response 2

The responsibility of the bystander has been a highly debated topic for many years. There are those who feel it is the bystander’s civil duty to stand up for what is right and prevent injustice; others believe that the bystander should only worry about his/her personal happiness and avoid unnecessary conflict. But this often becomes a gray area for matters such as the Holocaust and Macbeth’s dictatorship because these issues make the bystander an actual part of the injustice. The bystanders that comply to the demands often insist that their refusal would have had no effect, that the wrongdoers would just punish the bystander and find someone else to carry out the original order. But I believe that this mentality is how genocides and tyrannies are allowed to grow. A single bystander may feel they have no major influence, but what they fail to realize is that there are other bystanders making the same decision. And when all these bystanders choose the “easy way out” instead of standing up to the evil, they allow the evil to spread.

Victor Capesius and Konrad Jarausch were right to assume that if they refused their positions, someone else would have filled them. However, if every German who felt uneasy about the Holocaust had refused their positions, millions of Jewish lives might have been saved. What these two men, and millions of men like them, failed to realize was their power over the Nazis. Dictators and tyrants are nothing without people to manipulate and boss around, and Hitler was no exception. He was able to succeed by controlling a small group of dedicated followers and using them to overpower everyone else. He was nothing more than a disturbed bully, but no one rose up to oppress him before it was too late. Eventually most Germans either became like Jarausch, doing small acts of kindness to ease their tortured conscious, or like Capesius, brainwashed by Hitler’s teachings and left with no compassion.

Macbeth started out as a noble duke that was respected and revered for his bravery, which was part of the reason people failed to realize the dictator he had become. When a person idolizes someone, it is often very hard for that person to break away from their perceptions about their idol and see the reality of their actions. They refuse to believe that their hero has failed them, and so they blindly continue to offer support.  And even if they realize how their idol has strayed, they often feel too indebted to the person to abandon or even question them. They would rather remain under the safety of an evil power than stand up for a fragile truth.

I am in no way claiming that Jarausch and Capesius should have valiantly stormed up to Hilter and refused his orders to kill Jews, nor saying that I would have had an easy time refusing these orders if I were in their shoes. And while I believe that they do share the blame for the people they murdered, I know that the true evil and malicious intent came from the Nazis. What I’m getting at here is a problem that plagues all of humanity- the belief that one person cannot make a difference, and therefore should do nothing or just give in. We must somehow find a way to learn from our mistakes, and begin to combat every injustice that we can. Eventually in Macbeth, surrounding nations and people of power realized the evils of Macbeth and sought to end his reign. Eventually in World War II, America and the Allied Forces realized the evils of the Nazi and sought to end them. But in both cases, it took violent extremes for people to step up and fight back. I hope that one day, people will learn to always stand up against evil, even when that evil does not directly affect them.