Argumentative Essay On Ordinary Men

After thoroughly reading Christopher R. Browning’s book “Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland”, I’ve come to the conclusion that the Germans who perpetrated the Holocaust were indeed “ordinary”. Browning highlighted that the men from Unit 101 were ordinary middle-age men who were part of the working class in Hamburg, Germany. These 500 men were drafted for the war, but they were either ineligible for military duty or were evading fighting in it. Therefore, they decided to form this unit. Since this group of men was not part of the Gestapo or the SS, it indicates that they weren’t strong advocates of Nazism. Only a quarter were members of the Nazi Party. In the following essay I will be discussing the …show more content…
He was considered a sadist and drunk. He was very serious about the killings; he enjoyed killing thousands of Jews. He was a “hard core” anti-Semite. He would make Jews crawl for him before killing them. “Even before the shooting began, First Lieutenant Gnade personally picked out some twenty to twenty- five elderly Jews. They were exclusively men with beards. Gnade made the old men crawl on the ground in the area before the grave. Before he gave them the order to crawl, they had to undress” (Browning 82-83). He was killed during the war. And lastly, Buchman. Buchman was a family guy (Browning 56). He tried to avoid any killing as possible. He would find any excuse not to do this, and Trapp would defend him and guard him. He only got three years in …show more content…
The term “neighbors” refers to the Polish people who used to live door to door with the Polish Jews. These neighbors were ordinary Poles who took action in the Jedwabne Massacre. Jedwabne was a town in Poland were 60 percent of the population was Jewish. All, but seven, of the town’s Jews were brutally murdered in this massacre (Gross 27). The Jewish community in Jedwabne, also known as Judeo Commune, was also a communist group. The fact that this community was Jewish and communist made the killings easier. The Polish Catholics believed that the Polish Jews were a threat to society and so eliminating them was the best option. The Polish Catholics were very organized in the executions; they had help from other Polish Catholics who had been part of other massacres nearby and had control over the resistance.
It is important to highlight that before the war even started, the Polish Catholics and the Polish Jews in Jedwabne had a good relationship. They were peaceful, they got along, and even helped one another (Gross 15). Except for Easter. On Easter, Catholic priests would cast Jews as “God-killers”, which led to many violent outbursts and anti-Semitism (Gross

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