ipl-logo

Summary Of Ordinary Men By Christopher R. Browning

1183 Words5 Pages

Christopher R. Browning’s Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and The Final Solution in Poland is seen as one of the most influential book in Holocaust studies. The book traces the Reserve Police Battalion (hereafter RPB-101), a single German unit, throughout their military duty. These soldiers were instructed to kill innocent Jewish men, woman and children in Poland. Most of the men in the RPB-101 were originally deemed not suitable of conscription. When massacres in history occur, it is in the nature of human beings to think of the culprits as being different from normal people; savages or villains that kill for pleasure or have no remorse. Ordinary Men investigates the story of how normal people were commissioned to carry out such …show more content…

Never before had I encountered the issue of choice so dramatically framed by the course of events and so openly discussed by at least some of the perpetrators. Never before had I seen the monstrous deeds of the Holocaust so starkly juxtaposed with the human face of the killers (Browning, XVI) Browning then goes on to present different challenges he faced when doing his research and writing the book. He also presents different historians and their onions, as well as other individuals who helped in doing his research. The first chapter describes Major Wilhelm Trapp, the commander of the RPB-101 briefing his men on the assignment that they have been giving: round up the Jews n the village of Józefów separate the ones who are able and of working age and shoot the rest. After describing the assignment and reassuring all of the men that it was okay to kill these innocent people, Trapp offers the men an out “if any of the older men among them did not feel up to the task that lay before him, he could step out” (Browning, 2). At this point, the chapter does not give details on who took up the offer. It leaves a cliffhanger for the reader as Browning begins the next …show more content…

Heinrich Himmler was the Riechfuhrer of the SS, Chief of German Police and Reich Minister of the Interior followed orders handed down from Hitler authorizing the slaughter of civilians in occupied Russia. “Himmler toured the eastern front, personally urging his men to carry out the mass murder of Russian Jewry”(Browning,11). The chapter goes on to depict the beginnings of the slaughter of the nearly half-Jewish city of Bialystok and other nearby towns. When the battalion first entered the town, they beat and humiliated the civilians. There is one example of a Jewish leader begging for mercy on him and his people and a member of the Police Battalion 309 urinating on him (Browning, 12). The beatings and humiliations quickly escalated to bringing large numbers of Jews into the woods to shoot them. In addition to carrying out shootings, the Order Police played a large role in facilitating the deportation of Jews into the concentration camps. The next chapter delves into the specific role the Order Police had in the deportations. It gives a specific example chronicled by Paul Salitter, an Order Police Lieutenant of a time where the Order Police had the task of transporting Jews from Vienna to Sobibór extermination camp. This is the final chapter that gives background knowledge to the reader, at this point the reader should have a level of

Show More
Related

  • Brief Summary Of Ordinary Men By Christopher R. Browning

    1635 Words  | 7 Pages

    Only one many took this extraordinary kind offer, the rest went forth with the mission. Throughout the chapter Browning gave many examples of how Commander Trapp had a difficult time with the task of killing so many people. One specific example is one policeman remembered hearing Trapp say “‘Oh, god, why did I have to be given these orders,’ as he put his hand on his heart” (Browning). To make the situation worse after all the order police had finished rounding up all the Jewish men, they were escorted to the woods and lined up in groups and shot. This massacre continued all day for about a week straight until Battalion 101 was reassigned to the northern sector of the Lublin district.

    Read More

  • Chain Of Command In Night By Elie Wiesel

    163 Words  | 1 Pages

    Elie Wiesel tells the story of the traumatic childhood he faced in the concentration camps during World War II in his novel, Night. During the expulsion of the Jews in Sieght, the Nazis establish a “chain of command” to communicate with the people in the ghetto. In the ghettos, the Hungarian police gives commands to the Jewish police, who then share the orders with the other Jewish people. Finally, all Jewish peoples, including the Jewish police, must follow the orders originally instructed by the Nazis. The implementation of this “chain of command” allowed the Nazis to give orders faster, and may have even helped to restrain aggressive reactions or disobedience.

    Read More

  • Alsatian Guy Sajer In The Forgotten Solider

    1535 Words  | 7 Pages

    In 1942, 16-year-old Alsatian Guy Sajer became part of the German military. Sajer initially started as a member of the Rollbahn where he delivered supplies to the front, but eventually was promoted to the Gross Deutschland Division, an elite combat unit. In his memoir, The Forgotten Solider, Sajer recounts his experiences on the Eastern front of World War II. Among his horrific memories, Sajer has fond thoughts of his friends. He writes “Friendships counted for a great deal during the war, their value perhaps increased by the generalized hate, consolidating men on the same side in friendships which never would have broken through the barriers of ordinary life” (83).

    Read More

  • How Many People Have Too Much Power In Night By Elie Wiesel

    639 Words  | 3 Pages

    Seventy – six years ago the first killings of Jews began in Chelmo, Poland. Not even one hundred years have passed, and people are already forgetting how devastating it was, killing over six million Jews. Quotes from Night, by Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor himself, and facts and statistics illustrates how the Holocaust proves how cruel others can be, what happens when one man has too much power, and how fast humans resort to their basic instincts to survive, and that is why people should continue to learn about it. First and foremost, we know humans can be the cruelest things in the world sometimes, as demonstrated by the Nazis in the Holocaust. When they killed ruthlessly, and without regret six million Jews, and close to two million other minorities.

    Read More

  • What Is The Significance Of The Reserve Police Battalion 101, By Christopher Browning?

    921 Words  | 4 Pages

    Christopher Browning, in his seminal work, questioned how the Germans had managed to carry out the destruction of the widespread Jewish population in Poland, he explains that ‘we have long known how the Jews in the major ghettos, especially Warsaw and Lodz, were murdered’ but that most Jews lived in smaller conurbations widely spread across Poland and this must have been quite a feat in organisation, management and recruitment. Browning was particularly interested in how and where the Germans had ‘found the manpower … for such an astounding logistical achievement in mass murder.’ As he explains, the number of staff in the death camps was actually quite small but the number required ‘to round up and either deport or shoot the bulk of Polish

    Read More

  • Night By Elie Wiesel Compare And Contrast

    733 Words  | 3 Pages

    Brady Ravin Mrs. Ramsey English January 31st, 2023 The Horrors of the Holocaust Six million, the estimated number of Jewish people that died during the holocaust. Each one of them led their own life, each one of them was a person just like anyone else, and each one of them witnessed countless horrific sights. All of these deaths and horrors were avoidable. The book Night written by Elie Wiesel is a first person account of what the experience in a concentration camp was like. He and a man by the name of Rudolf Acohen will be the focus of this essay, but they are not the only ones who suffered; millions upon millions of people suffered through the horrors of the holocaust.

    Read More

  • Hitler's Willing Executioners Analysis

    508 Words  | 3 Pages

    The second feature is that these men received below-par training in weapons, logistics, and procedures. The third feature is that, “Police battalions were not “Nazi” institutions” and they not “nazified in an significant sense”. Saying that these men were never trained into becoming Nazified, let alone genocidal killers and would easily become genocidal executioners. He backs up his claims with one of the first slaughters of the genocidal campaign unleashed against Soviet Jewry was started by a police battalion and after

    Read More

  • Holocaust War Lawbreakers

    440 Words  | 2 Pages

    The destinies of several nazi individuals all throughout the last of World War II are spread wherever the guide regarding what transpired. Many took a sign from their devoted pioneer, Adolf Hitler, and submitted suicide to evade catch and discipline. These war hoodlums could never need to confront their violations. Others fled the nation and went up against expected characters in an attempt to escape experts. While a large portion of the individuals who fled were caught, there is entirely a main 10 most needed rundown of Holocaust war lawbreakers today.

    Read More

  • Outline For The Holocaust Essay

    1474 Words  | 6 Pages

    THE HOLOCAUST by Cadun Everett J. Williams. English III. Block 4 10 March 2023. ii Outline Thesis: The Holocaust led to the cruel unforgivable deaths of multiple Jews during the time of WWII from 1939 to 1945. Introduction Escape attempts Treatment

    Read More

  • Hinda Kibort Analysis

    682 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Holocaust of Nazi Germany, World War I created a new stigma about warfare. During WWI Adolf Hitler the German leader created what is known as the Final Solution, (252). This Final Solution was the creation of a system of camps that were specially build for the incarceration or extermination of the European Jews, (252). Hitler’s mission was to rid Germany of Jews and eventually the rest of Europe. Jews were captured and forced into camps where they faced horrific treatments and many times death.

    Read More

  • Dehumanization Quotes In Night

    714 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Night one of the ways that the Jews were dehumanized was by abuse. There were beatings, “I never felt anything except the lashes of the whip... Only the first really hurt.” (Wiesel, 57) “They were forced to dig huge trenches. When they had finished their work, the men from the Gestapo began theirs.

    Read More

  • Brutality In Elie Wiesel's Night

    645 Words  | 3 Pages

    It’s difficult to imagine the way humans brutally humiliate other humans based on their faith, looks, or mentality but somehow it happens. On the novel “Night” by Elie Wiesel, he gives the reader a tour of World War Two through his own eyes , from the start of the ghettos all the way through the liberation of the prisoners of the concentration camps. This book has several themes that develop throughout its pages. There are three themes that outstand from all the rest, these themes are brutality, humiliation, and faith. They’re the three that give sense to the reading.

    Read More

  • Summary Of This Way For The Gas By Borowski

    1381 Words  | 6 Pages

    In Borowski’s This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentleman, the members of “Canada” are faced with the reality of trying to survive inside the most notorious Nazi death camp, Auschwitz II – Birkenau. In the camp, death, horror and fear were present at all times, but in order for the members of “Canada” to survive the atrocious conditions of the camp, it was necessary for them to not only conform, but to actively participate in the hateful and demoralizing hierarchal nature of the camp. With the death camp, the Nazis were at the top of the hierarchy, but the members of Canada created a hierarchy among the other prisoners in order to survive. Tadek and Henri, the most highlighted members of “Canada”, understood that hierarchy among the prisoners

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Analysis For Night By Elie Wiesel

    686 Words  | 3 Pages

    Hannah Noel Mrs. Beaupre English 1 Honors 23 September 2016 Dialecticals 3-4 One passage that I think is interesting is, “No. Two steps from the pit we were ordered to turn to the left and made to go into the barracks” (Wiesel 25). With this quote the first thing that popped into my head was that these officers were petrifying the prisoners and making them think they were going to die and then at the last second turn them around. The fact that they did that is barbaric.

    Read More

  • Elie Wiesel's Night: The Holocaust And The Holocaust

    967 Words  | 4 Pages

    This book shows how the Holocaust should be taught and not be forgotten, due to it being a prime example of human impureness. Humans learn off trial and error, how the Jewish population was affected, decrease in moral, and the unsettled tension are prime examples of such mistakes. The Jewish population was in jeopardy, therefore other races in the world are at risk of genocide as well and must take this event as a warning of what could happen. In the Auschwitz concentration camp, there was a room filled with shoes.

    Read More

More about Summary Of Ordinary Men By Christopher R. Browning

Open Document