Part 28 (2/2)

The battalions past experience had led them to adopt much more effective ways of killing Jews, which were also less emotionally disturbing. The men realized that there was no point in making the victims lie down before shooting them and instead herded them along to line up on the edge of a waiting pit. The double advantage was that they could be shot from a greater distance and that the dead fell straight into their grave.

However, this method meant that many were only wounded as they fell, and it became the task of the East European POWs to go down into the grave and shoot anyone who moved or moaned. The prisoners were given very large vodka rations and were out of their minds with alcohol before descending into the pits, where they had to wade through a knee-high mixture of blood and groundwater. They shot wildly, bullets crisscrossing the bunker dangerously as they aimed at the floating bodies.

Most of the policemen became accustomed to the slaughter as an everyday occurrence and grew hardened to the task. They had learned to cope.

Browning describes some of the men and their lives: There is the normally strict and unapproachable SS officer who becomes bedridden with diarrhea and stomach cramps every time another Jewish action is announced. We learn of how he attempts to hide his weakness from his superiors.

There is the talented, self-a.s.sured officer who enjoys driving his car standing up, like a general. He brings his young bride on a honeymoon trip to Poland and invites her along to a ghetto operation, but his men strongly object to a woman being allowed to watch what they do.

There is the group of entertainers from Berlin, whose members beg to be allowed to join a Jewish action and do some of the killing. The battalion officers permit this.

There is the stench, carried in the wind blowing in over the town of Lublin as thousands of Jewish bodies are burned on the outskirts.

There is the care taken by some of the soldiers when they receive orders to kill their own kitchen Jews. They avoid raising any suspicion and go to quite a lot of trouble to shoot their servants suddenly from behind and at close range, so they wont suffer or experience the dread to which other Jews were exposed.

RESPONSIBILITY TOWARD COLLEAGUES.

Before the publication of Brownings book, obedience to authority was regarded as the primary mechanism that allowed ordinary Germans to turn into ma.s.s murderers, a conclusion based partly on the experimental results of Stanley Milgram and others.

Brownings account changes this view. His research indicates that by far the stronger influence is a sense of responsibility to comrades, which made the men carry on regardless. More than anything, the members of the Jewish action battalion wanted to avoid being regarded as weaklings. Also, the killings were widely detested, which meant that backing out marked you as selfish, someone who lacked team spirit after all, you were handing your share of the killings over to your colleagues.

EAGER KILLERS.

As time went on, some of the men became so intensely engaged in the killing sessions that they overreacted to new orders. They would beat up their victims for no reason at all, or amuse themselves after a drunken evening by driving into a town to shoot at live, moving targets. In the phrase used within this area of research, they developed into eager killers, Brownings term for excessive perpetrators.

One example is the forty-eight-year-old officer who, in the early stages, would always see to it that his men got out of harms way when another Jew-killing excursion was due. Later his behavior changed dramatically. During the Jewish actions he often drank as heavily as the Eastern POWs did before they were sent down into the ma.s.s graves. He became even more brutal than the battalions two young SS captains and forced his men to carry out acts of degrading cruelty, such as commanding old Jews from a town ghetto to undress and crawl naked across the forest floor, or telling his men to beat their elderly victims with sticks cut from the trees.

Internationally there is still insufficient data to state with any certainty what proportion of perpetrators is p.r.o.ne to excess. But Brownings calculations do coincide with the results of a social psychology experiment known as the Stanford Prison Experiment. Also, confirmation of the cited figures will be part of the argument in a forthcoming book by the Danish researcher and DCIG user Torben Jrgensen: 1020 percent of perpetrators try to obtain transfer to other duties; 5080 percent do as they are told; 1030 percent develop into eager killers and run riot, intoxicated by torture, rape, and murder.

THE FUTURE.

The research into the nature and behavior of the perpetrators of genocide is still hampered by the lack of hard information. There is little statistical justification for extrapolating conclusions based on data from twenty-two senior party members and one battalion of reservists to the a.n.a.lysis of mechanisms driving millions of human beings.

The Holocaust is, undoubtedly, the genocide that has been most thoroughly investigated. Even so, the gaps in our understanding are huge and the unexplored archival material is vast. Many of the 7,500 guards at Auschwitz were interrogated, but the records have not yet been examined.

Recent research has continued along the lines suggested by Christopher Browning. One approach is that of regional studies, i.e., a precise a.n.a.lysis of a selected region. This opens up opportunities to investigate interactions between the n.a.z.i Party and local police, military, local administration, and business.

To date, very little work has been carried out on the collaboration between the n.a.z.is and the populations of often strongly anti-Semitic Eastern European countries under German occupation. Now that the archives of the former Soviet Union are available to researchers, many new investigations are under way.

It may seem odd to prioritize work on the behavior of individual Germans in the context of exterminations carried out sixty years ago when other genocides, for instance in the Soviet Union and in China, have cost more lives yet remain virtually unexamined. However, there is no other genocide in known history that is as thoroughly recorded, with archival material that is both extensive and accessible. The expectation is that continued research will provide insight well beyond Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, and can be applied to other, less doc.u.mented genocides.

Above all, such heightened understanding could and should be used to prevent similar catastrophes in the future, events that mankind has been enduring for too long and would prefer to forget.

This article is based on several sources. The most important are the following: Becoming Evil. How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Ma.s.s Killing by James Waller (Oxford University Press, 2002).

Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher R. Browning (HarperCollins, 1992).

A second and final article on the subject The Psychology of Evil will appear in the next issue of Genocide News. It will present a selection of investigations by social psychologists into the minds of genocide perpetrators.

chapter 30.

i didnt want to burden you with this before. Its my job to do the worrying, after all.

Paul looks serious. He stands in front of the low bookshelf with back issues of Genocide News, his arms crossed over his chest, his feet solidly planted well apart the posture of a commanding officer demonstrating the serious nature of his speech to the troops. He has asked Anne-Lise to join the others in the Winter Garden.

I need to bring you up to speed. The lawyers in the Ministry of Finance have started work on a new bill thats going to make our Center part of the Danish Inst.i.tute for Human Rights.

He pauses deliberately.

Anne-Lise has no idea how the others will react, but secretly she feels that the news of a merger with the DIHR is like divine intervention on her behalf. The move could be her prize for holding out in this inferno. She could keep the vital aspects of her job and be in daily contact with a whole new set of colleagues who might turn out to be as congenial as her former ones at Lyngby Central Library.

But she knows she mustnt show any signs of relief.

Pauls forehead is wrinkled with concern. It explains why Ive been to so many meetings recently. He sighs and appears sheepish. Youve of course wondered whats been keeping me away so often. But then, you must know that I wont let them ruin our Center. Ill fight them with everything Ive got.

Malene is there, her first day back since being ill. Shes applied an excessive amount of makeup, at least too much for daytime. Paul! Its such dreadful news! she whines.

Iben and Camilla follow her lead.

What can we do to keep the Center as it is?

How long have you known this?

Ever since Anne-Lise found out how badly Camilla was traumatized by bullying at school, she has kept an eye on her colleague to see if she can somehow divine the truth. But Camilla is motionless and her face does not reveal anything. It never does.

I must admit I thought something was up. Youve been away so often.

Well, weve met other challenges head-on before. But this time its different: its one of our own who is undermining our fight for survival.

Anne-Lise stiffens. Has Paul somehow guessed her feelings? She hasnt let on. Perhaps he has discovered something about one of the others? Anne-Lise glances around the small circle. Camilla, Iben, Malene all look shocked. Or is it guilty? She looks at Paul.

He seems unaware of the effect of his words and carries on regardless.

Frederik Thorsteinsson has accepted the post as DIHR research coordinator. In other words, he will become one of Morten Kjrums immediate subordinates, starting five months from now. But Frederik isnt the one who told me. I was informed by a friend who sits on the board of the inst.i.tute someone totally reliable.

Paul takes a breath. Frederiks new position means that it is in his interest to have our Center controlled from within the DIHR. Never mind that hes a member of our board. Hes been completely duplicitous.

Malene asks several questions that demonstrate that she, like Paul, is aware of who the decision makers are, and whos who in the ministries and among the NGO administrators.

To protect our Center we need to get Frederik off our board, Paul continues. Hes not declared that he is compromised when it comes to dealing with this challenge to our independence, so I have no option but to make Ole aware of Frederiks deception. But neither Ole nor I can fire a board member. Only someone from the ministry can do that.

Anne-Lise is excluded from this world of high-level politics, but it obviously fascinates Iben and Malene. They readily agree with everything Paul says, but it occurs to Anne-Lise that Malene is closer to Frederik than anyone else at the Center. If by next year they are part of the DIHR, then at a stroke Malene will have become the bosss favorite, displacing Iben and her strong links with Paul. Anne-Lise feels that she has. .h.i.t on something worth thinking about, but at the moment cannot figure out what it means.

You might as well know that I have already found a good replacement for Frederik. Theres one clear candidate, and I have total confidence in him. I dont know if any of you know of him Maybe youre too young. He used to be all over the media and even a couple of years ago he was still writing brilliant articles for Information. Im talking about the journalist and Africa expert Gunnar Hartvig Nielsen.

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