come to the Museum and I will introduce you to our exhibits honoring these good and brave people.

But now let us contrast these courageous souls to a second group -- those who were the Bystanders to the Holocaust - those who saw the evil and did not react to it.

To give a simplistic definition of the word "Bystander" is not too difficult - "one who is present at some event without participating in it." Perhaps ordinary people, like you and me, who played it safe, who obeyed the laws and attempted to keep out of the way of the Nazi's terrorizing activities. The standard, traditional, and broadly accepted view is that during the Holocaust there were more Bystanders than victims, perpetrators, liberators, resisters and rescuers combined. And therefore, whether the Bystander was a person, group or country - the moral fault would appear to rest with their inaction -their failure to act to save the victims.

Recently, however, some historians have declared that there were no Bystanders, because one was either a victim, perpetrator, or resister and rescuer. Therefore, no safe haven is allotted to those who did not act, for their inaction put them automatically in the camp of the perpetrators.

That is perhaps a bit harsh, for it is so easy to sit here this afternoon and cast such blame on the Bystander with a self- righteous indignation that they acted immorally and cowardly. So safe here in Silver Spring to condemn them. Nevertheless, the essential question remains - Why the inaction by non-victims during the Holocaust?

Let us this afternoon look at some of the reasons, explanations, justifications, and excuses for being a Bystander in the face of the ultimate Nazi horror. We do so in the hope that we will gain some insight and vital lessons from those who failed to act in the past. I will leave the judgment as to the validity or merit of any or all of these reasons to you.

• The fear to act -- concern for one's personal safety and safety of family.
• The degree of knowledge of the heinous acts of the Holocaust - What did they know and when?
• The belief that one lacks the capability to act, to make a difference. Assumed ineffectiveness, real or imagined.
• Personal financial gain from the atrocities being committed against the Jews - the stealing of the possessions of the Jews.
• Concurrence with the objectives of the Nazis - the anti-Semitic wish of the citizens of the conquered countries to exterminate the Jews in their own countries -- Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, Romania, Western Europe, and so forth.
• And lastly, perhaps the most troublesome reason - indifference. "It is not me they are after" - so I do not need to act.

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out because I was not a communist.
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the labor leaders, and I did not speak out because I was not a labor leader.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me.

But now you will hear from a most intelligent and committed young lady who will strike a call to action. Listen to her. Let us respond to the challenge of Elie Wiesel and to the memory of the millions of other Holocaust victims, as well as to those who survived and those who perished - that we will learn from the Holocaust. We will honor the memory of the 6 million lost souls and dedicate ourselves to not being a Bystander.

The Ukrainian artist, Edward Yashi, writes in his poem "Indifference":

Fear not your enemies,
For they can only
Kill you.

Fear not your friends,
For they can only
Betray you.

Fear only
The Indifferent,
Who permit the killers
And the betrayers to walk
Safely on earth.

Shalom - Peace - Thank you.

Return to D'var Torah Index