In this week's 'Speccie', Matthew Parris raises the exceedingly uncomfortable notion of 'evil' following last month's 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Of course, to most of us 'soppy' Brits, that ghastly 'murder machine' is the very epitome of evil but that may be because not much is made of Stalin's incomparable efforts in Russia and Mao's in China!
Be that as it may, Mr. Parris is surely right to wonder at the fact that so many, er, 'ordinary' people joined in the mass slaughter of fellow human beings.
I asked myself the age-old question: why? Why, how, could apparently ordinary German citizens have connived in this obscene butchery, assisted in it, or (in most cases) just turned away.
Answer came there none, until he was advised to read: "Ordinary Men" by Christopher R. Browning; subtitle 'Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland'. Mr. Parris, being made of sterner stuff than me, accepted the challenge. In the book, Mr. Browning relates his search of all the available documents from the Hitler period and the judicial records which followed. He also makes clear that the men involved in the slaughter were not Nazi fanatics but ordinary people roped in for duty.
The personal testimonies are remarkably candid. The mission imposed upon these men was to kill Polish Jews, largely indiscriminately: not in extermination camps but town by town, village by village, in what amounted to systematised pogroms. Usually they’d herd their victims to field or forest nearby, shoot them, and leave the bodies. But often enough they’d execute Jews where they found them — at home, or in town streets or squares. Over the years this battalion killed tens of thousands.
I cannot possibly summarise Browning’s findings. Read the book! It’s shocking — in a sense even worse than concentration camp stories because the contact was so personal, man-to-man, man-to-woman, man-to-child, shooting in the neck, shooting brains out, again and again and again, all day, every day.
I should read that book, dammit, because in a way I feel it is a duty to the memory of those men, women and children who were slaughtered wholesale. But will I? I'll let you know in due course!
I recommend also Into That Darkness, by Gitta Sereny.
Posted by: Malcolm Pollack | Saturday, 08 February 2020 at 00:34
It is a horrific read.
Posted by: J.S.A. Adair | Saturday, 08 February 2020 at 14:59