We recently began our series of ‘Dialogues in Holocaust Education’ with an online session that looked at ‘bystanders’. We were honoured to be joined by Professor Mary Fulbrook, UCL’s Professor of German History and also by Ben Green, the great-grandson of Dr Michael Siegel.
The session raised interesting questions around how teachers might wish to approach the topic of ‘bystanders’ in their lessons about Nazi Germany in the 1930s and the Holocaust. Here, History teacher Andy Lawrence, asks (and offers tentative responses) three questions that struck him as a result of Ben and Mary’s talk and the ensuing discussion.
Ben began the session by outlining the story of his great-grandfather, Dr Michael Siegel, a prominent Jewish lawyer in Munich, who briefly features in UCL’s research informed textbook ‘Understanding the Holocaust: How and why did it happen?’. Ben related how Dr Siegel, acting on behalf of a client who had been illegally arrested, was beaten by SA thugs and paraded through the streets of Munich in March 1933.
How can I use Michael Siegel’s story to further our students’ understand of the situation faced by Jews in the early weeks of the Nazi regime?
Whilst I now use many personal histories to illustrate both pre-war Jewish life and the fate of Jews during the Holocaust, my students’ encounters with Jewish experiences in the early months of the Nazi regime was rather threadbare. The story of Ben’s great grandfather provides a powerful insight into the experience of Jews just a few weeks after Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor. Students can very quickly and graphically grasp how the protection of the law no longer applied to Jews, how the SA were able to act with impunity. Similarly, the photographs of a bloodied but unbowed Dr Siegel being led through the streets of Munich tells us much about the response of bystanders and the quiet resistance that individuals like Ben’s great-grandfather offered.
Should I invest more time in teaching about bystanders?
If I’m honest, ‘bystanders’ is not a topic that I have dwelt on to any great extent when teaching about the Holocaust in the past. With packed schemes of learning and a huge array of equally important content to deliver time is limited and choices need to be made. However, hearing Ben’s retelling of the story of his great-grandfather, seeing the photograph of Michael Siegel through the lens of the bystanders in the background and learning about the very active decisions that ‘Aryan’ Germans made when effectively isolating their Jewish neighbours made me think again. Mary Fulbrook’s research makes clear that bystanders had agency and were part of the process by which the Jews became to be seen as the ‘other’. There is also the issue of the impact of not teaching young people about bystanders. By not doing so students may well assume that ordinary ‘Aryans’ knew nothing about the Holocaust and were not complicit in the process that led to mass killing. That would be a distortion of the history. By understanding the role of the bystander students will better be able to acknowledge the implications and significance of the Holocaust. This knowledge will also further complicate notions of responsibility.
What does ‘Bystander Society’ mean for my teaching of discrimination against the Jews in 1930s Germany?
If I cast my eye over my teaching of the Holocaust one of the biggest changes that I have made over the last few years has involved an effort to humanise the victims. Including more Jewish voices, more victim rather than perpetrator narratives and authentic encounters with a multitude of Jewish voices has certainly enriched my lessons. Should I go further and humanise bystanders, given their ‘position’ as enablers of the Holocaust? In addition to that question is the day-to-day problem I’ve encountered of finding ‘authentic encounters’ with bystanders beyond a few photographs of ‘Aryan’ Germans attending auctions of the possessions of deported Jews. However, Professor Fulbrook’s research now opens up a treasure trove of such encounters in the archival evidence that underpins her research
I have found ‘Bystander Society’ to be invaluable in allowing me to humanise the impact of pre-war anti-Jewish policy and to chart the radicalisation of policy more effectively across the period. Previously, I was only able to take a top-down approach, and explain the various laws and decrees that were promulgated by the Nazi regime but not the impact that they had on Jews and the behaviour of ‘ordinary Aryans’.
To learn more about Dr Michael Siegel and ‘Bystander Society’ please take a look at a recording of the online session here:
