That's what everything I ahve read on the subject says. Not that there was not a lot of antisemitic help in Western Europe -- for France, see Ophuls' devastating The Sorry and the Pity, or Louis Malle's Au Revoir Les Enfants. But maybe because of the heritage of the porgrams, the eastern Europeans, especially the Slavs, were willing to kill and to allow and assist with killing on a large scale. There is a reason that most of the camps, and all of the extermination camps (Sobibor, Treblinka, Maidenek, Chelmno -- thosew ere the ones devoted wholly to murder -- Auschwitz-Birkenau, Dachau, and others were also labor camps with an extermination section) were in Poland. The Poles still hate the Jews, and there are none of us left in Poland any more. Maybe 10,000.
I should mention that when my kids were smaller we used a babysitting service run by Poles that provided Polish girls. One was a Warsaw MD studying for her US certification. Another, Magda, very sweet; we asked her where she was from, she pales and said, Auschwitz. Not, interesting, Oszweicim (sp?). How terrible to be from there, and to have that pall hang over your inevitable answer to that inevitable question. She was great and the kids loved her. Sort of like being from, I don't know, is there an analogy
The Hungarians, not. Eichmann had to invade Hungary in '44, overthrow Horthy' regime, because the regime,a Nazi ally with antisemitic laws, was unwilling to hand over its Jews to be murdered. The Nazis installed the fascist Arrow Cross, which had no scruples.
The Romanians were almsot the worse, btw -- sorry, Joanna -- only the Latvians approached them in blood lust. Eichmann had to stop the pograms in Bucharest to get the killings on a rational, efficient basis taht didn't involve splattering the stretts and walls with blood, disrupting business. Of course the Germans have to take final responsibility -- it was their idea, their plan, their operation.
Hillberg has a short, great, hard to read book called Victims, Perpetrators, and Accomplices, or something like that. Worth a read for those interested.
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