TFWOT

Our text for this Thursday’s flame-war open thread comes from David P. Gushee’s fascinating study, The Righteous Gentiles of the Holocaust:

The Righteous Gentiles were those Europeans who counted Jews within the boundaries of moral obligation while the most powerful nation in Europe was putting to death every Jew it could find. In welcoming hunted and hated strangers they risked the destruction of themselves and their loved ones. Such actions marked a reversal of all-too-customary human moral practice. Most often, loved ones are helped and protected at all costs, while equally needy strangers — especially those defined as “enemies” — are ignored or shunned. Rescuers were those who considered it morally obligatory to offer safe haven to the needy stranger, even though the action might mean death for those whose well-being mattered the most to them. …

Why did the rescuers risk their lives to help Jews, when the great majority of their neighbors did not? The question runs like a scarlet thread through every discussion of the Righteous Gentiles. Other questions follow, such as: What, besides the fact that they rescued Jews, set these people apart from those around them? Were they raised differently? Were they members of particular social classes or partisans of particular political ideologies? Were they people of a certain personality type? Were they less (or more) inclined to religious conviction, or religious conviction of a certain type? What motivated their behavior? Or was motivation irrelevant, and coincidental situational factors more significant instead? …

The import of the … data is that, just like age, gender, class and politics, religion does not prove to be a significant predictor of rescue behavior. This is true across the board, from religious background and education to personal levels of religious commitment. A Jew in need could not expect that, simply because a Gentile was “religious,” the Gentile would help the Jew.