Ordinary people and the Holocaust

Books reviewed in this essay:
Germans into Nazis. By Peter Fritsche.
Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany. By Marion A. Kaplan. 
My German Question: Growing up in Nazi Berlin. By Peter Gay.
Unwilling Germans? The Godhagen Debate. Edited by Robert R. Shandley. 

The 20th century has been scarred by the mass murder of ethnic groups in Armenia, Nazi-occupied Europe, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo. On a smaller scale, hate crimes against certain groups also erupt in this country. What factors converge to make such violence possible? Can anything be done to prevent it?

The relevance of these questions fuels the continued interest in the history of the Holocaust and the close examination of the role of "ordinary" people—both as victims and bystanders. Peter Fritsche, Peter Gay, Marion Kaplan and Robert Shandley offer intriguing glimpses of the people who lived through that devastating experience.