ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the bystanders, both individuals and nations, those who stood by and did nothing to help. It also considers non-Jewish resistance, including the actions of ordinary people who risked their lives to save Jews. William Rubenstein believes that the US response to the Jewish refugee problem in the latter half of the 1930s was better than many critics of US immigration policy suggest. Third-party protagonists who helped Jews are often called "righteous Gentiles" or "righteous Christians". In France, Catholic congregants were at times ordered by church authorities to assist in rescue activity; and in Poland, Catholic nuns engaged in third-party resistance at the behest of their convent superiors. As was the case in Le Chambon, religious or political sentiments could be used as ideological resources that mobilized third-party resistance. Ultimately, third-party resistance to the Final Solution not only required the mobilization of countermovements under optimal situational contingencies but also the mobilization of resources available only to governmental nation-states.
