Similarities Between Ordinary Men And Neighbors

Dan Wallin
Exam #2 Essay
4/12/16

Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning, and Neighbors by Jan Gross are both nonfiction accounts of Genocide during the Holocaust that share similarities in the fact that they delve into the minds of the killers that both tortured and committed mass murder on the Jews during World War II. Each account, however examines different events and two different groups of people in World War II, Browning examines the “ordinary men” of the German Reserve Police Battalion 101 and their participation in the killings of at least 83,000 Jews. Gross on the other hand, examines the brutal torture and eventual murder of an estimated 1,600 Jews in Jedwabne, a town in Southern Poland, by a group of so called “neighbors” or Polish

Many of the hooligans were even said to have made a game out of the killings. It all started on July 10, 1941, when a group of 8 Gestapo men met with the town Mayor, Marian Karolak, as well as the town council. The group decided that an annihilation of the Jewish population living in Jedwabne was in order, and it was the Poles specifically that embraced this order. When one Gestapo man suggested that they allow one family for each specific career/trade to survive, it was a Pole, Bronisław Szleziãski, who made his case that all Jews of Jedwabne needed to be

The person who assumes responsibility has evaporated. Perhaps this is the most common characteristic of socially organized evil in modern society” (77). It was shown in the Obedience experiment, we see time and again that the dissipation of responsibility can lead any average human being to perform tasks that they themselves consider immoral and unethical. So long as we are told that the responsibility of the harm that we are causing will fall on someone else’s shoulders, humans as a whole are capable of unimaginable damage much like Police Battalion 101 and the hooligans of Jedwabne. The institution of authority imposed during the Stanford Prison experiment is similar to the institution of anti-semitism that was preached and instituted in Polish towns like Jedwabne where the Jews were used as a source of blame. While many members of the Police Battalion preached that they were simply following orders, other members, and the Polish hooligans of Jedwabne were up to something far more sinister, and it is truly startling to see the barbarity that humans can have towards other humans in times of crisis when they are told that the responsibility for those lives doesn’t fall on