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Germany and Anti-Semitism - Part 8

© William Waller

So far the statements that have been made about the actions of the officers and men of Police Battalion 101 have been taken direct from evidence given by policemen who survived the war, their wives and other family members; there is also some from the very few surviving victims.

Beside the spoken and written evidence from the records kept by each battalion's HQ staff, there is photographic evidence. Not official photographs taken by, say, the SS, nor photos taken secretly by the victims, but photographs taken by the perpetrators themselves. Now, one can imagine, for example, taking a photo of a group of enemy POWs after a battle with a smiling policemen showing his family how he is the hero, the only guard of hundreds of prisoners. Or simply of a group of fellow policemen. But what is one to make of pictures of Jews squatting or sitting in market squares awaiting they no not what fate, but which fate is only too well known to the photographer. Or of Jewish men being forced to dig mass graves. Or of policemen smiling cheerily as one of them cuts off the beards of elderly Jews. Or of posing, smiling and with whips in hand, with groups of Jews about to be deported to their deaths in Treblinka or Sobibor. And, to ensure that they do not forget what the photo is about, many of them have notes on the back, with dates. All as you might find in the family album, or snaps carried around to show others, especially when going on home leave.

There is a famous Father Brown story about a detective who is deliberately watching from inside a building, to catch a murderer who has said he will come down that road that day. Outside it is snowing and he waits and waits until he receives a call that another victim has been found close by (I hope this is as it is written, because I read it decades ago!). How could this be? Father Brown is summoned and he looks into the street and points to a set of footprints in the snow, showing that someone had been that way, although the detective has already sworn that he saw no one. The footprints go into each building along the road and, only after Father Brown points it out, does everyone realize that it was someone who had dressed as a postman, but who was 'invisible' even to the intent observer. On the evidence of this story, postmen had become what are now known as the socially dead. In this case, it was simply because of the very familiarity of a postman delivering letters, that led the observer not to see him. The social death of the Jews, first of all in Germany and then in the conquered lands, was very different but they did become people of no importance, invisible except when targeted for shooting or deportation. In this state, whatever people did to them was alright, for they were 'dead' anyway. Ordinary Germans were, therefore, able not only to deny to themselves that the Jew was a human being, but their indoctrination by anti-Semitism caused them to be able to feel no particular emotion when carrying out Hitler's extermination policy. It was all in a day's work.

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