The Historical Deadliness of Indifference
In 1938, after Kristallnacht, the night Jewish-owned stores and synagogues had their windows smashed in by the SA, the psychologist Michael Müller-Claudius interviewed 41 randomly selected Nazi Party members. 26 of the 41 were extremely upset and indignant that the events happened. Only 2 advocated for more racially-based persecution. The rest were non-committal.
Afterward, as the Holocaust and WW2 were raging, the same psychologist interviewed 61 randomly selected long-term members of the Nazi Party, members who had joined the Party or the Hitler Youth before the Nazi seizure of power. 3 of the 61 applauded the idea of exterminating all Jews. An equal amount of members fully rejected anti-Semitism. Twelve of them advocated for a future Jewish state. But the vast majority of the respondents neither embraced nor denounced anti-Semitism. They had an “indifference of conscience” — “an attitude that could contain some sympathy for the Jews but was at best resigned and at worst callously uninterested.”
In the wrong times, indifference towards evil can be as cruel as the evil itself.
