Bystanders to Genocide

Abstract

This chapter examines the role of bystanders in genocide. To achieve their objectives perpetrators had to rely on bystanders to be neutral or supportive. Bystanders are not victims or perpetrators, but they can easily be swept into supporting one or the other sides in a genocidal conflict. Borrowing from Gregory Mellema’s discussion on complicity the author considers nine ways that bystanders could have become complicitous. Their omissions, endorsements, and cooperation could count as complicitous behaviors. Four case studies are considered to demonstrate how actors became complicitous in the Holocaust: the case of Pastor Martin Niemöller, the case of A. J. Topf & Sons, the case of the German church, and the case of neighboring nations. In order these cases represent a loyal citizen who endorsed the politics of the Nazis, a corporation making goods to be used for mass murder, a social collective supportive of the genocide, and a sovereign nation that refused to intervene in the initial stages of mass murder. Attention is given to the failure of churches to speak out against the killing of Jews. In genocide perpetrators can anticipate and take advantage of the complicity of bystanders.