Altruistic Personality

Rescuers Of Jews In Nazi Europe

Samuel P. Oliner

• Publisher: Touchstone
• Year: 1992
• eBook ISBN: 9781439105382
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: World War II

An enligtening and powerful exploration of those who risked their lives to help others during the Holocaust—and those who did not—and what we must do to ensure that such a tragedy never occurs again. Why, during the Holocaust, did some ordinary people risk their lives and the lives of their families to help others—even total strangers—while others stood passively by? Samuel Oliner, a Holocaust survivor who has interviewed more than seven hundred European rescuers and nonrescuers, provides some surprising answers in this compelling work.Samuel Oliver delves into the profound acts of altruism that emerged during one of history's darkest periods. Each interview provides a unique insight into the types of personalities that answer a call to action, and those that do not. By comparing these rescuers with bystanders, he provides a nuanced understanding of what drives people to act with extraordinary compassion—or to remain passive in the face of evil.Offering both a historical perspective and a roadmap for a more compassionate future, Altruistic Personality is not just a historical account—it is a call to action and a beacon for moral education. Relevant when it was first published and even more relevant today, Oliver argues that by understanding and fostering the traits of altruism, we can prevent future atrocities and bring out the better aspects of humanity.

Why Risk One’s Life?

World War II is rightfully remembered as a time of exceeding cruelty and barbarism. Nowhere was this brutality more evident than in the treatment of Jews, six million of whom were exterminated by unprecedentedly ruthless means in a period of about five years. Yet, also during this period, somewhere between 50,000 to 500,000 non-Jews risked their lives and frequently those of their families to help Jews survive. Although they constituted but a fraction of the total population under Nazi occupation, their significance transcends their numbers.

We regard the rescue of Jews as an example of an altruistic behavior. To be sure, there were those who helped Jews out of greed and self-interest; these individuals are not the subjects of our study. The individuals we are interested in are those who helped out of humanitarian considerations alone—without material rewards of any kind. What makes their behavior of particular interest is not only the fact that it was undertaken in the context of terror but that it was undertaken on behalf of an “outsider” minority group, marginal under normal conditions and increasingly rejected and despised as the poisonous seeds of Nazism spread all over Europe.

The true number of rescuers is unlikely ever to be known. Many perished in the effort; they became another wartime casualty, their specific activities lost in a statistic of over forty million World War II deaths. Among those who survived, many refused to identify themselves even after the war was over. Some refused to do so because they did not want public recognition for doing what they thought was their simple human duty. Others were afraid of revealing their activities—“Jew lover” was an unrewarding title in many places long after the Nazi menace had abated. Some continue to fear the shadowy hand of threatening neo-Nazi groups. Any counts of rescuers are thus, at best, estimates.

If the definition of rescue is limited to those who risked their lives without monetary compensation, the lower figure of 50,000 is more reasonable. This is the estimate given by Mordecai Paldiel,1 director of Yad Vashem’s Department of the Righteous in Israel, But even the highest estimate, a million,2 represents less than one-half of 1 percent of the total population under Nazi occupation. Clearly, then, even many basically good and decent folk, personally sympathetic, nonetheless regarded the fate of others as separate and distinct from their own—not quite pertinent enough, not quite important enough to compel intervention. What we need to understand is why rescuers could not share this perception of the fate of Europe’s Jews.

Much of human behavior can be explained as the result of broad social forces—political, economic, and social organizations compel the assumption of social roles that shape us. Living in any society demands submission to its organized patterns and behavioral requirements. Within such dominating structures, the individual often appears to be powerless. The existence of rescuers informs us, however, that individuals are not entirely powerless. We seek to understand the source of their power to resist the forces around them and why they chose to manifest that power in an act of altruism toward an outsider group despite the risks.

In search of answers we interviewed almost 700 persons living in several countries in Nazi-occupied Europe—406 rescuers, 126 nonrescuers, and 150 survivors. The rescuers in our sample were all identified as such by Yad Vashem, Israel’s memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. Part of Yad Vashem’s charge is to honor those who risked their lives to rescue Jews, in fulfillment of which a commission of eighteen members appointed by Yad Vashem investigates and determines who shall be designated a rescuer. The commission makes its determination based on evidence submitted by rescued survivors (or their friends and relatives), as well as ancillary documentation and personal interviews. Three overriding criteria determine selection: the rescuer had to be motivated by humanitarian considerations only, risked his or her own life, and received no remuneration of any kind for his or her act. As of this writing, Yad Vashem has identified some 6,000 such rescuers—at the time of the collection of our data, the number was approximately 5,500. The important point about Yad Vashem’s list is that all those identified thereon are authenticated rescuers—their activities corroborated by external documentation—and their humanistic motivations are attested to by the rescued survivors themselves. Ninety-five percent of the rescuers we interviewed are Yad Vashem designees; the remaining 5 percent are individuals we identified by virtue of our interviews with rescued survivors, using criteria similar to those established by Yad Vashem.

Most of our respondents are from Poland, Germany, France, and Holland, but also included are representatives from other countries, including Italy, Denmark, Belgium, and Norway. Most still live in their native countries; a few have emigrated to the United States or Canada. We designed a questionnaire and trained interviewers who met with each respondent for a period of several hours. The interviews were taped and subsequently translated into English, transcribed, coded, and analysed. Analyses were both qualitative and quantitative in character.

Our interviews were guided by several key questions, including: Was rescue primarily a matter of opportunity—that is, a question of external circumstances? If so, what were they? Was rescue a matter of personal attributes—particular learned values and personality characteristics? If so, what were they? Implicit in these questions is the notion that there may exist something called an “altruistic” personality; that is, a relatively enduring predisposition to act selflessly on behalf of others, which develops early in life. For this reason we were interested not only in what our respondents did during the war and the circumstances of their wartime lives but also in their parents and their youthful characteristics and behaviors as well as their current behaviors.

We included a sample of nonrescuers because explanations regarding rescue needed to address not only what rescuers may have shared in common but also whether their particular attributes were in some way different from others. If no discernible differences are found, then we must either conclude that rescue behavior was a matter of chance—that is, not really explainable—or that we have failed to look for those factors that might provide reasonable explanations.

Our comparison group consists of people not identified as rescuers either by Yad Vashem or our own means of corroboration but who lived in the same countries at the same time as the rescuers did. During the course of interviewing our 126 nonrescuers, we became aware of an important difference among the members of this group. In response to the question of whether they had done anything out of the ordinary during the war to help other people or to resist the Nazis, 53 responded yes; it turned out that they were either members of resistance groups or had helped Jews or sometimes both. Although we had no reason to doubt their claims, we did not have corroborating external evidence. Rather than exclude them from our study, we labeled them “actives”—that is, persons who by their self-reports either participated in resistance activities or helped Jews. The remaining 72 nonrescuers said they had done nothing out of the ordinary during the war either to help other people or resist the Nazis. We labeled this group “bystanders.” The statistical comparisons we report are based on two types of comparisons: (1) similarities or statistically significant differences between rescuers and all nonrescuers, including actives and bystanders, and (2) similarities or statistically significant differences between rescuers and bystanders only.

The sample of survivors served supplementary purposes only. They were helpful in illuminating some of the diversity of rescue conditions and rescuers, and we used their testimony in comparing rescuers’ assertions of their reasons for rescue with survivors’ perceptions of reasons.

Altruism is such a complex concept that some clarification of its historical and theoretical background is in order.

The word altruism is rooted in the Latin alter, which simply means “other.” It is credited to August Comte, who coined it about 150 years ago. The word itself was widely disseminated through the works of Herbert Spencer toward the latter part of the nineteenth century.3 Although it was favored and popularized by social reformers and explored by philosophers and theologians, with few exceptions, social scientists tended to ignore the term until recent times. Pitirim Sorokin4 gave the concept some academic respectability in the 1940s when he turned his attention to its meaning and dimensions and began to study it as a sociopsychological phenomenon. But not until the 1960s did other social scientists begin a serious study of the phenomenon. Not coincidentally, perhaps, this period overlapped with a renewed interest in the scientific study of morality, based largely on the seminal works of Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg.

Comte conceived of altruism as devotion to the welfare of others, based in selflessness.5 This probably comes closest to its consensual meaning as given in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary—“uncalculated consideration of, regard for, or devotion to other’s interests….” This suggests that the act needs to be performed entirely for its own sake apart from any considerations of self-satisfaction, pleasure, or utility. Is such behavior possible? Skeptics such as Machiavelli and Hobbes would argue that humans are incapable of acting out of any other motive than their own self-interest. Even those who might have a more benevolent view of human behavior—such as Helvetius, Plato, Marx, Freud, and mainstream psychologists6—suggest that people rarely act out of any motive higher than enlightened self-interest. Whereas Machiavellianism implies manipulating or even harming others for the sake of self, enlightened self-interest counsels helping others in light of reciprocal claims. Thus, what appears like altruism turns out at best to be intelligent consideration of the self.

On the other hand, Émile Durkheim believed that altruism exists in every society.7 Altruism exists, said Durkheim, whenever individuals abnegate their interests in favor of obedience for the sake of society. No society could exist unless its members acknowledge and make sacrifices on behalf of each other. Thus, said Durkheim, altruism is not merely “a sort of agreeable ornament to social life” but its fundamental basis.

Most definitions center on selflessness and motivation as critical elements of altruism. However, the degree of selflessness necessary and the type of motivation required vary considerably. At one extreme are those who insist that the altruistic actor must have no concern for self8 and derive no benefit from the act;9 at the other are those who say that an act that satisfies both the self and the other can nonetheless be considered altruistic.10 In between are those who maintain that it is sufficient that costs outweigh gratification.11 Proposals regarding the types of motivations necessary range from mere intention to help,12 to helping for any reasons other than external rewards,13 to insistence on specific internal states (such as empathy,14 or lack of concern with restitution),15 specific values (such as love or compassion),16 personal norms,17 or principles of justice.18

Each of the above presents its own set of conceptual and pragmatic problems. For example, if we say that the actor does not benefit, does this mean that he or she must derive no internal pleasure from the act? And does this exclude incidental benefits, derived as unforeseen by-products of the act? How can we assess practically whether expectation or gratification is outweighed by costs or rule out the possibilities of restitution or compensation as motivating mechanisms even if people say they performed the act for other reasons? Such problems, of course, are not unique to the construct of altruism. Any attempt to characterize internal psychological states is hindered by similar difficulties in knowing or quantifying another’s thoughts or feelings.

For the purpose of our study, we prefer a definition that relies on objective, measurable criteria. We characterize a behavior as altruistic when (1) it is directed towards helping another, (2) it involves a high risk or sacrifice to the actor, (3) it is accompanied by no external reward, and (4) it is voluntary. Rescue behavior in the context of the Holocaust meets these criteria. The behavior was clearly directed toward helping; it was very high risk, threatening life itself; it was accompanied by no external reward, according to the rescued survivors’ Yad Vashem testimony; and it was certainly voluntary—no external coercions required it.

The above criteria could encompass a variety of altruistic behaviors, such as saving drowning peopl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1: Why Risk One’s Life
• Chapter 2: The Historical Context of Rescue
• Chapter 3: The Acts of Heroism
• Chapter 4: The Social Context of Rescue Trust and Deception
• Chapter 5: Saving Others Was It Opportunity or Character
• Chapter 6: The Key to Altruism Values of Caring
• Chapter 7: The Roots of Human Attachments
• Chapter 8: Concern into Action
• Chapter 9: The Enduring Significance of Altruistic Acts
• Chapter 10: Moral Heroism and Extensivity
• Methodology
• Tables
• Questionnaire
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright