As the Resistance in Le Chambon developed, a curious phenomenon was taking place there: many of the Vichy police were being “converted” (as Trocme puts it in his notes) to helping the Chambonnais and their Jews. Even as the official policy of the Vichy toward Le Chambon and the Jews was hardening, individuals among the police and the bureaucrats of Vichy were more and more frequently resisting their orders to catch or hurt people who had done no visible harm to anyone. They found themselves helping those who were trying to save these innocent, driven creatures. Caring was infectious.42
When the doctor Le Forester was accused, tried, and executed as an example to the villagers, his deeds and the words he spoke at his trial influenced a German officer, Major Smelling, who persuaded Colonel Metzger, the head of the infamous Farber Legion of the SS, not to move against the village.
I heard the words of Dr. Le Forester, who was a Christian and explained to me very clearly why you were all disobeying our orders in Le Chambon. I believed that your doctor was sincere. I am a good Catholic, you understand, and I can grasp these things... .Well, Colonel Metzger was a hard one, and he kept on insisting that we move in on Le Chambon. But I kept telling him to wait. I told Metzger that this kind to resistance had nothing to do with violence, nothing to do with anything we could destroy with violence. With all my personal and military power I opposed sending his legion into Le Chambon.43
What is the psychological basis of this kind of influence? Helpful bystanders provide a different definition of reality. They break the uniformity of views and call attention to values disregarded by perpetrators and passive bystanders. They affirm the humanity of the victims. If they themselves are not devalued by perpetrators, they set a standard and also invoke a deep-seated human desire to be well regarded by others.
Heroic rescuers
Some people risked their own lives to save Jews and others persecuted by the Nazis. Among the bleak memories of the Holocaust, their actions offer hope for the future. Some of these rescuers and the rescued have been interviewed, either in the 1960s or recently.44 The interviews show that many of them had parents with strong moral concerns that they transmitted to their children. As a result, these rescuers were motivated both by a desire to fulfill moral and humanitarian values and by dislike of the Nazi system. Many valued caring or felt empathy for those who suffer. Other rescuers responded to the plight of one victim, often a friend or an acquaintance, and then continued to help others. In some instances a person began to help after witnessing the murder or brutal treatment of a Jew, or the Jews’ evident suffering. One person repeatedly noticed a group of ragtag Jewish children on his street. He was aware that they could be arrested and taken away anytime. A characteristic of many rescuers was “inclusiveness,” the tendency to apply caring, moral values and standards of right and wrong to people in different social, ethnic, or religious groups.45
Some rescuers had already shown in their earlier lives that they were unusually fearless, self-confident, and adventurous. Personal goal theory suggests that adventurousness may have been a contributing motive for resistance against the Nazis.46 Oscar Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg were both men of action who gained satisfaction from exercising their skills and personal power in confrontation with the Nazis.
Another reported characteristic of some rescuers was marginality: being a member of a minority religion (Huguenot in the case of Le Chambon), being new to the community, having a parent from another country, or some other source of social separateness that allowed a different perspective and reduced fear of risking one’s relationship with the majority group.47 Many rescuers, however, were closely tied to some group. Samuel and Pearl Oliner, in a major study of rescuers, found many rescuers “normocentric,” or norm-centered, characterized by a “feeling of obligation to a special reference group with whom the actor identified and whose explicit and implicit values he feels obliged to obey.”48 The reference groups included religious, political, and resistance groups, family or friends. Sometimes these rescuers helped when authorities in the group (e.g., priests or resistance leaders) or other members directed, persuaded, or in other ways influenced them. At other times, they responded when events called forth their internalized group norms. The position taken by their group or implied by its norms led these rescuers to deviate from the majority.
This type of motivation was frequent and is highly significant, especially when a large social group supports it, as in the case of Belgium. Social defense networks developed and helping became the norm. However, such motivation can be unreliable. Individual helpers do not necessarily care about the fate of the victims, but are guided by the stance of the group or its leaders. Resistance groups and local church groups sometimes influenced their members to help, but some priests and church authorities (e.g., in Poland) urged their flocks to support Nazi policies of extermination, and some resistance groups killed Jews.49
The Oliners found that most rescuers in their study, not only normocentric ones, felt connected to other human beings, whether family, a group, or people in general. In contrast, the passive, nonhelping bystanders, members of a comparison group they interviewed, tended to be disconnected. Repeated helping by most rescuers, over long periods of time, must have strengthened their experience of connection. Seventy percent of the rescuers first helped in response to a request, by either the person in need or an intermediary. Most of them continued to help. According to personal goal theory, motives for helping become active in response to activating conditions. Requests might have led rescuers to appreciate the mortal danger of Jews or called forth important values or exerted pressure.
As I have mentioned, in many instances there was an evolution of commitment to help by steps along a continuum of
