One of the most persistent and pernicious myths about the Holocaust is that, once the orders for the "Final Solution" had been given, it was inevitable. It is generally assumed that, with a few exceptions, the Jews of occupied Europe were passive and that the gentiles were indifferent. Yet the admittedly rare instances of gentile defiance made all the difference to the survival of Jews in Denmark or Bulgaria, just as gentile hostility was often fatal to Jewry. This month's claim by the present Romanian government that "there was no Holocaust" in Romania (250,000 of whose Jews died, many of them at the hands of Romanians) shows that some nations are still in denial about their role. Inside the Reich, public protests could be effective, such as the spontaneous demonstrations in Berlin in 1943 by "Aryan" wives which prevented the deportation of their Jewish husbands to the death camps. At home, the German authorities were sensitive to peaceful opposition, but elsewhere only armed resistance made much impact. Neither resistance leaders nor the Allies seriously tried to disrupt the machinery of "evacuation".