The bystander effect

It’s a myth.

Fearless reporting, a behind-the-curtains look at how journalism is made — and an unabashed point of view. Welcome to Chills.

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Part of a wall at one of Birkenau’s crematoria.

Traces of a red brick wall. Smooth, small stones atop it. A silent wood.

We stood at the remains of one of the crematoria at Birkenau, a camp that stretched endlessly in every direction. The smooth stones were a reminder that people had been here before — it is a Jewish tradition to place stones on graves as a sign of remembrance of the dead. The rest of the destroyed structure was a reminder of the hundreds of thousands murdered.

We’d just walked the uneven, muddy path that so many were forced to walk between thin birches to their death. (See video below.)

Of the many emotional hours I’d spent with my colleagues at our journalist symposium at Auschwitz, this was probably the most painful. It’s likely why I finally broke down.

Over eight hours of walking through the different camps within Auschwitz (including Birkenau), our tour guide had given us an extraordinary amount of information about what had happened there. But while standing at the crematorium toward the end of our tour, he launched into a talk about being bystanders, imploring us to act, to not spend our lives as passive bystanders. It was not a short speech. And the more he said that word, bystander, the angrier I got. I finally interjected:

“As journalists, we are not ‘bystanders,” I said. “We are witnesses.”

The guide sort of waved this away and continued. My anger mounted.

At one point I again interrupted to ask whether our group had ever heard the story of Kitty Genovese. Genovese was 28 when she was murdered in Queens, N.Y., in 1964. It was the middle of the night. A man stabbed her in the back and stalked her through her own apartment complex, raping and finally stabbing her to death. Soon after, The New York Times reported that no one had tried to help Genovese. That despite her cries being heard by many in the densely packed complex, no one cared enough to get involved. The result of the murder led to decades of study of what psychologists dubbed the “bystander effect,” in which no one lifts a finger to help someone while surrounded by other witnesses.

In the end, however, the story of what happened the night of Genovese’s murder was proven incorrect. A number of neighbors had called the police. And there was no evidence to show that others heard anything and didn’t act.

As I described this to our group at Birkenau, my voice broke. I was surprised to feel tears in my eyes. People do act. People do try to help. Rather than press my point, I walked away, considering why I’d finally broken down.

My entire career — my life — is built on the premise of doing something. Whether is it “merely” witnessing — listening to traumatic stories that someone is sharing for the first time — or writing about what they endured, or taking evidence I’ve gathered in a war zone to the International Criminal Court, or helping to catch a gang rapist and his group that had raped nearly 50 little girls in the Democratic Republic of Congo — and then going on to raise $20,000 for their medical and psychological care — I care and I act. I am not a bystander.

Is this something you think about? It’s a thought and entreaty engraved in my soul.

I grew up watching endless Holocaust documentaries and living among people who had numbers tattooed on their arms. I know full well what I would have done if I were alive during the Holocaust, what my role would have been. It certainly would not have been that of bystander.

You?

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