Light eyes/hair and Holocaust Survival

[vgambler33]

Light eyes/hair and Holocaust Survival

Lethal stereotypes: Hair and eye color as survival characteristics during the Holocaust

Suedfeld, Peter et al.

Journal of Applied Social Psychology. Vol 32(11), Nov 2002, pp. 2368-2376

Abstract
Notes that in spite of many false negatives and false positives quite familiar to the people of Nazi-dominated Europe, dark hair and eyes were salient among the physical stereotypes of Jews that the Nazis promulgated along with psychosocial ones. Many narratives of the Holocaust refer to someone surviving because he or she "did not look Jewish," and others being caught and killed because they did. A quantitative test of the validity and impact of this attribution showed that a higher proportion of Holocaust survivors than of a North American Jewish control group had light-colored hair, eyes, or both during the relevant period. The paper discusses possible reasons why these were survival characteristics under the conditions of the Holocaust, the possible short- and long-term effects of such selectivity, and implications for stereotyping in other situations of ethnic persecution and genocide.

dienekes.ifreepages.com/blog/archives/2003_07.html

[nerdling301]

this isn't proof of evolution/natural selection in any way, since nobody adapted to these changes. it was just the luck of the draw, whereas natural selection takes generations upon generations to establish many individuals with desired characteristics

[pavel2]

well obviously the Gwyneth Paltrow jewish type had a better chance of surviving than the swarthier semitic type. Heck, Hitler even had half jews in the nazi army. Most of them were more germanic than Himmler could ever hope to be. They were purely German at that point (If there was such a thing) and I imagined any blond/blue jews in concentration camps evoked more sympathy than the swarthy one's.