"If the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 could become killers under such circumstances, what group of men cannot?" (189). The chilling words at the end of Browning's Book "Ordinary Men" leaves the reader with some very scary thoughts. Although it might not be the safest and most attractive view of society, Browning analyzes in great detail how it was possible for a seemingly normal and common group of men to turn into a group of mass murderers. Browning does not try to shield the reader from the horrific details of the events that entailed the Nazi's liquidation of the Jewish population, and in fact, these very blunt and specific descriptions that constitute many of the stories in the book are the very details that lead to the question nobody …show more content…
My exposure to the stories and the facts increased as I got older, but it was something that always seemed distant and far away. I never thought to ask my parents if I had any personal ties to the events that took place in the 1940's, even though I was born in Poland and my family had been living there all their lives. It wasn't until the end of 8th grade that I made the connection between the place I was born and the city that was home to one of the biggest concentration camps in Poland. I was born in the city of Oswiecim and lived there for a few years before moving to America. After a lesson in my Polish school class about the horrific events that took place in the Auschwitz concentration camp, I came home and asked my parents where exactly in Poland the concentration camp was. They were pretty shocked when I asked because to that very moment I was completely unaware of the connection. I never even considered that the place that I was born was just a few miles from the concentration camp where more than 1 million people had been brutally killed. Browning writes that the German men had renamed many cities "to avoid the difficult Polish pronunciations" (107), and that is the very reason as to why I never connected the two together. I had been unaware of such an important part of the history of my home town, just as I was very unaware of many of the …show more content…
The fact that the group consisted of so much men meant that there was always a surplus of men willing to participate. Thus, even if a few men did not want to continue it was not the end of the world. Although many men did not decline their orders to kill, many "accidently" shot in the wrong direction, let certain Jews go, or turned a blind eye and spared lives when authority figures were not present. The play between their willingness to conform and follow the orders of authority figures seemed to always be clashing with their moral values. Browning brings up an area called the "grey zone". He wrote that "in spite of our natural desire for clear-cut distinctions, the history of the camps 'could not be reduced to the two blocs of victims and persecutors'" (186). As someone who always looks for the good in people, I cannot bring myself to believe that all the men in the Reserve Police Battalion 101 were cold-headed killers. Many had families, children back home, and common jobs before the atrocious events in the early 1940's began. The topic of whether or not the actions of the men should be justified is a very difficult one since the actions they committed reflected the greatest evil another human can do. However, I do believe after reading Browning's book, that many factors played a role in their willingness to continue. The human dilemma between doing what is ordered and
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 reader is confronted with an interpretation of life in Jedwabne as a shared experience. With the town population of 2,500 and about two-thirds of the residents are Jewish and the rest Polish and Catholic, it was hard for anyone to participate in the economic, social, and political area without inflicting conflict on people with different ideas. Although, Gross claims that religious or ethnic difference did not partake in a role of the engagement between the Non-Jewish and Jew individuals of Poland. He avoids situating the Jedwabne experience among other anti-Jewish mass murders. The Jedwabne experience is represented by Gross's reliance on individual testimonies by direct interviews, interviews done by other interviewers, and memoirs. Court documents from the 1953 trial such the recounts from perpetrators and memoirs from survivors or family of the survivors assist in further evidence of the event. Although, the reliance on testimonials clearly highlights the issue of responsibility. Put another way, rather than providing a clear choice by disregarding the massacre as a hate crime, Neighbors gives the reader the ability to interpret the actions done by the Non-Jewish Poles was completed due the belief of kill or be killed. When a community is demoralized by war,
Six million Jews died during World War II by the Nazi army under Hitler who wanted to exterminate all Jews. In Night, Elie Wiesel, the author, recalls his horrifying journey through Auschwitz in the concentration camp. This memoir is based off of Elie’s first-hand experience in the camp as a fifteen year old boy from Sighet survives and lives to tell his story. The theme of this memoir is man's inhumanity to man. The cruel events that occurred to Elie and others during the Holocaust turned families and others against each other as they struggled to survive Hitler's and the Nazi Army’s inhumane treatment.
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.
The Holocaust will forever be known as one of the largest genocides ever recorded in history. 11 million perished, and 6 million of the departed were Jewish. The concentration camps where the prisoners were held were considered to be the closest one could get to a living hell. There is no surprise that the men, women, and children there were afraid. One was considered blessed to have a family member alongside oneself. Elie Wiesel was considered to be one of those men, for he had his father working side by side with him. In the memoir Night, by Elie Wiesel, a young boy and his father were condemned to a concentration camp located in Poland. In the concentration camps, having family members along can be a great blessing, but also a burden. Elie Wiesel shows that the relationship with his father was the strength that kept the young boy alive, but was also the major weakness.
A Lucky Child by Thomas Buergenthal is a memoir about his time as a Jewish child in multiple ghettos and death camps in and around Germany during World War II. The author shares about his reunions with family and acquaintances from the war in the years between then and now. Buergenthal wished to share his Holocaust story for a number of reasons: to prevent himself from just being another number, to contribute to history, to show the power and necessity of forgiveness, the will to not give up, and to question how people change in war allowing them to do unspeakable things. The memoir is not a cry for private attention, but a call to break the cycle of hatred and violence to end mass crimes.
It is a miracle that Lobel and her brother survived on their own in this world that any adult would find unbearable. Indeed, and appropriately, there are no pretty pictures here, and adults choosing to share this story with younger readers should make themselves readily available for explanations and comforting words. (The camps are full of excrement and death, all faithfully recorded in direct, unsparing language.) But this is a story that must be told, from the shocking beginning when a young girl watches the Nazis march into Krakow, to the final words of Lobel's epilogue: "My life has been good. I want more." (Ages 10 to 16) --Brangien Davis
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.
The memoir Night by Elie Wiesel gives an in depth view of Nazi Concentration Camps. Growing up in the town of Sighet, Transylvania, Wiesel, a young Jewish boy at the innocent age of 12, whose main focus in life was studying the Kabbalah and becoming closer in his relationship with God. In the memoir, Elie Wiesel reflects back to his stay within a Nazi Concentration Camp in hopes that by sharing his experiences, he could not only educate the world on the ugliness known as the Holocaust, but also to remind people that by remembering one atrocity, the next one can potentially be avoided. The holocaust was the persecution and murder of approximately six million Jew’s by Aldolf Hitler’s Nazi army between 1933 and 1945. Overall, the memoir shows
Authors sometimes refer to their past experiences to help cope with the exposure to these traumatic events. In his novel Night, Elie Wiesel recalls the devastating and horrendous events of the Holocaust, one of the world’s highest points for man’s inhumanity towards man, brutality, and cruel treatment, specifically towards the Jewish Religion. His account takes place from 1944-1945 in Germany while beginning at the height of the Holocaust and ending with the last years of World War II. The reader will discover through this novel that cruelty is exemplified all throughout Wiesel's, along with the other nine million Jews’, experiences in the inhumane concentration camps that are sometimes referred to as “death factories.”
Many different responses have occurred to readers after their perusal of this novel. Those that doubt the stories of the holocaust’s reality see Night as lies and propaganda designed to further the myth of the holocaust. Yet, for those people believing in the reality, the feelings proffered by the book are quite different. Many feel outrage at the extent of human maliciousness towards other humans. Others experience pity for the loss of family, friends, and self that is felt by the Holocaust victims.
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...
Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night, is an account about his experience through concentration camps and death marches during WWII. In 1944, fifteen year old Wiesel was one of the many Jews forced onto cattle cars and sent to death and labor camps. Their personal rights were taken from them, as they were treated like animals. Millions of men, women, children, Jews, homosexuals, Gypsies, disabled people, and Slavic people had to face the horrors the Nazi’s had planned for them. Many people witnessed and lived through beatings, murders, and humiliations. Throughout the memoir, Wiesel demonstrates how oppression and dehumanization can affect one’s identity by describing the actions of the Nazis and how it changed the Jewish
In Maurice Ogden’s poem The Hangman, Ogden writes a story of a man who chooses to not stand up for others. He does not speak “out of the fear of his Hangman’s cloak”(Ogden 2), but in the end, “the scaffold was raised for none but you”(Ogden 4). The narrator was killed because he failed to stand up for others. This story was published in 1954 which was only 9 years after the Holocaust. The situation in which the narrator was put in is similar to a person who chooses to stand by during a tragic event such as the Holocaust. Ogden chose to write this story to persuade people who are placed in this situation to act differently than the narrator did. In order to convey his message, Ogden writes to a specific audience, parallels his story to the Holocaust,
World War II was a grave event in the twentieth century that affected millions. Two main concepts World War II is remembered for are the concentration camps and the marches. These marches and camps were deadly to many yet powerful to others. However, to most citizens near camps or marches, they were insignificant and often ignored. In The Book Thief, author Markus Zusak introduces marches and camps similar to Dachau to demonstrate how citizens of nearby communities were oblivious to the suffering in those camps during the Holocaust.