Bystanders In The Holocaust

Imagine Auschwitz: people’s eyes are filled with sorrow as they glance at the girl. Her ribs are detected from under her shirt and her nails were born with yellow stains that, just looked like she peeled hundreds of lemons. As a man sits up and grabs his whip, he shares a laugh with another commander and starts to shuffle towards the starving child. His hand grabbed the girl’s arm. After cries of pain the child limps with blood slashes and purple and blue fingers. The man walks away, feeling every cut that the seven year old felt. With depressed thoughts of every word any Jew has called him, he stands alone, not saying a word; knowing if he does, consequences will appear. Miles Lehrman, a Holocaust survivor, who was featured in the documentary …show more content…
This can be shown in the quote by Franz Stangl in an interview, with journalist Gitta Sereny in 1971 talking about the Holocaust “... ‘not knowing that in no time at all they’d all be dead.’ He paused. His face drawn. At this moment he looked old and worn and real.” This quote shows that bystanders do feel regretful after the events that take place. Franz Stangl has guilt towards what he had done to the Jews in the Holocaust. When there aren’t bystanders in the concentration camps, there are some just on the street, witnessing the events. “We got sympathetic looks from people on their way to work. You could see by their faces how sorry they were they couldn’t offer us a lift; the gaudy yellow star spoke for itself” Said Anne Frank in a diary entry on July 9,1942. This proves the point of saying that people just don’t want to get into danger by helping a Jew. Although the bystanders feel bad about not doing anything, they also know that they won’t get hurt. The people witnessing just want to carry onto their own lives and not have to feel sad about anyone else’s but sometimes it’s really hard to do that. To summarize, most bystanders truly want to make a stand but are too afraid to risk getting into a harsh event. Lehrman’s quote is only partially true for he is not recognizing that it takes a lot of bravery for someone to endanger their life for somebody else. The words by Anne Frank and Franz Stangl can give you more insight on what it is like to be a bystander and how it seems to have no bystander speak up. Both have different judgement and meaning . Whether it’s to not speak up or say something and get hurt as well; in the end, no matter what, the bystander will always have