2kNreeJ

oycotted Jewish-owned businesses during the one-day boycott on April 1, 1933, just three months after
Hitler came to power on January 30, 1933. Germans and collaborators from other countries informed
on their Jewish neighbours to the local Nazi authorities. Germans and collaborators from other countries
willingly took part in the murder of innocent Jewish men, women, and children.
12 How can we blame the Nazis and their collaborators when
Hitler invaded their countries too. I mean, if they hadn’t
done what Hitler said, they and their families would have
been killed, too.
Asked by: Madison, Catholic school, Grade 9
It is vitally important to understand that how the Nazis treated people varied according to the time period,
the place, and the circumstances. German nationals, and western Europeans were treated differently from
eastern Europeans and Slavs. Generally, in western Europe, they treated the local populations with milder
policies. This is partially due to the racial pseudo-science that Nazism promoted. They considered countries
such as the Netherlands, Denmark and Nordic countries as related to them according to their so-called
Aryan ideology. In contrast, the Nazis treatment of Slavic nations was particularly harsh as they considered
them to be of inferior ethnicity. The Nazis enacted a policy of “collective punishment” in Poland and the
Czech lands in retaliation for those who resisted. Yet in Denmark, where many ordinary Danes worked to
ferry Danish Jews to neutral Sweden thereby avoiding deportation, there were no repercussions. Similarly,
German military officers and medical personnel who refused to carry out orders were assigned to other
units. Like most topics related to the Holocaust, there are no simple answers. Rather, a complex set of
circumstances existed which individuals navigated according to their own moral compasses, their own set
of particular circumstances, and their belief systems.
135 HOLOCAUST EDUCATION IN PEDAGOGY, HISTORY, AND PRACTICE
Despite such treatment, resistance movements (Jewish and non-Jewish partisans) arose in Nazi-occupied
countries. Most were ill-equipped to directly take on the powerful German military, so they engaged in acts
of sabotage and subterfuge in order to resist. Some ordinary citizens provided shelter and aid to Jews,
and some including Bishop von Galen of Münster, Germany protested the so-called “euthanasia” program.
Studying the Nazi-occupation of Europe leads to the discovery of a wide range of responses.