Does Hitler deserve all of the blame for the Holocaust and its continuation? Think before you answer this question. For many people, the immediate answer would be, "Yes! Of course he did it all! What kind of question is that?" The truth is, we've been taught over and over again that Hitler was a very bad person, and he was. He was easily one of the cruelest leaders in modern history. But does Hitler really deserve all of the blame for the Holocaust? Weren't there other factors that contributed to the largest systematic extermination of a people in modern history?

The debates on this topic, of course, could go on and on. But how is it possible that one person, just one person, could be responsible for the killing of millions of innocent people? There are definitely other layers and perceptions of the issue.

When the Holocaust began, Hitler commanded his highest ranking officials to contain the Jews in small ghettos. Then, they sent them to concentration camps, giving them false hope to become free of the camp. Finally, the last step of Hitler's scheme for the mass extermination of an entire population was put in place: the final solution, also known as throwing Jews into the crematorium or starving them.

The officers all claimed to have been brainwashed by Hitler or were so terrified of being killed that they followed in his footsteps blindly. But what if someone, or even a group of people, had the courage to infiltrate the Nazi forces from the inside and managed to delay or even prevent the Holocaust? What if the Nazi soldiers, in an effort to preserve their humanity, let the Jews go? What if they even attempted to overthrow their leader? History may have turned out differently.

Hitler set the Holocaust in motion, but what continued it for as long as it did last? Ordinary citizens like you and me continued it. We are the bystanders. The fuel to keep the Holocaust was none other than the indifference of normal people, even that of the Allied Powers. The Allied Powers are claimed to have had at least some knowledge about all the atrocious activities going on inside the German borders, but they did little about any of it. After all, they had a war to focus on and couldn't worry about the genocide of more than six million innocent people, right?

Had the Allied Powers not have been so indifferent about the injustice the Jews were facing in their own homelands, there may have been much fewer people killed.

When the trains full of prisoners passed by the regular citizens of Germany, they didn't give them a second glance. This was usual. Enslaving millions of people and later killing them was usual in Germany during World War II. According to Elie Wiesel's "Night" the country folk actually took great pleasure in dehumanizing the starving prisoners by throwing them meager scraps of food and watching them fight over them like rabid animals.

People did this because it was so much easier to believe that the prisoners being taken really were animals. It was easier for the people to believe that they were living in a good and just world where such acts didn't even exist, much less thought about, as outlined in Elie Wiesel's "The Perils of Indifference" speech. Indifference allowed people to turn away from these problems, even use them to their own benefit. It was much more attractive than actually helping others and becoming part of the problem.

It also contributed to the largest genocide in modern human history.

The citizens also claimed to have been brainwashed by Hitler or that they didn't know what was really happening inside the walls of the work camps and assumed that wherever the prisoners were being taken, they were "happy." People could clearly see the smoke and smell the stench of burning flesh. Indifference helped them ignore all of that. The Allied Powers claimed to have known nothing of the events. The Nazi officers claimed to have been brainwashed or that they were just too scared of the consequences. They just couldn't defy their "savior." They couldn't do it for the lives of millions of innocent people.

These things are all true, but the reason for the Holocaust's continuation comes down to one thing that everyone shared in common: indifference.

Indifference leads to questions that test your selfishness against your selflessness. During the Holocaust, these questions were on the minds of everyone struggling to cope with what was happening right before them.

Why should I help other people when it's clearly not part of my problem? Why should I risk the consequences just to help a few people? Why should I stand up against the authority?

Because history repeats itself.If you do these things, you could break that chain and change the course of history. That's what matters.