Culture | It took a continent

A new history focuses on the collaborators in the Holocaust

Dan Stone shows that people in various countries were willing participants in the Nazi horrors

An electrified barbed-wire fence separates male and female prisoners at a German concentration camp. A Nazi guard keeps watch in the foreground. The inmates appear to be in relatively good health at this point in their internment, indicating they may have arrived recently at the camp. | Location: Eastern Europe or Germany. (Photo by © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images) — Victims and perpetratorsImage: Getty Images

Feb 8th 2023

One day in June 1941, in the Lithuanian city of Kaunas, a local man—soon to be known as the “death-dealer”—picked up a crowbar and waited for his first victim. The city had just been captured by the Nazis and a German soldier recorded what happened next. Several dozen Jewish men were brought out one by one and beaten to death in turn. After each murder, the crowd, including women and children, clapped. They also sang the Lithuanian national anthem.

This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “It took a continent”