(FB post responding to Uri Kurlianchik)
There are two ways to see why the Holocaust happened. Nazi Germany did it which it did or the European Nations were so indifferent to each other that their overweening nationalism allowed the Nazis to do it. I believe in the second way of seeing it. I'm a big lad (I'm 70) and if me and a couple of mates who are also big lads see some young idiot assaulting a fine old lady we do something about it because we have overwhelming force. European nations who collectively did have overwhelming force did very little and when they did do something, inspired solely by national interests which is what got us into the problem in the first place, we destroyed the Nazi idiots with the help of the Americans. But it was too late for the Jewish community in Europe to our eternal shame. I visited Belsen in 1961 when I was five years of age because we lived in the nearby NATO base of Hohne a former Displaced Persons Jews who survived the Holocaust. I had many great times as a kid playing in that army camp completely oblivious what it had been previously used for. I watched my Saturday children's matinee film in what was a former synagogue! Nice!
So everybody didn't take part in the sense that you mean but they did with regard to ignoring world collective security when there had been a multi-nation world discussion and the embodiment of it in the League of Nations . World collective security is the only way forward for all nations and I would say that if I wasn't a religious Baha'i. I'm a Baha'i and our World Centre is in Haifa in Israel.
What would have protected European Jews then and will protect everybody now is world collective security mediated through international democracy for only those problems which concern the international level. This is to be expressed in a democratic World Parliament which democratically controls a World Government also reporting to a World Tribunal which delivers "its compulsory and final verdict in all and any disputes that may arise" (Baha'i Writings).
My Baha'i way of seeing things in this comment is backed in this book which I've read several times,
"It [the Holocaust] depended also upon collaborators from countries far beyond the German border; and it depended most of all, one survivor has remarked, ‘upon the indifference of bystanders in every land’. "( Hugo Gryn , in conversation with the author Martin Gilbert in "The Holocaust")
And in typical Baha'i fashion of attempting to bring about unity in everything we do my comment ends in more or less agreeing with you !
