When we think about the genocides and mass killings throughout history, human nature wants us the think of the perpetrators as being antithesis to ordinary people. They are endowed with sub-loving stereotypical villainous names like sadist, evil, and monstrous, all with no moral code, enjoy killing people for entertainment. We like to think this, because we can’t fathom perpetrators of genocide as being ordinary like ourselves. What is inevitably true of the most horrific genocide in the past century (the Holocaust) is that ordinary people are capable of committing the most heinous crimes imaginable.
The myriad of events that took place throughout World War II, that constituted the destruction of the Jewish people, were carefully constructed pogroms instituted, commonly by average people, out of fear of retribution, self annihilation, and greed. The catch-22 situation that was present for the perpetrators of Battalion 101 and the Poles of Jedwabne, illustrate the lengths at which ordinary people will go, to conform to those around them and protect themselves from harm.
In almost every careful analysis of individuals who committed violent actions, past history and characteristics have been analyzed, usually with some event being a trigger for such negative behavior. In the case of Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 And The Final Solution in Poland and Neighbors, the perpetrators commonly had very normal backgrounds. In Ordinary Men, the men of the Battalion consisted mostly of working class, middle-aged men from Hamburg. Browning found that 63% had working class backgrounds with few being skilled laborers (Browning, 1998, p. 47). Browning quoted saying:
These were men who had known political standards and moral norm...
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... study and the Stanford Prison experiments simulated many of environments in which seemingly regular individuals can perform heinous crimes, drawing a parallel to the events at Jedwabne and Jozefew has its complication. While the premise of compliance and obedience for both was the same, the shear complexity of war and combat could never truly be tested unless on the battlefield. Inherent in the experiments was control. While the Stanford Prison experiment deviated from its original course, the severity of consequences doesn’t come close to those faced with imminent death or the order to kill.
Works Cited
Browning, C. R. (1998). Ordinary men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the final solution in Poland. New York: HarperPerennial.
Gross, J. T. (2002). Neighbors: the destruction of the Jewish community in Jedwabne, Poland. New York, N.Y.: Penguin Books.
In January 2002 James Waller released the first edition of the book “Becoming Evil – How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killings.” Dr. James Waller is a professor at Keene State College in New Hampshire and is home to one of the nation’s oldest Holocaust resource centers, the Cohen Center for Genocide and Holocaust Studies. Becoming Evil uncovers the historical and modern day reasons to why people do evil and attempts to debunk common explanations for genocide and mass killings. Some of Waller’s other notable works include “Prejudice across America” and “Face to Face: The Changing State of Racism Across America.” Waller takes and in depth look at the societal, psychopathological and cultural reasons that would make a good person commit such heinous acts of evil. “What culture, society, or nation, what ideology, historical prejudice, or ethnic hatred, what psychological profile or cluster of personality traits, what unusual situation or special circumstance is to be deemed the cause of such aberrant human behavior?” (Browning/Waller) Why do humans commit genocide and mass killings?
Conover begins his investigative journey as he goes through the training required to become a prison guard. The process that each potential guard has to graduate from highly resembles that of which the military uses. Perfectly made beds, matching uniforms, roll calls, shooting practice, and psychological tests are all engrained into the schedules of potential guards. When this realizations strikes the author he says, “It dawned on me that I had reported to boot camp.” The emphasis on uniformity and discipline clearly showed the correlation those who controlled prisons saw between the prisons and warzones. The rhetoric is nearly identical as well, as evidenced by the “sergeant” who states,” The gray uniforms are the god guys, and the green uniforms are ...
Many of the soldiers that comprised Reserve Police Battalion 101 were of random choosing; they were not picked due to their anti-Semitic sentiments nor for their prowess in previous battles. Browning argues that these ordinary men were not forced to become killers rather they had the option to speak out against these horrific actions and accept the consequences of that or to conform to the orders even if it was a violation of their moral standards. Browning argued that any man had the potential to become a killer if their values were at all compromised, if they were susceptible to peer pressure, if they did not want to seem cowardly in front of their comrades, or if they had a dislike towards Poles, Jews or Soviets which may have been instilled by Nazi propaganda or its ideological training. Through Browning’s research he found out that of the approximately 500 German soldiers that composed Reserve Police Battalion 101, only about ten to twenty percent (50 to 100 soldiers) of men totally abstained from killing altogether, which means at
soldiers during the Jewish Holocaust, knew that the Nazi’s actions were inhumane and cruel; hence, he commanded his soldiers to not confiscate property from the Jews. Although the Nazi soldiers did not take valuables away from the Jews, they still dehumanized and exterminated the Jews, rega...
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 arguments of Christopher Browning and Daniel John Goldhagen contrast greatly based on the underlining meaning of the Holocaust to ordinary Germans. Why did ordinary citizens participate in the process of mass murder? Christopher Browning examines the history of a battalion of the Order Police who participated in mass shootings and deportations. He debunks the idea that these ordinary men were simply coerced to kill but stops short of Goldhagen's simplistic thesis. Browning uncovers the fact that Major Trapp offered at one time to excuse anyone from the task of killing who was "not up to it." Despite this offer, most of the men chose to kill anyway. Browning's traces how these murderers gradually became less "squeamish" about the killing process and delves into explanations of how and why people could behave in such a manner.
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.
Browning, Christoper R. (2001) Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (Penguin Books : London)
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.
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. A majority of these men were neither Nazi party members nor members of the S.S. They were also from Hamburg, which was a town that was one of the least occupied Nazi areas of Germany and, thus, were not as exposed to the Nazi regime. These men were not self-selected to be part of the order police, nor were they specially selected because of violent characteristics. These men were plucked from their normal lives, put into squads, and given the mission to kill Jews because they were the only people available for the task. “Even in the face of death the Jewish mothers did not separate from their children. Thus we tolerated the mothers taking their children to the ma...
Browning, Christopher. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.
Tent, James F. In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Nazi Persecution of Jewish-Christian Germans. Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2003.
This book left me with a deeper sense of the horrors experienced by the Polish people, especially the Jews and the gypsies, at the hands of the Germans, while illustrating the combination of hope and incredible resilience that kept them going.
For many years, people time and time again denied the happenings of the Holocaust or partially understood what was happening. Even in today’s world, when one hears the word ‘Holocaust’, they immediately picture the Nazi’s persecution upon millions of innocent Jews, but this is not entirely correct. This is because Jews
Throughout history mass murder has not been a problem to the same level and in the same sense as it is today. A related occurrence that is seen in history, which can be studied for its similar preparation and organization, is genocide. Genocide, an international crime, is a large-scale form of mass murder, in which many people are killed in a string of independent events because of prejudices or war (Reisman, 2008). Killing a large group of people takes a high level of organization. The logistics of how to do it, where to do it, where to dispose of the bodies, among other things must be examined before killing begins (Reisman, 2008). The only similarity to the 21st century version of mass murder is the predatory violence involving extensive planning and little to no emotion involved in the killing (Meloy et al., 2004). However aside from that it is difficult to compare the two events because genocide has many killers and can take place over extended periods of time. For example, during the Holocaust Nazi Germany systematically exterminated millions of Jew over a period of three years (Reisman, 2008). This trend is relevant due to the death of more than three p...