Holocaust Myth: Sheep to the Slaughter
For many years I have wondered why the Jews went seemingly to their deaths during the Holocaust as “sheep to the slaughter.” Only recently in doing additional research in connection with my free nonfiction Holocaust theater project www.ThinEdgeOfTheWedge.com have I realized how wrong this belief is.
First, a simple example regarding Anne Frank’s family:
I always thought it strange that Anne’s father moved the family to Amsterdam (before WWII started) to escape Nazi rule. After all, the Netherlands shares a border with Germany. Why did Anne’s father think they would be safe there?
Now I have just learned that the Netherlands stayed neutral during WWI — and that the expectation of the Netherlands staying neutral again fueled many people’s conviction that they would be safe if they got to the Netherlands. Nazi Germany destroyed that hope when they invaded in May of 1940.
Second, a more complicated example:
I read a question of a Holocaust educator in a Facebook group about the massacre of Jews at Babi Yar (a ravine in the Ukrainian capital Kiev). Why did the Jews go meekly to their deaths? He said they could see the piles of corpses.
Here is what I have learned:
They could not see the pile of corpses because when the Jews at the front of the line were shot their bodies tumbled into the ravine below. They were surrounded by Nazis with guns — so running away at that point would have done no good. And when they were marched out of town to the ravine — Jews had been sent to separate areas in Europe for centuries. Why should the Jews have expected anything different than being sequestered?
Perhaps more importantly, Babi Yar was at the beginning of the massacres the Nazis committed after they broke the non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union in June of 1941 and swiftly moved east conquering Russian-occupied areas and murdering Jews. (This is before the gas chambers of Auschwitz even existed and before the Wannsee Conference on the Final Solution held in January 1942.)
Third, the problem of where to go:
Even with enough money to obtain transportation tickets, pay bribes, etc. — for most Jews there was nowhere to go. Without going into the entire litany of quotas for Jews in the British-controlled land of Israel, the U.S, and other countries, suffice it to say that there was very little opportunity for the Jews outside Germany (who had already had Nazi rule since January 1933) to escape before WWII was started by the Nazi invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, and even less opportunity after the war started.
Fourth, the problem of going into hiding:
I have just read several accounts of child survivors whose family members were betrayed in hiding. That is besides the obvious problems of securing enough food and water for several years of hiding in hostile countries that had very little food and had rationing of that food.
Fifth, we are looking at history from our own time:
We have a post-Holocaust mindset. How can we expect people at that time to believe the atrocities that some Jews were warned about when they might have still escaped? The atrocity of places built especially to murder men, women and children boggles the mind even today.
Sixth, the resistance groups of Jews and non-Jews who did save many Jews:
Most people know nothing or very little about these groups in France and other countries whose members risked their lives to smuggle children out of the Warsaw Ghetto, or help refugees cross the border from Vichy France into neutral Switzerland, or help Jews cross the Pyrenees (on foot) into neutral Spain. Sometimes the smallest act saved many lives.
In conclusion, all of us who care about the accurate representation of history have a responsibility to educate people who say that all the Jews went as “sheep to the slaughter.”
Read this article about Judy Batalion’s 2021 nonfiction book THE LIGHT OF DAYS: THE UNTOLD STORY OF WOMEN RESISTANCE FIGHTERS IN HITLER’S GHETTOS.