good of the many outweigh the good of the few

Under these difficult circumstances, what is morally right may not be what is right for the safety of you and your own family. It also takes a certain grace to open your home or country to persecuted strangers, and risk your own life in doing so. It takes tremendous strength of character and lack of fear to stand up to such a foe. People probably said things like, 'Why should we share our meager resources with them?' or 'Yes, it's terrible, but shouldn't we help our own, first?' or “Leave their problems over there.” And I'm sure many secretly thought, 'Better them, then us.' Instead, they were aided and abetted by a general populace (also consumed with anti-Semitism) and world at large who chose to look the other way for many years, and protect their own, and not get involved (until their hands were forced and it affected them). Hitler and his Nazi henchmen couldn't carry out this mass extermination if they had major resistance. When I got to college, I realized an even greater and disappointing truth. Still, I could never understand what kind of person followed such orders? Were they weak of will? Mentally unstable? How could so many people be that flawed or so easily impressed by a demagogue of such obvious evil intent?

They were swept by National pride, swayed by overwhelming anti-Semitism, and 'just following orders', or so they claimed. However, I also learned that these weren't fundamentally evil or sociopathic people. His power was in convincing others to be good soldiers and carry out his plan. When I was a teenager and studied the Holocaust, especially the Nuremberg Trials, I realized Hitler didn't act alone. When I was a child, and heard about the Holocaust I could not imagine how a man could be as evil as Hitler and kill millions of innocent people.

Good of the many outweigh the good of the few