By: Emily Washburn, senior writer

Throughout the years, the Holocaust has created many questions for people – questions about life after the horrific events, questions about how to properly punish those responsible, and so many more. Today, we are in the wake of some of the answers that have been given, but still are able to create our own questions surrounding that time of such deep sorrow in our world’s history.

Amos Guiora, an Israeli-American author and professor of law at S.J. Quinney College of Law at The University of Utah, stood in front of a crowd in Leonard Auditorium on Wofford’s campus on Monday, April 16 with his own questions: is complicity of the bystander a crime? If so, can you be prosecuted for being a bystander?

Guiora is the only child of two Holocaust survivors who chose not to disclose much information at all about their experience to their son. However, Guiora stated that because of his parents’ situations and past as a part of the Holocaust, he has become dedicated and obsessed with analyzing the bystander in order to see if any legal retribution could be dealt on those that chose to remain silent in the midst of crime, who ultimately have aided that crime themselves.

Guiora decided to go to three countries, Holland, Germany and Hungary, in order to interview Holocaust experts, Holocaust survivors, and the children of bystanders. He wanted more information from people who were present during the events of the Holocaust in order to understand the bystander more fully. Guiora recalled that during his meetings with Holocaust survivors, they dressed to the nines and brought documents if they had them. The survivors discussed their own horrors and were totally immersed by the idea of the bystander who witnessed their distress and didn’t do a thing. The survivors viewed Guiora as their last chance to tell their story.

Guiora’s meetings with the daughters of bystanders were extremely different. The first woman he met with was a Dutch daughter of a bystander that matter-of-factly stated, “Yes my father was a bystander the day the Jews were deported in 1943 and didn’t do anything about it, what else do you want to know?” The second woman he met with was around 85 or 86 years old, had just been released from the hospital after having major surgery, but she insisted on meeting with him for 20 minutes. The woman ended up talking for hours to Guiora, telling her own story. At the conclusion of the meeting, she stated, “You need to leave my house now. For my entire life my father was my hero, the greatest man I ever knew. Until you walked into my house. I have never thought of my father as a bystander.” Guiora said that this was the hardest interview he has ever conducted.

So after studying and learning much about the bystander, Guiora decided to bring his thoughts into a modern context, discussing sexual assault and the bystander. His question in this context is: does the bystander owe the victim a duty to dial 911?

Guiora believes that a bystander does owe this to a victim, so he, along with others, are pushing the Utah State Legislature to pass the 911 Bill, a bill that would try to legally impose a duty on bystanders. If a bystander stood idly by while an assault or rape was happening, under the bill it would be classified as a Class C Misdemeanor that would hold the potential for a $1,000 fine and up to six months in jail. Although the state legislature has yet to pass the bill, Guiora says they will continue to push it forward into hopefully passing in the future. Ten other states have similar bills in place now.

To learn more about his studies on the Holocaust and his findings about the bystander, purchase Amos Guiora’s book, The Crime of Complicity: The Bystander in the Holocaust.