Why Did Ordinary People Across Europe Contribute To The Persecution Of Jews

Imagine being stripped of everything in life-one’s home, family, friends, and wealth-and being forced into a labor. The prisoner toils for what seems like months-years even, but it is all futile in the end. This is what the Jews imprisoned in the Holocaust felt. The Holocaust was the organized and systemic killing of Jews by the Nazi regime from 1933 to 1945. Millions of Jews were taken from their homes and forced into concentration camps, where they were forced to work and later murdered in cold blood. This was carefully orchestrated by Hitler and the Nazi government. Besides Adolf Hitler, the top SS officers who developed the Final Solution, leaders of Allied Countries who were aware of what was happening, and the Nazi soldiers who carried

They state, “In Germany, many individuals who were not zealous Nazis nonetheless participated in varying degrees in the persecution and murder of Jews and other victims” (“How and Why Did Ordinary People Across Europe Contribute to the Persecution of their Jewish Neighbors?” 1). However, in the passage about SS officers and soldiers, the author explains that “SS men…established killing centers equipped with gas chambers to facilitate assembly line mass murder” (“Perpetrators” 5). Therefore, SS officers developed the places where Jews were killed and without them, the Holocaust would not have been so severe. Thus, SS officers were more responsible for the Holocaust than non-Jewish Europeans. Moreover, according to “How and Why Did Ordinary People Across Europe Contribute to the Persecution of their Jewish Neighbors?”, “They [German citizens] were aware of the risk that outspoken dissidents faced in a police state, where opponents of the regime could be arbitrarily arrested and imprisoned in concentration camps without trial” (12). To clarify, Germans were in fear of Nazis and SS men and were afraid of being sent to the same concentration camps that Jews were in. Hence, the German military and SS officers had control over German civilians and were more responsible for the Holocaust. To summarize, top SS officers were more responsible for the Holocaust than German citizens because citizens lived in fear of the officers, and SS men developed the concentration camps and gas chambers, indirectly killing millions of