The main question raised in the One Day in Jozefow: Initiation to Mass Murder article is that of how did the Nazis get the manpower and successfully eliminate so many Polish Jews in a mere matter of eleven months. What is found is that the Nazis did not actually use real military force to clear the ghettos. When they were given orders leaders did not have enough men to successfully clear ghettos, therefore, they turned to normal everyday Polish police. They also gathered prisoners of war who were from places like the Ukraine and Lithuania. The Nazis also took order police who were stationed in the German government. This gave them the numbers they were so lacking and that were vital to them to take on their orders.
Many of these people had not been brought up and raised in Nazi Germany and therefore they did not have the values and anti-Semitism that other soldiers had.
They were simply given orders and expected to carry them out. Some men did not want to participate in shooting Jews at point-blank range and yet some did without even giving a second thought as to why they were killing these people. It seemed as if some of the men were merely just going along with what their peers were doing in order not to be singled out or labeled a coward.
This concept is a very interesting one. How could the Nazis succeed in simply convincing men who were not necessarily racists towards Jewish people to kill them so mercilessly? Surely the men could have refused and went against orders but instead, they chose to kill innocent people. After the Holocaust, the men were uncomfortable talking about what they did. They did not feel good about it nor did they take any sort of pride. They themselves probably wondered how they were so easily persuaded and convinced to murder so many Polish Jews.
Genocide and Public Health: German Doctors and Polish Jews examines the roles that German Doctors played in the mass murder of the Polish Jews. It looks especially at the public health officials. First, it shows the fact that German Doctors thought Poland, in general, was a filthy country that was filled with uncivilized people. They thought health conditions in Poland were not even suitable for animals. Things like this helped contribute to anti-Semitism because people thought no respectable human being would ever choose to live in such conditions.
The health system that was set up was to first serve the German people above anyone else. There was an emphasis on preventing the spread of any diseases that the Polish Jews may be carrying. This like this helped justify things like mass murder. It gave people all the more reason to think that it was okay to eliminate Jewish people from the country entirely. They restricted the movement of Jews in order to prevent any diseases from traveling and keep in mind the well being of the Polish people and above all the Germans.
The doctors began to look at Jewish people not as patients but instead as a danger to everyone else. They did not focus on getting them better but instead thought it would be best just to abolish the Jewish people entirely. These ides infiltrated other people’s heads and fueled their hatred. The Jewish people were putting them at risk for sickness and disease and they did not seem to care. This gave the people all of the more reason to want them to be murdered.
These two articles were extremely interesting to explore and compare. It is amazing the influence certain people can have on others. On one hand you have the doctors being able to spread bold lies and make citizens feel that the Jewish people were the cause of a lot of disease and they could not be cured therefore they had to be eliminated. On the other hand you had people who were not necessarily against Jewish people being persuaded to kill them for beliefs that they themselves did not possess.
