Unfortunately I was unable to attend the Holocaust Museum field trip, but after into the online exhibits on the website, I feel like I retained a good amount of information for not going to the actual museum. The first exhibit I read about was the “Some were neighbors” exhibit. This explained how the Nazis got help from a large amount of ordinary people all across Europe. Many people turned against their Jewish neighbors due to possible factors like fear, greed, or compassion. These ordinary people did things like looting Jewish-owned businesses. Many other attacks like this were targeted towards synagogues and other Jewish-owned businesses. One of the Nazis goals was to completely strip the Jewish out of their properties and forced them to sell their stores and businesses, causing many of those families to go into poverty.
Another way that these ordinary people helped to contribute to the Nazi’s terrible plans was just simply by doing their jobs. Railroad engineers, carpenters, and bankers took actions that very frequently had deadly consequences for the other Jewish people around them. Most of these workers had to aid the persecution and murder of Jews in Europe. Very few of these workers made the bold choice to risk their jobs, along with their lives, to try and help the Jews. Government officals and bankers had to enforce laws that specifically targeted Jews and ended up causing them to face taxes up to 96% of their assests that made it very difficult for them to flee the country. Police officers also took part in helping the Nazis carry the deportation as well as mass shootings. Nazi propaganda caused policemen to behave with extreme brutality to the so called “inferior” people in Poland.