Institutions like the theater, restaurants, and even the church completely crumble. All of the values society seemed to cherish go out the window. In addition, many images bring the Holocaust to mind. For instance, the foreboding walls of Oran reflect the notion of Fortress Europe. Residents are trapped inside. Escape is a dodgy business, and those who try put themselves at great personal risk. Another image of the Holocaust in Oran is the burning of bodies. This action is unthinkable under normal circumstances, but in plague time it prevents the spread of disease. In Nazi time, it was a tool of pure genocide. The image of burning bodies alone is enough to immediately draw a comparison to the Holocaust. Camus’ allegory sheds great light on the Holocaust.
	The Rieuxs of the real world are few and far between. The French village of Le Chambon was a haven for Jews (and was where Camus lived as he wrote The Plague). The residents reflect sentiments of common decency when explaining their motives. They are the existential heroes of the Holocaust—with no notion of self-advancement, they put themselves at great risk to save Jews from the Nazi death camps.
	On the day after France surrendered to Germany, the congregation in the Church of Le Chambon agreed to a code of conduct. The key word was “resist.” But furthermore, they agreed to resist Nazi influence “without pride, and without hate.” Andre Trocme was instrumental in leading the congregation to these decisions. Marguerite Roussel, a resident of Le Chambon, says, “we never analyzed what we were doing. It happened by itself.” After the Holocaust, there was no grand reward for those who helped the Jews. The world returned approximately to normal, with those who lost something in the Holocaust being the only ones who felt its lasting effects. After the Holocaust, the hiding Jews left Le Chambon, and the residents never heard from them again. They made no grand thank you. The residents of Le Chambon were neither surprised nor offended. This clearly impacted Camus. He designed characters who took on the burden of helping the victims with neither questions nor self-interest, and who were forgotten about once the epidemic was over. The people of Le Chambon set an example that too few others followed. They saved with no notion of reward.
	By offering the conjecture that those who helped the Jews during the Holocaust had nothing to gain by doing so, Camus explains why so many bystanders witnessed the systematic murder of millions without so much as lifting a finger to help. In making an effort to save Jews, the stakes were astronomical—anyone with a Jew-saving agenda could readily expect a death sentence from the Nazis. The payoff, to some, seemed small. They would save some lives, but those people would then go on their way and the life of the savior would be largely unchanged. Bystanders saw no reason to risk their life if the net result, as they saw it, was that their lives would go on unchanged.
