In wartime Europe, did people trust their neighbors? If not, how long did it take for them to regain their trust?

There is no way to generalize. There were “righteous Gentiles” who hid their Jewish and those who turned them in. There were schoolchildren who turned on their classmates and ostracized them. I would imagine that once persecution started, it would be self-preservation to at least feel some distrust of neighbors unless they have revealed themselves to be trustworthy.

Just to elaborate about after the war, many of the Jews and other minorities were gone although there is now a small but accepted Jewish community in Berlin. In France, I have heard older people who were still embittered about Vichy France. I believe the wounds heal slowly if at all.

My grandmother opened the little door window to the father of her sister in law, in WWII.
He was collaborating with the Germans, and searching for my grandfather (who had just time enough to oust the house and hide; otherwise he would have been sent to a work camp).
That was family.
Based on this one example, I can only assume that very soon during the beginning of the war already, many people started to mistrust (almost) everybody.
The guy served time after the war ended, by the way.

On a small related note, if I may:
I was talking about the war with my father, recently.
When I was small we used to visit my grandmother’s (this was my father’s mom, as opposed to the grandparents in the first story) house, every few weeks, and I was telling my dad that I remembered the decoration, and appliances, of the kitchen.
My father then told me that one day the Germans came in their house, to search for men (my grandfather was, I guess, in his twenties).
My father, and his older sister, were playing on the kitchen floor, in front of the kitchen cabinets.
Inside the cabinet was my grandfather, hiding for the soldiers.
The fear that there must have been during that war….
Terrible.

I don’t have an answer, but this is an interesting question in relation to current events in the US.
Today, we’re probably all more removed from our neighbors in the first place, and I live in a pretty conservative area. I’d trust the jellies more than any neighbor of mine.

Also: Hi! I’ve missed you all!

Hey Auggie!!

Depends on your religion.

If you were Jewish, your neighbors were likely to turn you in to the Nazis.

If you were Christian, you could generally trust your neighbors as long as they liked you, but the could just easily turn on you and make up lies to make your life difficult.

Many similarities to today (Gardening While Black) – see the newspaper today.

@augustlan, Hi! Missed you a lot.

That is in fact exactly the reason why I asked. Loss of trust of one another even among friends and neighbors is one of the most damaging effects of the current political crisis in the U.S. I was wondering how long it might take us to recover, if we ever will. I know there’s no single European experience, especially across religious and sociocultural lines that divided the persecuted from the rest; but I thought that even among members of a given community there might have been loss of trust if you didn’t know exactly where your neighbors stood and what they might do.

If the answer is twenty years, or fifty, or never, it might point to what it’s going to take to heal the ragged, raw, suppurating divides that have been inflicted on American society, to our great shock and horror.

I fear the divide will get worse before it gets better – if it ever does. It’s awful. :(

Victor Klemperer was born into a Jewish family. he was a World War I veteran, non-religious and married to a Christian woman. That gave him a little higher status in Nazi Germany for a non “Aryan”.

He survived the war, literally walking out of fire-bombed Dresden as a refugee mere days before his scheduled deportation to concentration camps.

His diaries are amazing. It’s an on-the-ground view of Nazi Germany through one man’s eyes. I’m sure I’ve linked them here before.

I Will Bear Witness 1933–41 A Diary of the Nazi Years

I Will Bear Witness 1942–45 A Diary of the Nazi Years

He also documented life in communist East Germany.
The Lesser Evil: The Diaries of Victor Klemperer 1945–1959

I mean, before my time but it’s well documented that the spirit of the British people helped them come through an obviously enormous period of their lives.
During the blitz of London in particular, whole communities would shelter in the underground tube stations with their entire families present being a common occurence.
There was no fear, or downtrodden feeling of dread, instead they would all come together singing songs & wait for the all clear before returning to their homes.

Yes, they were trusted. But, just like today, only so much.