Confronting Complicity: Exploring Ordinary Germans’ Roles in the Holocaust

Jacob Wiener (standing second from right) and his brother Benno (standing at far left) pose in front of their father’s bicycle shop in Germany with a group of non-Jewish children from the neighborhood in 1929. One of the other boys in the picture later became a guard at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. —US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Jacob G. Wiener

The boys in this photo were more than just neighbors — they were playmates, even friends before the Nazis took power. Unbeknown to them then, hatred and prejudice would destroy their bond. Two were brothers and would flee Germany after their mother’s murder in an antisemitic attack, while another would become a guard at an infamous concentration camp.

Complicity among ordinary Germans took different forms in the Nazi regime’s early years. While some embraced the new anti-Jewish policies, others looked away as the Nazis isolated, impoverished, and assaulted Jews. In this digital program, we explore the complicity of many Germans in the Holocaust.

Confronting Complicity: Exploring Ordinary Germans' Roles in the Holocaust