Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning
I. Ordinary Men is the disconcerting examination of how a typical unit of middle-aged reserve policemen became active participants in the slaughter of tens of thousands of Polish Jews.
Reserve Police Battalion 101 was made up of approximately 500 men most from working and lower-middle-class neighborhoods in Hamburg Germany. They were police reservists, not trained in combat, some of whom worked with and had been friendly with Jews before the war.
Major Wilhelm Trapp, a WWI veteran and career police officer headed the battalion. On July 13, 1942 the 101st Police Battalion arrived in Jozefow where Major Trapp informed his men they had received orders to perform a "very unpleasant task". They were to round up all the Jews, separate the males of working age (to be taken to a work camp), and the remaining women, children and elderly were to be shot immediately. Pappa Trapp (as he was called by his men) then offered the battalion an unbelievable proposition; any of the older men who did not want to participate in the assignment, could excuse themselves without consequence. Very few refused. This was to be the beginning of one of the most brutal, steadfast, ruthless campaigns in Poland.
Following the massacre of over 1,500 Jews in Jozefow, the 101st Police Battalion participated in the cleansing of the ghettos, the deportation of 42,000 victims to the gas chambers of Treblinka, the "Jew Hunt" and the gunning down of over 38,000 Jews
during the Harvest Festival in the Lublin district. At the conclusion of their rampage, the body count was at least 83,000 Jews. ...
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...e in jeopardy.
I chose Ordinary Men because I wanted to come to some understanding as to how people can commit mass murder without a second thought. One of the most disturbing facts regarding the men is that they were given a choice to extricate themselves from the very beginning and so few chose to do so. I found myself trying to find valid reasons as to why they did what they did, but could not. I think it is only human to want to find a rationale for such contemptible, uncivilized actions. Browning, Christopher. Ordinary Men; Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. 1st edition. New York: Harper Perennial, 1993.
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