I’ve been reading “Ordinary Men” (Christopher Browning) and as someone who has taken time to learn what I can about the Holocaust in the past I am still blown away by the brutal descriptions and analysis of how a reserve police unit in Eastern Poland engaged in the brutality we know too well. A quote that sums up his conclusion at the end of the book:
Most of all, one comes away from the story of Reserve Police Battalion 101 with a great unease. This story of ordinary men is not the story of all men. The reserve policemen faced choices, and most of them committed terrible deeds. But those who killed cannot be absolved by the notion that anyone in the same situation would have done as they did. For even among them, some refused to kill and others stopped killing. … If the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 could become killers under such circumstances, what group of men cannot?
What have you read/learned/remembered to share?
- edited to fix typos in the quote
submitted by /u/jrs1029
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Source: Reditt
