The atrocities of the Holocaust have
prompted much inquiry by researchers to
understand how
humans can behave so cruelly toward their fellow man. Theories have
been formed that
cite the men of Battalion 101 as "exceptions" or men with
"faulty
personalities,"
when, in fact, they were ordinary men.
The people who attempted to
perform a
genocide were the same people as you and
me with the only difference being
the environment
in which they worked. The behavior of
the men in Battalion 101 was not
abnormal human
behavior, rather, their actions are testament to the premise that when
humans are
exposed to certain environmental and psychological conditions, extreme
brutality is
highly apt to occur.
The members of the Police Battalion 101
had the same ideas and influences as the
rest of the
German citizens. Because of the racist
teachings produced by the German
government, the
entire German society was uniform under the belief that they were the
master race. The German were taught that anyone different
from their own kind (white
Anglo-Saxon
Protestant) needed to be removed from their society in order for it to
prosper. The Police Battalion men shared the same
beliefs as everyone else, but they had
to perform the
dirty work of killing approximately 83,000 Jews. Christopher Browning
states in his
book, Ordinary Men, that, "...the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101,
like
most of the
German society, was immersed in a deluge of racist and anti-Semitic
propaganda"
(Browning 184). Unless placed in the
Battalion men's situation, one can not
fathom how a
population of people can so evilly turn against another.
People in every culture are susceptible to
the ideas and beliefs brought upon them
by
propaganda. Whenever an idea is accepted
as the 'norm', people will find a way to
justify it and
follow it despite the evil implications it might entail. Humans have faced
these situations
throughout the last two centuries numerous times. For example, the
American slave
trading was totally acceptable to the southerners because the blacks were
perceived to be
lesser human beings. The slave owners
did not mind controlling and
abusing a slave
like it was an animal since in their mind the slave was comparable to an
animal. This was true in Germany with the only
difference being that the Anti-Semitics
thought the Jews
should be eliminated. A more recent
example would be the American's
attitudes toward
the Russians during the Cold War.
Children were taught that the
Russians were
evil and while the Russian children were being taught the same ideas about
the
Americans. Propaganda was used by our
government to make us believe that we were
the good side
while they were the bad side. Before
anyone had time to sit back and think
about the
situation rationally, our entire society hated the Communists. The same
situation applied
for the German citizens except, their attitudes illustrated the effectiveness
of propaganda even when it has the evilest of
implications.
It must be understood that the men who
transported or participated in the killings
of 83,000 Jews
were not selected as men who were thought to be capable of acting
inhuman. They were ordinary men in their 30's and 40's
who were too old to fight in the
war but they were
still capable of carrying out orders.
Before the war, the men worked as
businessmen,
truck drivers, medical workers, and even teachers who came from middle to
lower class
backgrounds. It is difficult to imagine
an individual, such as a teacher, who
dedicated his
life to the enhancement of a child's education and well-being, participated
and tolerated the
killing of thousands of children. But it
is true that the same men, who
the Jewish
society trusted as workers and professionals, willfully tried to kill them off.
The political environment which surrounded
the Police Battalion made their
vicious job less
difficult. But those men who did not
wish to partake in the killings could
be given a
different assignment. In fact, a
minority did walk a way from the slaughters,
but the remaining
80% to 90% carried out their orders.
Reich, in his summary of Ordinary
men, suggests
that, "For many, the pressure to conform to a group, and not to seem like
cowards, played a
major role in their continuing to shoot" (Reich 1B). If a minority group
differs from a
majority group that has the same beliefs, they are looked upon with shame
and disdain. If a soldier were to disagree with their
orders, they were the object of ridicule
and
scrutiny. It is much easier for a person
to follow the beliefs of their society or else
they will stand
out. An example of the fear to follow
your beliefs if they differ from the
norm, is an
account from Tim O'Brien's true story titled, "On The Rainy
River." After
being drafted for
the Vietnam War, he wanted to flee to Canada to avoid being sent to the
war. O'Brien recalls before he was about to swim
to the shores of Canada that "My
conscience told
me to run, but some irrational and powerful force was resisting, like a
weight pushing me
toward the war" (O'Brien 54). Like
some members of the Police
Battalion,
O'Brien wanted to follow his conscience and leave the situation, but instead he
chose to go to
the war and follow the 'norm' where he would be like everyone else.
Following the
views that your particular society accepts is much easier than standing out
and practicing
the opposite. For the Battalion men,
responsible decision making was
hindered among
the wartime chaos.
Many soldiers found their task to be
psychologically burdening until they found
ways to overcome
their uneasiness. Killing Jews even
became a routine chore for the
Battalion
men. Eventually, one kill was the same
as the next so it really did not have an
affect on the
shooters. After the Battalion men got
adjusted to the initial shock of the
extreme gore and
disgust from shooting Jews at point blank range, their job was habitual.
Their job even
became fun when the police could participate in "Jew hunt" (Browning
123) which was
exactly what the name implies. Jews who
managed to escape from their
camps were hunted
by the police who would shoot them for target practice. Browning
quotes an officer
named Adolph Bittner as saying "'In summary one could perhaps say
that in small
[hunts], when not so many shooters were needed, there were always enough
volunteers
available'" (128). The "Jew
Hunts" represent the extreme desensitizing that
the war
causes.
When victims, like the Jews, are
dehumanized, the aggressor can feel less disturbed
by ending its
life. The Jews were numbered and
gathered like a herd of sheep going to a
slaughterhouse
(Jacobs). For the Battalion 101 group,
it was much easier to kill with the
mentality that
their victims were less significant and even detrimental to the human race.
The men who
transported the Jews to the death camps felt at ease because they were not
doing the actual
killings. Even the men who directed the
Jews into the gas chambers did
not feel
responsible because they were not doing the actual killings first hand. Reich
concludes that,
"Each of these factors helped the policemen feel that they were not
violating, or
violating only because it was necessary, their moral codes" (Reich 1D).
When choices are
presented that are morally burdening, it is human nature to find ways to
rationalize their
decisions. For many of the Police
Battalion 101, rationalization for their
brutal actions
occurred repeatedly.
Despite the evil propaganda that was
spread about the Jews, there are examples of
how ordinary
people took it upon themselves to help the desperate Jews hide from the
Germans. Among the brutal wartime chaos, certain
groups of people rose above the
mainstream
beliefs of their society to show that human courage and morality can prevail
when all odds are
against them. In his book, Conscience
and Courage, Eva Fogelman
terms these types
of people as "moral rescuers" (161).
These are people who follow their
own conscience
despite the pressures from their surroundings to do what they believe is
morally
correct. Fogelman states in his book
that, "Their values were self sustaining, not
dependent on the
approval of others. To them, what
mattered most was behaving in a
way that
maintained their integrity" (162).
In both Le Chambon, France and Denmark,
accounts have
been made of groups of people following their consciences and doing what
necessary to save
another person's life.
The civilians living in the small town of
Le Chambon successfully hid over 5,000
Jews from the
Germans. Their heroic effort to save the
Jews' lives is a perfect example of
how the human
conscience is capable of making morally correct decisions even during a
time of war. In the movie, "Weapons of the
Spirit", the effort put forth by
the
Chambonais was
not a town endeavor but an individual undertaking by each individual
family. The families were only acting on what they
believed was the morally correct thing
to do. This example is similar to the Danish people
who found it their patriotic duty to
save their own
people from the wrath of the Germans. In
her magazine article titled,
"Dallas
Honors a Righteous Nation", Rachel Amado Bortnick tells of the Danish
effort to
save the
Jews. The Danish did not separate the
Jews in their minds from the rest of the
Danes. It was never taught or led by example that
the Jews were different from the rest of
the Danish
community, therefore, children were never exposed to the Anti-Semetism that
the German
children were exposed. In Bortnick's
article, Mr. Petersen explains that
"'What we
did for the Jews wasn't any different than what we would have done if the
Germans had
decided they were going to deport all postmen or people who wore glasses
or who had red
hair'". This mentality was
obviously on the opposite end of the spectrum
from the citizens
of Germany.
In Browning's book, Ervin Staub made the
assertion that "'cruelty is social in its
origin much more
than it is characterological'...most people 'slip' into the roles society
provides
them..." (167). Evil ideas and
beliefs are molded onto a person by their
surroundings
rather than inherent in their personalities.
With such a strong influence on
our behavior,
propaganda can lead a society to think and belief the unimaginable. The
men of Police Battalion 101 are a testament to the
idea that people are capable of not
only thinking the
unimaginable, but they can act upon it.
Works Cited
Bortnick, Rachel
Amado. "Dallas Honors a Righteous
Nation." Dallas Jewish Life
Nov. 1993.
Browning,
Christopher R. Ordinary Men. New York:
Aaron Asher Books/HarperCollins
Publishers, Inc., 1993.
Fogelman,
Eva. Conscience and Courage. New York:
Anchor Books Doubleday,
1994.
Jacobs,
Mike. Speech to Class. Dallas, 31 Mar. 1997.
Reich,
Walter. "The Men Who Pulled the
Triggers." The New York Times 12 Apr.
1992.
Weapons of the
Spirit. Writ./Dir. Pierre Sauvage. The Friends of Le Chambon. 1988.
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