Crisis of Orientation and the Discourse of Violence of the Fin de Siècle

Abstract

In her book, Victoria J. Barnett takes up the central question of any historical discussion of the Holocaust: Why did most Germans remain passive in the face of the brutal and racist policy against the Jews? Her study focuses on the bystander phenomenon that does not only reveal a historical problem but raises ethical and moral questions about the behaviour of the majority of Germans during the Holocaust. Drawing from a wide variety of sources, Barnett examines the historical and ethical implications of bystander behaviour on three levels: the individual, institutional, and international. Mechanisms of denial and complicity functioned on all of theses levels. The books aim is to give the reader a more complex view on the bystander phenomenon that too can applied on more current appearances of genocide and terror.