I have been listening to the book Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland on Audible on my commute.
It’s a difficult book to listen to.
In chapter 10, the author talks about the clearing of the ghetto at Międzyrzec to send the Jews to Treblinka.
What stuck out at me was that 11,000 Jews were deported and over 900 shot by a cadre of only 350 police.
Moreover, the police, due to the emotional stress of what they were doing (which is hard to consider, almost having to feel empathy for German police having to deal with their own psychological pressure of shooting thousands of Jews by firing squad) were drinking heavily. They often got so drunk they had to shoot Jews multiple times because they would miss the kill zone at near point blank range and wound the Jews instead.
Again, 11,000 Jews were rounded up and deported and 900 were shot by 350 intoxicated German Order Police.
And there wasn’t one report of Jews fighting back.
The Jews were given shovels and picks to dig mass graves while guarded by only a couple of drunk German police, and not one Jew thought to whack a drunk German in the head with a shovel?
The hardest part of listening to this is the overwhelming sense of shame I have that 11,000 Jews, knowing what their fate would be, didn’t fight back with every last improvised weapon that they could get their hands on.
I actually understand the Germans. Throughout history many people have enslaved, oppressed, and massacred others over tribal or religious differences.
What I don’t understand is how the Jews, who do outnumbered the Order Police just accepted their fate.
If you want to understand me and my anger issues, this is at a root of it.
I want to over compensate for the passive cowardness of European Jews with ferocity.
This seems to be a general pattern. Dictators usually can control with relatively small forces. Cuba today comes to mind — didn’t you comment the other day that Cubans have machetes, why aren’t they being put to good use? Nazi occupation and Soviet control are also examples.
A possible reason is that decent people have no familiarity with evil violence and can’t function effectively to resist it. In some countries where there was a previous history of decent government, you can add to this the assumption of “it really can’t be as bad as all that, right?”
A while ago I read something that to some extent explains why so many Jews are willing to go along with victim disarmament: it stated that, throughout the middle ages and perhaps afterwards, Jews were prohibited from possessing arms on penalty of death. If weaponlessness is a condition for survival for several centuries, it is not too surprising that it would persist as a bad habit even after it is no longer needed.
When I had a commute of around 75 minutes one way I listened to a lot of books. This was one of them. It is absolutely sickening to listen to. The author talks about how they managed to convince ordinary men to do horrific things. And when you get to the end of the book, the author talks about people that doubt his research. He then refutes those attacks.
Another book talks about pictures of German guards of this time period. What you see, over and over again, is guards that were walking around with weapons that did not have a round in the chamber. I.e. there would be two or three guards with bolt action rifles with no round in the chamber guarding a dozen or more prisoners, and nobody attacked the Germans.
And when the Jews decided to fight back, a small number, currently believed to be less than 100, managed to tie up 20 to 30 thousand troops for months before the burned the ghetto to the ground.
One of the more sickening aspects described in the book is how these police were able to rationalize what they were doing. They weren’t killing the obedient ones, they were just marching them to the train station, where they were then loaded into trains for the camps. And they knew damn well that nobody was coming out of those camps and there were not enough trains to take people to the camps.
But they weren’t doing the actual killing, never mind the 100s that they killed “resisting arrest” (my term).
The number of deaths attributed to this one group of police men is in the 100s of thousands.
And they were just “ordinary men”
And that, in turn, makes me very careful when making assumptions about “human nature” and “how people are.”
Including myself.
Every man and woman out there has the capacity to do great evil, if they can only manage to rationalize and justify it in their own heads.
Likewise, every man and woman has the capacity to tolerate great evil, if they will not grab their short and curlies and stand up to it.
Every single one of us.
Being bombarded with daily propaganda dosnt help either. Look at “covid” , there are still people scared to death over it and filled with hateful fear. Many(but not THAT many) dont think like We the People do. Many have complete faith in gubmint right up until they get shot in the head. “Normal” thinkers hear/see something and we THINK about it before acting. Those others have been taught WHAT to think not HOW to think. I saw it in high school way back in the early 80s..
While I understand how that can sicken you to death, the reality is humans, at best, pretend to be brave. The overwhelming majority of people will go along with whatever ridiculousness an authority imposes.
If the majority of people where actually willing to stand up and fight against authority, all the names we know from history would be lost in the haze. The story of Wallace standing up to Longshanks, or Washington crossing the Delaware would be blips, lost among millions of other, equally brave stories.
Only a very small percentage of people alive have the intestinal fortitude to put their own lives on the line to save others, or even to save themselves. That is the reality of human nature. There is a reason why only a small percentage of eligible citizens/residents serve in the military.
What truly sickens me is not the history, but that humans did not learn from that history. Right now, even as we speak, there are forces in the US that are demonizing anyone on the right side of the political aisle. And, a measurable number of people on the right are either ignoring it, or actively assisting. (Murkowski, Cheney, Romney, Collins — I am looking at you.)
Evil knows only one side, EVIL.
My best friend is a practicing, orthodox Jew. He was raised on a farm just like I was and has a very conservative background. He is as much at a loss as I am at explaining why so many US Jews, even orthodox Jews, are anti-gun leftists.
“If weaponlessness is a condition for survival for several centuries, it is not too surprising that it would persist as a bad habit even after it is no longer needed.”
That’s a viable theory but it doesn’t explain why US Jews, who have not had that prohibition enforced upon them, follow that mold.
It’s actually quite funny that my friend’s wife is from New Jersey and was reflexively liberal because that’s how she was raised. My friend slowly converted her to the political conservative isle, she’s had a concealed carry permit and has carried a .38 revolver daily for decades now…and her parents hate it. They’re civil to my friend to keep the peace in the family, but he says it’s very clear that they don’t appreciate the way he’s corrupted their daughter.
Anyway, I don’t know that anyone is ever going to be able to come up with a good answer as to what goes on in the minds of liberal Jews.
“I want to over compensate for the passive cowardness [sic] of European Jews with ferocity.”
Mostly due to my wife’s “look at the other side” perspective, I would like to make this point.
In the early stages, the subject races were soft-sold this “temporary” changes. The concept of a Final Solution had no historical reference. Additionally, most of the Jews in Poland, Germany, etc. had taken the path of blending in with their new environment (i.e., don’t make waves).
Thus, I think it unfair for us, with our current perspective of the Nazis, Stalin, & Mao, to envision ourselves rising up in a death camp. The surviving Jews (and there) were almost totally cowed. (The Warsaw Uprising being a notable exception).
I recall my father telling me of a few Jews who had escaped from a death camp trying to warn other and getting them to flee. They were ignored as these “innocent” people couldn’t imagine such an enormous extermination machine.
That said, my P938’s slide has “never again” in Hebrew engraved on it.
/end rant
Not a Jew, but I never understood it either.
I do think of it in today’s terms, where if someone agresses against the gov or their agents, even legitimately, help is scarce to come by, the spin is unreal, and we all find any old excuse to say well he didn’t do that right, or he did this bad thing/thing I don’t agree with in the past, or he should have done this. We all want the perfect case or person to support, but such a thing rarely if ever exists. How that happens makes it easier for me to understand how these things can happen.
Regardless of your stance on it, the Bundy ranch situation is one such thing that comes to mind; they were lucky in that they got support.
Where would they run? Where would they hide? The vast majority of Germans would report the fugitives (and those hiding them) to Gestapo.
And, judging by my family, Jewish phenotype is quite noticable even after generations of Asian/Slavic interbreeding, and it is not exactly Arian looking.
Well said – you should also listen to the fabulous Dr. Jordan Peterson on the same subject! And the fact that some of those soldiers were among those who had once been friends with Jews…yet they could distance themselves from past friendships to carry out their work. And as much as I agree with you about the meekness of the Jews of Europe back then, *I* am more incensed by the cowardice and apathy of so many American Jews today, who likewise support the political party and politicians who HATE Jews. And about Ben and Jerry, the purveyors of overpriced ice cream – I knew they were socialists, but always assumed they were of the commie type…yet since they came out of the Nazi closet, or Bunker, I realize they are Nationalist Socialist, like their Uncle Adolf!!!
Jew or Gentile, I never got the “Dig your own Grave” concept. No matter how you try to delude yourself that “This too will Pass” or the “They Really Won’t Kill Me,” by the time you’re out in the woods with a rifle or machine gun pointed at you and they hand you s shovel and tell to dig, you should have a damn good idea what comes next. At the very least they’ll have to work to dispose of my body, with luck I’ll take a few of them with me.
@Nuke Road Warrior: I like to think that that would be my plan, were I in such a situation.