What was your family history during the Holocaust?
I personally had a very large number of family members who died in the Holocaust. I was born in the Soviet Union and my entire family is ethnically Jewish. My grandmother came from a very large family with many cousins, aunts, and uncles. Yet she is the only one who survived the war because she was away serving as a nurse in the Soviet Army when her hometown was occupied.
Her mother and sister were able to hide thanks to the help of the janitor of their apartment complex. However, when one of their neighbors alerted the soldiers that there were Jews hiding in the janitor's supply room, they were killed by firing squad. Also killed by firing squad was the janitor who had risked his life to do the right thing.
I was born long after the war was over. But the city I was born in, Kiev, is the site of one of the largest massacres of the Second World War. Kiev had a very large Jewish population, roughly similar to the Jewish population of Chicago. When the Germans arrived, they had the Jews line up in front of the entire town and then they were marched off and killed by firing squad.
At least according to what my family tells me, the vast majority of the local population was very happy about what was happening. Anti-semitism was very strong in this part of the world and the Germans would have never been able to be successful with what they did if it had not been for the enthusiastic support and cooperation of the local population, because these were the people who were making sure that the Jews could not escape or run away.
The lesson to be learned from this, I believe, is that it is not just the people pulling the triggers who are responsible.
In the case of factory farms and slaughterhouses, the people in the videos are only doing what we are paying them to do on our behalf. If we were not buying their products, none of this would be happening. The number of animals which the industry breeds, tortures, and kills depends directly on consumer demand, with every person's choices affecting hundreds of animals.
The people who chose to do the right thing in the 1940's were risking their lives, yet many did so anyway. The people who choose to do the right thing today are only risking ridicule from their family and friends.