St. Petersburg, Fla. – 927th Air Refueling Wing staff members recently toured the Florida Holocaust Museum, dedicated to educating people about the consequences of looking the other way. The Air Force now trains its members in bystander intervention, ensuring they know how to respond to offense words and actions. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Shawn Rhodes)
DACHAU, GERMANY – Shortly after Dachau’s liberation, American soldiers view the bodies inside one of the open railcars. Today, the U.S. Air Force educates all Airmen about how to intervene in small and large-scale situations to prevent the type of bystander behavior that allowed places like Dachau to exist. (Photo courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum/Eric Schwab)
by Staff Sgt. Shawn Rhodes
927th Air Refueling Wing
8/17/2012 - MACDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. -- The thing that 1st Lt. Charles Ferree remembers most about Dachau was the stink.
"The smell burned my nostrils and permeated my pores," he said. Ferree, an Army Air Corps pilot with the 9th Air Force said the only way he could get rid of the smell was to burn his uniforms.
In the Spring of 1945 Ferree flew medical and intelligence officers to a makeshift runway outside Frankfurt, Germany, to report about conditions at a recently liberated concentration camp.
"Most of us have some idea of the horrors the Nazis perpetrated on the European Jews," Ferree said in an interview decades later. "No one knows how many humans suffered and died at the hands of these ordinary men."
The Florida Holocaust Museum, in St. Petersburg, Fla., emphasizes how the inaction of the ordinary men and women around the world was a leading contributor to the horrors of the holocaust. Recently, the 927th Air Refueling Wing command staff visited the museum in an effort to tie together the training they receive on how 'not to stand idly by.'
"Many people today just aren't taking responsibility for what's going on around them in their society," said Col. Dave Pavey, 927th ARW wing commander. "Our current Air Force culture emphasizes that we don't tolerate the kind of bystander behavior that allowed the holocaust to happen."
The program that everyone in the Air Force is required to complete - from its wing commander down to its newest Airman - is Bystander Intervention Training. This training focuses on giving servicemembers training and options so that they can safely intervene when they see a potentially dangerous situation about to occur.
"This training was designed to prevent sexual assault, but there will always be vulnerable people that need people to intervene for them," said Staci Vileta, MacDill AFB sexual assault response coordinator.
Although the bystander training that Airmen receive is designed for small-level intervention, Vileta said that the training is equally valid when a person sees a crowd taking advantage of a person or a community.
"Everyone is vulnerable at some point in their lives. People join the military because they want to serve and protect those people," Vileta said.
Vileta enjoys quoting Edmund Burke, an Irish philosopher who supported the colonial cause in the Revolutionary War.
"Burke said that 'all it takes for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing,'" Vileta said. In her own words, she added, "Silence is an offender's biggest weapon. If we're silent, we all pay."
Pavey believes that incidents from sexual assault to the holocaust often happen when people feel like it isn't their place to intervene.
"The museum stands as an important lesson about what happens when people feel like they shouldn't get involved," Pavey said. "This museum is a testament to that, and it informs us about the importance of taking responsibility."
