Most narratives out of the Holocaust from the Nazis point of view are stories of soldiers or citizens who were forced to partake in the mass killings of the Jewish citizens. Theses people claim to have had no choice and potentially feared for their own lives if they did not follow orders. Neighbors, The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland, by Jan T. Gross, shows a different account of people through their free will and motivations to kill their fellow Jewish Neighbors. Through Gross’s research, he discovers a complex account of a mass murder of roughly 1,600 Jews living in the town of Jedwabne Poland in 1941. What is captivating about this particular event was these Jews were murdered by friends, coworkers, and neighbors who lived in the same town of Jedwabne. Gross attempts to explain what motivated these neighbors to murder their fellow citizens of Jedwabne and how it was possible for them to move on with their lives like it had never happened. The account of Jedwabne is unique in the fact that it focuses on one mass murder of roughly 1,600 Jewish residents, which occurred in July 1941. The murder occurs during the violent German campaign of anti-Semitism in Poland. The main occurrence seen across Germany and Poland of the anti-Semitism campaign was the killing and justified harassment of Jewish residents. Without a doubt the event in Jedwabne was triggered by Nazi influence. What is interesting is how Gross represents these influences. He shows that the killings of Jedwabne were planned, organized, and enthusiastically conducted by local authorities and citizens of the non-Jewish community. Gross also points out that it is possible that Germans did not participate in this killing and that it is even possib... ... middle of paper ... ...e of Jedwabne to seriously examine what occurred in their town. What truly influenced the murders to have occurred by the non-Jewish citizens? Gross used excerpts of the accounts that occurred. Often they seem to be untold stories that were hidden away. The stories are heart wrenching and painful. It can be understood why for so many years these people chose to hide the truth. These people murdered their friends, co-workers, and neighbor whom they lived with on a daily basis. Those involved made a conscious decision to partake in the murders they were not innocent bystanders. Some chose to partake out of fear for themselves and their families, while others had deep resentment and hate for these people. Some of it was inspired by Nazi Germany, but there had to be something deep inside those people that prompted them to act with such hate and disregard for others.
The atrocities of war can take an “ordinary man” and turn him into a ruthless killer under the right circumstances. This is exactly what Browning argues happened to the “ordinary Germans” of Reserve Police Battalion 101 during the mass murders and deportations during the Final Solution in Poland. Browning argues that a superiority complex was instilled in the German soldiers because of the mass publications of Nazi propaganda and the ideological education provided to German soldiers, both of which were rooted in hatred, racism, and anti-Semitism. Browning provides proof of Nazi propaganda and first-hand witness accounts of commanders disobeying orders and excusing reservists from duties to convince the reader that many of the men contributing to the mass
“The War Against The Jews” by Lucy Dawidowicz explores a very dark time in history and interprets it from her view. Through the use of other novels, she concurs and agrees to form her opinion. This essay will explore who Dawidowicz is, why she wrote the book, what the book is about, what other authors have explored with the same topic, and how I feel about the topic she wrote about. All in all, much research will be presented throughout the essay. In the end you will see how strongly I feel about the topic I chose. I believe that although Hitler terrorized the Jews, they continued to be stronger than ever, and tried to keep up their society.
Throughout The Butcher’s Tale: Murder and Anti-Semitism in a German Town, the murder of Ernst Winter in Konitz is very much a reflection of the overall attitudes of many Europeans during the early 20th century. It was clear that once the anti-Semitic attitudes started to become prominent in society, they spiraled out of control and started to take over entire communities. The Jewish people were blamed for crimes they did not commit, were excluded from society, and suffered from acts of violence and hate speech. Wild stories began to be spread all over town and people started to believe everything they heard, even if there was no substance behind it. This caused lots of problems in Germany, as well as Europe in general, since many people got
During World War II, many German soldiers killed thousands of innocent lives, especially Jewish. However, not all lives lost during World War II, and the Holocaust be accounted for by German soldiers, and the mobile killing task force, Einsatzgruppen, but citizens themselves. In the book, Neighbors by Jan Gross, studies a Polish town called Jedwabne during World War II. The book provides evidence on a mass killing on July 10, 1941, by Polish citizens. The Polish citizens murdered roughly 350 victims, Jewish, in Jedwabne. This evidence brought to light by the author shows not all Germans were accountable for all the mass murders during the time period.
Murders inflicted upon the Jewish population during the Holocaust are often considered the largest mass murders of innocent people, that some have yet to accept as true. The mentality of the Jewish prisoners as well as the officers during the early 1940’s transformed from an ordinary way of thinking to an abnormal twisted headache. In the books Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi and Ordinary men by Christopher R. Browning we will examine the alterations that the Jewish prisoners as well as the police officers behaviors and qualities changed.
On July 13, 1942, the Jewish community of Jozefow, Poland was annihilated by Reserve Police Battalion 101, who was working with Einsatzgruppen, the most fanatical members of the SS. This group received orders to collect the town’s Jews and to kill them all, except for the young boys who could perform labor. Christopher Browning’s arguments in his essay, Reserve Police Battalion 101, reveal that the humans who partook in the killings of Jews were just humans doing typical things. They were blindly obedient and pressured by their peers. Also, when people are around their friends, they can have a tendency to be less moral and humane.
The events which have become to be known as The Holocaust have caused much debate and dispute among historians. Central to this varied dispute is the intentions and motives of the perpetrators, with a wide range of theories as to why such horrific events took place. The publication of Jonah Goldhagen’s controversial but bestselling book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust” in many ways saw the reigniting of the debate and a flurry of scholarly and public interest. Central to Goldhagen’s disputed argument is the presentation of the perpetrators of the Holocaust as ordinary Germans who largely, willingly took part in the atrocities because of deeply held and violently strong anti-Semitic beliefs. This in many ways challenged earlier works like Christopher Browning’s “Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland” which arguably gives a more complex explanation for the motives of the perpetrators placing the emphasis on circumstance and pressure to conform. These differing opinions on why the perpetrators did what they did during the Holocaust have led to them being presented in very different ways by each historian. To contrast this I have chosen to focus on the portrayal of one event both books focus on in detail; the mass shooting of around 1,500 Jews that took place in Jozefow, Poland on July 13th 1942 (Browning:2001:225). This example clearly highlights the way each historian presents the perpetrators in different ways through; the use of language, imagery, stylistic devices and quotations, as a way of backing up their own argument. To do this I will focus on how various aspects of the massacre are portrayed and the way in which this affects the presentation of the per...
Christopher Browning describes how the Reserve Police Battalion 101, like the rest of German society, was immersed in a flood of racist and anti-Semitic propaganda. Browning describes how the Order Police provided indoctrination both in basic training and as an ongoing practice within each unit. Many of the members were not prepared for the killing of Jews. The author examines the reasons some of the police members did not shoot. The physiological effect of isolation, rejection, and ostracism is examined in the context of being assigned to a foreign land with a hostile population. The contradictions imposed by the demands of conscience on the one hand and the norms of the battalion on the other are discussed. Ordinary Men provides a graphic portrayal of Police Battalion 101's involvement in the Holocaust.
Imagine you’re eating dinner with your family on a quiet, normal night in your small town. Suddenly, a seemingly mad man comes to warn your family that millions of people of your race are being slaughtered. He advises that you immediately pack everything you own, and leave the place that has been your home your entire life. You probably wouldn’t take his warning very seriously, would you? Living in the twentieth century it was hard to imagine that such a barbaric act was actually occurring. Not adhering to this warning, however, cost millions of Jews their lives. Night by Elie Wiesel lets us into the minds of the Jews who were victimized, and Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning offers us the point of view of the
Gross discloses the ‘major but largely silent dimension of the Final Solution.’ He affirms that half of the six million Jews who were shot, gassed or starved did not ever see a concentration camp. He thus shows the multiplicity of ways in which the victims of the Holocaust perished. The carnage that took place ruptured the social landscape. Gross’s historical investigation proves how “the entire town council participate in this murder of the Jews.” Supported by personal testimonies, he shows how the Polish population bestially massacred the town’s Jewish residents. He further adds that “everybody who was in the town that day and in possession of a sense of sight, smell or hearing either participated in or witnessed the tormented deaths of the Jews of Jedwabne.” Herewith, “a bunch of ordinary men” catapulted, with a sense of immediacy, to perpetrators and
Jan T. Gross introduces a topic that concentrates on the violent acts of the Catholic Polish to the Jewish population of Poland during World War II. Researched documentation uncovered by Gross is spread throughout the whole book which is used to support the main purpose of this novel. The principal argument of Neighbors is about the murdering of Jews located in a small town, called Jedwabne, in eastern Poland. During this time, Poland was under German occupation. With an understanding of the that are occurring during this era, readers would assume that the Nazis committed these atrocious murders. Unfortunately, that is not the case in this book. The local
The history of the Jewish people is one fraught with discrimination and persecution. No atrocity the Nazis did to the Jews in the Holocaust was original. In England in 1189, a bloody massacre of the Jews occurred for seemingly no reason. Later, the Fourth Lateran Council under Pope Innocent III required Jews to wear a badge so that all would know their race, and then had them put into walled, locked ghettos, where the Jewish community primarily remained until the middle of the eighteenth century. When the Black Death ravaged Europe in the medieval ages, many Europeans blamed the Jews (Taft 7). Yet, the one thing that could be more appalling than such brutal persecution could only be others’ failure and flat-out refusal to intervene. Such is the case with the non-Axis coutries of World War II; these nations failed miserably in their responsibility to grant basic human rights – even the right of life – to Jewish immigrants prior to World War II.
Who were the Nazis? Monsters? Psychopaths? Amoral? Or were they ordinary men that have rationalized their actions away? Gitta Sereny explores this perplexing image of Nazis and their consciences through her in person interviews of Franz Stangl, the Commandant of Treblinka, in her book Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience. Sereny ensures that she speaks not only to Stangl but also to his wife, his sister-in-law, men who worked with him, survivors of Sobibor and Treblinka, witnesses of events at Sobibor and Treblinka, those connected to the Euthanasia Programme in which he was involved, and those connected to his escape route after World War II (p. 16-18). Sereny works to humanize Stangl, and present him the opportunity to rationalize his role in killing hundreds of thousands of people. Though throughout the book she does not allow for Stangl’s rationalizations to
Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning, and Neighbors by Jan Gross are both nonfiction accounts of Genocide during the Holocaust that share similarities in the fact that they delve into the minds of the killers that both tortured and committed mass murder on the Jews during World War II. Each account, however examines different events and two different groups of people in World War II, Browning examines the “ordinary men” of the German Reserve Police Battalion 101 and their participation in the killings of at least 83,000 Jews. Gross on the other hand, examines the brutal torture and eventual murder of an estimated 1,600 Jews in Jedwabne, a town in Southern Poland, by a group of so called “neighbors” or Polish
The main focus of the post war testimony of Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Hoess, Commandant at Auschwitz from May 1940 until December, 1943, is the mass extermination of Jews during World War II. His signed affidavit had a profound impact at the Post-War trials of Major War Criminals held at Nuremburg from November 14, 1945 to October 1, 1946. His testimony is a primary source that details and describes his personal account of the timeline, who ordered Auschwitz to become a death camp, and the means used to execute and exterminate millions of Jews. Obtained while tortured nearly to death under British custody, the authenticity and reliability of this document is questioned due to arguable inconsistencies that exist. However, the events sworn to in his testimony have been recounted and corroborated by witnesses and thousands of survivors.