Ronit Roth-Hanania
Concern for Others in Nazi Germany: Searching for Markers of Empathy in Germans’ Emotional Responses to the Persecution of the Jews, 1933-1945
2017 | Full access
The persecution of the Jews under the National Socialist regime began in 1933 and ended with the destruction of European Jewry in 1945. During the years of Hitler’s rule, Jews were excluded, segregated, haunted, and finally, annihilated. Such happened at first in Germany and later in the occupied territories all over Europe. This study focused on three historical periods in search of markers of empathy in the emotional responses of “ordinary Germans” to the persecution of the Jews. At the time, the Nazi administration had under its control, a network of 30,000 agents and informants that reported on the opinions, reactions, and mood of the German public with regard to the administration’s actions in general and its anti-Jewish measures in particular. Historians’ analyses of the reactions of Germans as they were portrayed in the “secret” reports were the foundation for the overall agreement between Holocaust scholars, that the German public at large was indifferent to the fate of the Jews in Germany. The indifferent apathetic population was seen therefore, not merely as innocent bystanders to the ongoing persecution, but rather as passive partners to the active Nazi mass murder of the Jews. Empathy is an inborn, vicarious socio-emotional response that is evoked in an observer when seeing another in distress. The empathic response is composed of three major components: an emotional component which is expressed through feelings of concern, the feeling for the other person, sympathy or compassion; a cognitive component that includes all attempts to inquire and/or better understand the other’s situation and state; and a behavioral component which is usually expressed through pro-social helping behavior, assisting, rescuing, or exhibiting altruism. In the present study, personal accounts of a hundred “ordinary Germans,” including letters, memoirs, diaries, interviews, testimonies, and surveys were reviewed and analyzed in search of markers of empathy. These primary sources were compared and contrasted with the Nazi secret reports, in order to uncover discrepancies, if exist, between what the official documents suggest was the overall response of the German public and what individuals felt and experienced in response to the Jews’ maltreatment. In all three periods, comparison of the sources suggested that while the secret reports portrayed a picture of an indifferent public, in fact, “ordinary Germans” expressed concern and sympathy towards the Jews’ situation and have also inquired and searched for information on their whereabouts. This study proposes therefore, that ordinary individuals in Germany between 1933 and 1945 felt empathy towards the Jews. These emotions were kept secret, were expressed in private writings, or discussed only in close and secure circles of friends and families. Since no overt pro-social actions were taken nor was protest expressed in the open, the German population was perceived and tagged by historians as indifferent participants in the genocide of the Jews.
Supervisors:
Dr. Laura Jockusch
Prof. Eli Somer