Genocide and Rescue

Abstract

During World War II, between 5.5 and 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis and their local agents.1 In the immediate aftermath of the war, the Allies were horrified by what they had discovered in the camps, and they were aware that Jewish people had been specifically targeted by the Nazi regime. But the victims were usually described in terms of their nationality rather than their Jewishness.2 It was not until the 1960s that historians began to stress the central role of anti-Semitism in Nazi crimes. Two new words began to be widely used to describe what had happened: Holocaust (from the 1960s) and Shoah (from the 1980s). In this chapter, we will explain how ascribing responsibility for this genocide has been incorporated into narratives of resistance and collaboration. It is impossible to consider resistance and collaboration without also discussing the Holocaust. This is because establishing responsibility for the Holocaust has raised the stakes in describing people’s actions as resistance or collaboration. We will begin with a brief overview of the history of the Holocaust and then discuss how historians have attempted to address the question of responsibility. Finally, we will discuss three ways in which this historiography amplifies our understanding of resistance and collaboration as social processes. The Third Reich was the most virulently anti-Semitic regime in history. The mass murder of Jewish people began in 1941, at the time of the German invasion of the Soviet Union.