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... ... middle of paper ... ...gen who portrays the Policemen as “Ordinary Germans” who willingly took part in the killing. This means he portrays them as a whole, who all reacted in the same way because they were all socially conditioned in eliminaitonalist anti-Semitism. For this reason a completely different portrayal of the perpetrators of the Holocaust is offered in each book, each defined by the way each historian views the way the German’s worked. Works Cited Browning, Christoper R. (2001) Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (Penguin Books : London) Goldhagen, Daniel J. (1997) Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (Abacus : London) Wood, Nancy (1999) Vectors of Memory: Legacies of Trauma in Post-War Europe, (Oxford) Shandley, Robert R. (1998) Unwilling Germans? The Goldhagen Debate, (University of Minnesota Press)
“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” (Elie Wiesel) The Holocaust is a topic that is still not forgotten and is used by many people, as a motivation, to try not to repeat history. Many lessons can be taught from learning about the Holocaust, but to Eve Bunting and Fred Gross there is one lesson that could have changed the result of this horrible event. The Terrible Things, by Eve Bunting, and The Child of the Holocaust, by Fred Gross, both portray the same moral meaning in their presentations but use different evidence and word choice to create an overall
Goldhagen's book however, has the merit of opening up a new perspective on ways of viewing the Holocaust, and it is the first to raise crucial questions about the extent to which eliminationist anti-Semitism was present among the German population as a whole. Using extensive testimonies from the perpetrators themselves, it offers a chilling insight into the mental and cognitive structures of hundreds of Germans directly involved in the killing operations. Anti-Semitism plays a primary factor in the argument from Goldhagen, as it is within his belief that anti-Semitism "more or less governed the ideational life of civil society" in pre-Nazi Germany . Goldhagen stated that a
The beginning of the book starts off by explaining the importance of Poland and how it reflects back to the Holocaust. Browning states the harsh trust right from the beginning. “The male Jews of working age were to be separated and taken to work at a camp. The remaining – the women, children, and elders were to be shot on the spot” (Browning 2). However still, stays focused on the fact that these men aren 't used to this kind of manner. Moving into chapter 5 Browning includes the pictures to show the process the Police Battalion 101 and the Jews had to go through. Police Battalion 101 was also involved in something called the “Jew Hunt”. This is a process in which the officers go and get the Jews who have either Evacuated, deported or ran a hide. The Officers would go in small groups and try to find the Jews. They usually are ordered to kill the Jews they find. Browning summed up the end of the book in chapter 13 “Ordinary Men”. By trying to answer questions such as “why did most men in Police Battalion 101 become killers” (Browning, 159) He finishes up the chapter with explaining the after effect on the officers. This was a very difficult and upsetting time for the Police Battalion 101 team. Browning ends this book with something he calls “Afterword” this is a time where Browning incorporates other books with the same viewpoint as the book Ordinary Men. He explains his opinion throughout this section. Browning ends the book on a single chart, the “Number of Jews Deported to Treblinka by Police Battalion 101” (Browning, 226). To me, this is a powerful message that many readers
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. The major focus of the book focuses on reconstruction of the events this group of men participated in. According to Browning, the men of Police Battalion 101 were just that—ordinary. They were five hundred middle-aged, working-class men of German descent.
War Changes People is an age old saying, but what makes an ordinary man go from average Joe to blood thirsty Nazis? As Browning, explains in her book “Ordinary Men”, the loss of humanity does not happen over night. The combination of War, racism, and “constant propaganda and indoctrination”, were key factors in understanding the assimilation of these men into the Nazi ideology (Browning, 186). Browning does a great job of contrasting the Reserve Police Battalion 101’s Massaacre at Józeów to later experiences which allows the audience can see these factors slowly coming into effect when reading the transition from reluctant compliance to enthusiastic killer.
Browning, Christopher. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.
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
In his book, “Ordinary men,” Browning examines the police me who committed, or performed the killing. First he explain to the readers that this men just ordinary people, but coming to think of it, what made this ordinary people perform the first massacred. Browning explain to us that this men were not chosen individual, nor were they chosen because of a particular reason. The reserve police battalion were first assigned to massacre the Jews, but after that, they were assigned to clear the Jews ghettos and drive the residents onto trains that they would be transported to the extermination camps. But he made us understand that the police battalion who committed this massacre had the opportunity not to do it when Trapp, their commander said, “If any of you older men among them did not feel up to th...
This is clearly evident towards the victims of the Holocaust, whereby the ultra-nationalist mentality of the Nazi Party established a culture of immense violence against the targeted population. A major characteristic of modernisation was ethnic targeting and an underlying racial dimension which motivated perpetrators to commit wholesale massacres. A number of violent policies stemming from the notion of ethnic cleansing became conducive to repression, murder and ultimately genocide. The scope of twentieth century violence can be explained by modernity’s defining features such as the combined force of new technologies of warfare and administrative techniques that “categorised people along strict lines of nation and race”. Genocides stem from long-term obsession on the part of the perpetrators with the emphasis on religious or cultural differences of the victim group. Nationalism provided society with an opportunity to systematically categorise society based on ethnicity and race. This was certainly a modern phenomenon and was conducive in spreading violence and ultimately genocide. A defining feature of the twentieth century, and more specifically the Holocaust is the perpetrators ability to totally disregard the identity of its victims. Fear and “ubiquity of perpetrators and victims” are considered at the core of modern genocide that “encompasses society in a vicious cycle of devastation and murder”. The premeditated plan of the Nazi Regime is outlined in its ability to merely transform society’s perception of the victims into repulsive figures that threaten the prosperity of the nation. This became an effective technique that rendered mass support among the citizens of Nazi Germany. Hitler’s vision of the Final Solution was to create a Judenfrei Europe as Judaism was considered “a mortal, universal
Rost, Nico, Concentration Camp Dachau, third edition, translated into English by Captain Bernard R. Hanauer (no date) Comité International de Dachau, Brussels, p. 4.
Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. New York: Vintage, 1997. Print.
Bard, Mitchell G., ed. "Introduction." Introduction. The Holocaust. San Diego: Greenhaven, 2001.
The atrocities of the Belgian Congo and the Holocaust are two of the main events in history that have been responsible for the mass murdering of millions of people. Although these events significantly changed the course of humanity, and the story behind each one is very different, there are significant factors that make them alike as well as different. Many would agree that comparing two atrocities that affected the lives of so many people and gave a 180-degree turn to each of their countries would be something very difficult to achieve. However, by comparing the behavior of both the perpetrators and the victims of both cases we might be able to further understand the lack of morality and the inspiration that led to these awful events. The perpetrators in both atrocities tended to have a similar pattern of behavior when it came to the way they saw their victims. But, they also acted in ways where you can draw the conclusion that one set of events was not inspired by the other. These two sets of atrocities were reported to have a very similar number of victims. However, the Holocaust is one of the most reminded events in history as a period of shame, tragedy and sadness, while many still ignore the atrocities in the Belgian Congo.
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.
Anti-Semitism reached to extreme levels beginning in 1939, when Polish Jews were regularly rounded up and shot by members of the SS. Though some of these SS men saw the arbitrary killing of Jews as a sport, many had to be lubricated with large quantities of alcohol before committing these atrocious acts. Mental trauma was not uncommon amongst those men who were ordered to murder Jews. The establishment of extermination camps therefore became the “Final Solution” to the “Jewish Question”, as well as a way to alleviate the mental trauma that grappled the minds of Nazi soldiers. The following essay will examine various primary and secondary sources to better illuminate the creation, evolution, practices and perpetrators of the extermination camps wherein the horrors of the Holocaust were conducted.