What would you do?

[123everton]

After Hamburg had been heavily bombed, many German families found themselves homeless.
So the authorities, in full view of everyone, evicted the Jews and sent the to the Lodz ghetto.
Would you have taken that property?
If you had nowhere else to go, would you take that property, or would you look for communal accomadation in billets?

[ll_billym]

Why do you write you question set in WW2? Why don't you write your question about today? Why don't you say:

"If England was nuked tomorrow, and you, along with millions of other families were left homeless and the government evicted all the Jews, would you go and live in a Jews property or go and live in communal billets?"

It is exactly the same scenario and, therefore moral dilemma, as far as the individual in question is concerned and hopefully the answers will tell you more about that person which I assume is why you ask the question in the first place.

With your original question, any answers you get will be totally swayed by the way people think in the UK in 2009, or at least the way those people think they would think if they were in Hamburg in July 1944.

Personally, if the houses were empty I would most probably go and live in them unless my family really didn't want to.

[jno]

Would I go and live in a house that had previously been repossessed because the hard-working owner lost his job in the credit crunch? I guess so. If it's legal and in order... the fact that German wartime rules were inhumane doesn't alter the fact that they were laws; and clearly things are different in wartime.

There are things I wouldn't do, as a matter of conscience. But refusing a house for my homeless family probably isn't one of them. (I'm assuming I wouldn't have known much about the death camps at that stage, otherwise I might have thought twice - and then taken it anyway.)

[B00]

Agree with jno i'm afraid.

Yes, i'd have taken the house. My own family would have been more important to me at the time. Even if i'd known about the death camps and that's where they were heading, i'd have still taken the house.

[123everton]

Il-bilym, I ask it because it happened, it is not a hypothesis based entirely on whimsy.
I think the bombing raids related to 1942, the death camps as such were not in full swing, and to be fair, the residents in Hamburg would not have known of the conditions in Lodz ghetto.
It's a dilemma of empathy and justification, because they were lucky enough not to get bombed out, does it justify your occupation because they are persona non grata?
Everything the Nazis did in Germany was legal as according to their statute, should one acquiesce to an unjust law for personal profit?
From my own personal point of view I don't know what I'd do, I'd certainly be torn.
I wonder what to these surviving properties (or the land they sat on) after the war?
Was the new owner given possession?

[Sqad]

I agree with BOO and jno.......I wouldn't hesitate..........."never look a gift horse in the mouth"

[Ankou]

its still a hypothesis though as we cannot fully understand or comprehend the full circumstances from the perspective of the german populace at that time. for me i am the same as above, i would make a bee line for a house to get a roof over mine and my family's heads.

imagine if today that all immigrants living in uk council houses were deported for no over reason than being an immigant, from the country and those houses becamse free for anyone, then you would have the general masses clmbering over each other, fighting and killing to get their mits on one of those houses.

[123everton]

I agree it's still a hypothesis, comprehending what one would do in such a situation can only be that.
These houses were not council owned they were privately owned, based on your own scenario would you take your neighbour's house on the basis that theirs has the bigger garden?

[tamborine]

its still 'everyman for himself' or the Courts wouldn't flourish

[Ankou]

if i had no home as per your original scenario everton, then yes i would. but your second hypothesis refsr t my own home and the choice being garden size. is this not going off on a tangent.... ?

[ll_billym]

My point is that your 'real' scenario didn't happen to the people you are asking so you may as well make up another one, based today, to get a feal feel of how people might act as the dilemma would be the same. I feel your question wouldn't go down quite as well if you did that though so you probably did the right thing.

[123everton]

The impression I'm getting here is that what happened in Nazi Germany could happen here, maybe to a lesser extent but nonetheless.
I wonder what happened to the seized houses and land (if the house was destroyed by bombing) after the war, did the usurpers keep it?

[shaneystar2]

I really do wish my in laws were still alive when I see this sort of question and that I could sit them down ( my pa in law especially ) at my computer and then he could tell you all about what happened during the war from the German perspective .
He was a very peace loving man who didn't really want to go and fight for Adolf and Daß Vaterland but had no choice in the matter.
He said to me that in the war it was every man for himself and after serving in Russia being half frozen to death ,being shot and ending up in France where ,when the allies started to cross the Rhine and they knew it was all over he deserted .He stuck two fingers up at Hitler.And I don't blame him.
.Having been born in 1914 and never having known his own father who was blown to smithereens in the first lot before he was born and watching the struggle his mother had as he was growing up if this scenario had occured in his own personal situation during the war I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever knowing my pa in law as I did that he would have made sure his wife and family came first and would have taken any shelter, anywhere ,regardless, if they had been bombed out.
Not every German was a Nazi and not every Nazi was a German.
Size of gardens and to whom it belonged would not have come into the equation. A roof of some sort would have been quite enough .In desperate times people do desperate things.

I certainly wouldn't stand on ceremony if my family were homeless after being bombed out if this were to happen now .
You can't change history .These things happened .We just have to make sure it doesn't happen again .

[Lonnie]

I think I have a personel prospective on this, (good question by the way).

The answer should be yes, although morally speaking, still in the 1940s, if the legal owners came back, (although not many did), would the present residents make way for them?.

There're lots of if whys and buts to this.

Interesting.

[123everton]

I don't know whether this event (and presumably others in western Germany) fall under restitution, as it is being applied in Poland and other Soviet Bloc countries.
My Grandmother (God rest her soul) was bombed out with 3 kids on the floor and her husband away fighting the Germans, the thought of stealing someone elses house never crossed her mind.
Perhaps at the time many people thought the Jews deserved it, although I don't wish for this question to be about modern anti-semitism (feel free to indulge your own, secret. prejudices whilst considering) Ankou offers a good example with immigrants.
I suppose the question is how would you justify taking somebody's house for no particular reason other than who or what they are?