Choice, Human Behaviour & the Holocaust
29 March @ 2:30 pm – 4:00 pm
2:30 for 3pm
Some Were Neighbours: Choice, Human Behaviour, and the Holocaust, from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), explores one of the central questions of the Holocaust: how it was possible. While Nazi leaders planned and directed the genocide of the Jews of Europe, circles of collaboration and complicity rippled throughout governments and societies wherever victims of persecution and mass murder lived.
Focusing on human behaviour, the exhibition examines the motives and pressures that shaped individual choices – including fear, indifference, antisemitism, peer pressure, and the prospect of personal gain. At the same time, it highlights those individuals who did not betray their fellow human beings, reminding us that there is an alternative to complicity in evil acts, even in extraordinary times.
Romanian Holocaust survivor Lyonell Fliss, who survived the Iași Pogrom, will deliver the keynote speech, sharing his insights on collaborators and rescuers.