Good Citizens, Terrible Times: Community, Courage and Compliance in and beyond the Holocaust

The sheer scale of what we call the Holocaust continues to challenge both scholars and wider publics around the world. Despite innumerable attempts to understand the organised mass murder of more than six million Jews, alongside Roma and Sinti, the mentally and physically disabled, and other victim groups, key questions remain. Research to date has highlighted German policies and practices, varieties of occupation and collaboration, as well as both organised resistance and individual rescue efforts. This project addresses areas that have not as yet received adequate attention: the significance of surrounding societies and notions of community and citizenship for the startlingly different survival rates of Jews in different areas of Europe. Survival rates ranged from a mere 5% in Lithuania to 95% in Denmark; and while 75% of Jews in France survived, only 25% of Jews in the Netherlands escaped deportation and death - a figure comparable to eastern Europe - while the survival rate in Belgium was midway between those of its closest neighbours. While scholars have explored a wide variety of factors, public perceptions tend to highlight the significance of individual actions. In particular, 'good citizenship' and 'civil courage' have been widely emphasised in civic education, pedagogical initiatives, and Holocaust memorialisation since 1945. Such approaches rarely register, however, that being a 'good citizen' in a state initiating and condoning violence against targeted minorities may in fact mean compliance with systemic violence.

Our research focuses directly on conceptions and practices of citizenship and community, as these variously affected compliance with state or occupation policies, or inspired sympathy with those ousted if considered part of a wider 'community of empathy'. In-depth case studies explore Nazi Germany, in comparison both with annexed Austria, which became part of the Greater German Reich in 1938, and the occupied Netherlands. These are complemented by detailed comparative case studies of rescue and survival in France and Romania, given that structural and situational factors also affected the willingness and capacity of people to side with victims rather than perpetrators. Moreover, survival depended on the social environment or wider circumstances in which victims of Nazi persecution sought to 'go under', find refuge, or 'pass' among members of the surrounding society, depending on changing socio-political circumstances. A comprehensive survey of societal factors affecting survival in different areas of eastern and western Europe under changing circumstances will explore the significance of inter-ethnic and community relations before and during the war; structures of power and repression; and shifting aspirations, cultural conceptions, and borders of communities.

The project combines broad structural analysis of changing historical circumstances with detailed exploration of subjective perceptions and individual behaviours in different settings, using diaries, letters, and memoirs by both Jews and non-Jews, and other archival sources. In this way, the research seeks to identify and disentangle the different elements of societal contexts that may help to explain variations in survival.

By looking at contested constructions of citizenship, community, and compliance with both written and unwritten codes of behaviour, and by exploring the conditions under which those who were initially bystanders might become increasingly complicit or, by contrast, extend gestures of sympathy or assistance to victims, this collaborative research will make a significant contribution to the field of Holocaust studies in Germany, the UK, and internationally. It will also, by engaging with the implications of the findings for Holocaust memorialisation and civic education, contribute to a better understanding of issues surrounding notions of 'lesson learning' and citizenship, a topic of vital importance in Europe today.