I think I wrote about it on the site before... during one of our visits to Yad Vashem, we had the opportunity to speak with a Holocaust survivor. Tattoo and everything. He was very young when the Nazis came for his family. He said that he remembered a policeman came into the courtyard of the complex where his family and numerous other Jews lived, fired his rifle into the air and ordered everyone to get on the trucks. They eventually ended up in a death camp and most of his family died there.
After he shared that vignette with us I recall thinking to myself, "Why didn't your father put the muzzle of HIS rifle out the window and shoot that Nazi fuck in the face?" But I know that's from a place of ignorance on my part. I don't know the whole picture. Maybe if they would have done that, all of them would have died. Going along, at least some of the family survived.
My point of view also has the extraordinary benefit of hindsight. There wasn't a direct line from "leave your homes" to the crematorium. There were a LOT of interim steps. Kristalnacht, forced deportations, confiscations, Jew-specific "uniforms," discrimination, other-ing, ghettos, trains, forced marched, work camps... then death. I think if the people who died in the Holocaust knew what the end result was going to be, they would have fought harder at the beginning and things may have been different. But they had no way of knowing, and something like the Holocaust is absolutely inconceivable to some people.
And that's perhaps the most important takeaway--it didn't happen at once. There was a steady program of demonization, other-izing, discrimination, and deprivation of rights before the Nazi felt comfortable enough to say "fuck it, kill everyone." That's why you ALWAYS have to protect your rights--all of them--jealously. Because one day you're warm and cozy in your humble but happy apartment complex, and the next you're starving and naked in a locked and crowded room and someone is pumping in Xyclon-B.
The key is to not let it get to that point. And to do that, you have to resist. Early and often.