Nicholas Winton helped 669 Jewish children escape the Nazis and his efforts went unrecognised for 50 years. Then, in 1988, while sitting as a member of a TV audience, he suddenly found himself surrounded by the kids he had rescued, who were now adults.

[u/RoyalChris]

[u/ComradeDizzleRizzle]

It's almost always the second answer.

[u/Lopsided-Weather6469 → u/ComradeDizzleRizzle]

Or they are in denial.

My grandmother was born in 1920; even though she first hand witnessed the Nazi regime she was a holocaust denier.

She actually hated the Nazis for sending her two brothers and her husband to war (one of her brothers died, the other two men were severely wounded), but still she claimed the holocaust didn't happen or at least was greatly exaggerated.

She simply refused to acknowledge that people were capable of perpetrating something like this.

One day she told me how she witnessed her Jewish neighbours, including a girl her age whom she used to play with as a kid, being taken away from their home by authorities, never to be seen again.

I asked her what she thought happened to them, but she refused to give me a clear answer.

[u/bamatrek → u/Lopsided-Weather6469]

It is absolutely insane what your brain will make or let you ignore to protect itself from horrifying realities. I'm disgusted by that, but also have to recognize that it's a design feature of the human brain. It's easy as an outsider to see the horror that causes and denounce it, but it's really more complicated that people like to believe.

It has some really hard to face truths about living in a human society when you realize how subconsciously people do choose willful ignorance.

[u/bigfootsdemise → u/Lopsided-Weather6469]

Wow. Thank you for the insight.

[u/slartibortfast → u/ComradeDizzleRizzle]

Even back then. Winton would have saved thousands more but FDR actively refused them. The greatest president.