All the Other Neighbors: Communal Genocide in Eastern Europe

This chapter explores the dynamics of mass killings of Jews and offers some explanations for the native population behavior in the context of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. It considers the phenomenon of communal genocide during the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. The chapter reviews how historians (and the public) have analyzed (or ignored) this form of genocide, which was most often carried out by locals, not the Nazis themselves. It also explores the history of local massacre and how the Nazis harnessed it. The chapter examines the bloody communal violence that occurred in Lwow in the summer of 1941. It provides an overview of the modern memory of such violence and some explanations for the phenomenon of communal violence in the Holocaust. The chapter deals with the communal aspects of genocide by non-Germans.