The roots of evil: The origins of genocide and other group violence

to become colonies and their inhabitants to provide labor; these areas had German military or civilian governors who ruled with the help of the SS and army troops; German and SS control was strong and harsh. In other occupied territories, mainly in the west, German authorities relied on existing government institutions and native collaboration. Some countries were German allies; here, the Germans incited anti-Semitism and used persuasion to get governments to deport their Jewish populations – to hand them over to the Germans. Germany invaded several of its allies late in the war, mainly to avoid their desertion, but with the effect that Germany gained direct control.

Helen Fein has shown a direct relationship between prewar anti-Semitism in a country (the existence of anti-Semitic parties and organizations, discriminatory policies, and so on) and the proportion of Jews killed in the country.⁵ A related factor was the behavior of local church leaders. Another was the degree of SS control over the population. Some authors argue that SS control (which was often established or increased after 1941) was a primary determinant of the number of Jews killed. When a government in an occupied country was allowed to retain significant internal control through an independent army or police force, the chance of Jewish survival was greater.⁶ Fein’s work indicates, however, that the degree of preexisting anti-Semitism – and the behavior of church leaders, officials, and members of the population in anti-Semitic countries

– affected Jewish fate under most conditions.

Hungary is an example of a country with long-established anti-Semitism. A voluntary ally of Germany in the war, it had introduced legal discrimination against Jews already in 1920. Jews were stripped of equal rights and the entry of Jewish students to universities was limited. Between 1920 and 1938, Jews were excluded from jobs in government, the police, and the schools. They were identified by ancestry in 1938, following the example of Nuremberg laws. The dominant churches – Roman Catholic and Lutheran – both approved this “Jew law,” although they attempted to protect converts. The fascist parties received about 45 percent of the popular vote in 1938.⁷ During the war, groups of non-Hungarian Jews residing in Hungary were rounded up and massacred. Jewish men were conscripted into forced labor battalions. Hungarians had much opportunity to progress along a continuum of destruction.

To stop Hungary from concluding a separate peace, German troops occupied it in March 1944. Widespread cooperation in Hungary enabled Eichmann, eight SS officers, and forty enlisted men to deport over four hundred thousand Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz in the spring and summer of 1944. In October the Hungarian Nazis, the Arrow Cross, took over the government. Their identification with the German Nazis and thus their vicarious participation in German activities added to their evolution. They brutalized and killed Jews: they lined up and shot groups of them at the river Danube.

In Poland as well anti-Semitism was deep-seated, with many pogroms in 1918 and 1919. After 1935, Poland enacted discriminatory laws. There was widespread support before World War II for Jewish emigration as a solution to Poland’s Jewish problem. After the German invasion, the Poles suffered terribly; many in the leadership and educated elite were killed, and many deported for labor in the Third Reich. It is not surprising, however, given the history of anti-Semitism, that this did not lead to the experience of “common fate” and solidarity with Jews. Perhaps also, as Sophie said in William Styron’s book Sophie’s Choice, Poles were glad when the attention of Germans focused on Jews as their victims rather than themselves. Poles helped the Germans supervise the ghettos. Some searched out Jews hidden by other Poles to blackmail them or their rescuers or for the cash offered by the Germans for such information. Members of the right-wing National Armed Forces fought Germans, but also attacked Jewish partisans. The underground Polish Home Army refused to accept Jews and repeatedly refused to help them fight the Germans.⁸

A contrasting example is the resistance of the Danish population and government, including the king, against treating Danish Jews differently from other Danes. Most of the Jewish population there survived. In Italy, a large percentage of Jews survived because officials and citizens sabotaged efforts to hand them over to the Germans.

In Bulgaria, a German ally, the government attempted to deport Jews, but many elements protested: the bishops of the Bulgarian Orthodox church individually and collectively and professional organizations of doctors, lawyers, and writers. A member of parliament introduced a motion against the anti-Jewish policy of the government. Probably in response to these pressures, the king intervened on their behalf. As a result, 82 percent of the Jews survived in the larger Bulgaria that included territories annexed during the war. Bulgaria was ruled by Turkey until 1878 and there were many minorities: Turks, Greeks, Jews, Armenians, and others. There was no sharply drawn differentiation between the Bulgarian ingroup and these outgroups. Anti-Semitism was also limited, perhaps, because Jews did not fill important roles in finance and commerce, which in other places evoked envy and resentment.⁹

In Belgium, the German policy was the same as in other occupied territories: requiring Jews to register, stripping them of their rights, property and jobs, and segregation. Press control, propaganda, the organization of collaborators, and brutal reprisal against resistance promoted these policies. In spite of this, “the Belgian public exhibited an ‘aversion’ to the acquisition of Jewish real property.”¹⁰ The Belgian government in exile declared transfers of such property illegal. The universities and bar associations resisted pressures to exclude Jews. The Belgian cardinal and the queen both protested an order that Jews report for forced labor. (We can contrast this with the behavior of the German public and institutions or even with Vichy France, where the government introduced anti-Jewish legislation before German demands.)

When the Jewish council (see the section entitled The Jewish Councils in this chapter) set up by the Germans delivered call-up orders of forced labor to Jews, the Belgian resistance movement burnt the card file of registered Jews. When this did not