The book, “Ordinary Men”, is a story about the Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the final solution in Poland. Thousands of Jewish men, women, children and infants were murdered. The book is dark and depressing.
At Józefów, Major Trapp made an offer for men to step forward who wanted to excuse themselves from the atrocities they were about to commit. Out of five hundred men only twelve stepped forward. Why only twelve? Later reflections indicate there was no time to think. It was all too sudden. Additionally, no one wanted to abandon their comrades.
The rationalization given by a thirty-five-year old metal worker is astonishing:
“I made the effort, and it was possible for me, to shoot only children. It so happened that the mothers led the children by the hand. My neighbor then shot the mother and I shot the child that belonged to her, because I reasoned with myself that after all without its mother the child could not live any longer. It was supposed to be, so to speak, soothing to my conscience to release children unable to live without their mothers.”
The author points out that the German word for “release” also means to “redeem” or “save” when used in a religious sense.
The people who committed the mass murder at Józefów were not sadist. The men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 were metalworkers, barbers, salesmen, etc. The book details the physical and mental anguish these men suffered for the rest of their lives. It also gives insight into the psychology of man.
It is wrong to say every citizen in Nazi Germany was pure evil. We all like to think we would have been Oskar Schindler. We would have hid Anne Frank and put our entire family at risk. Statistically, you would have not been those people.