Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland

In 1941, Himmler puts Odilo Globocnik in charge of “the destruction of the Jews of the General Government, who constituted the bulk of Polish Jewry” (49). It is decided that this requires a “method different from the firing squad operations used against Russian Jewry,” a method that is “more efficient, less public, and less burdensome psychologically for the killers” (49). Jews are to be sent to “extermination camp[s] […] where—by virtue of assembly-line procedures requiring very limited manpower, most of it prisoner labor—they [will] be gassed in relative secrecy” (50).

Despite the scale of the task (there are, in total, around 2,000,000 Jews in the General Government), Globocnik is given “virtually no manpower to accomplish it” (50). He draws on “the Sonderdienst (Special Service), composed of small units of ethnic Germans” (51) and “the so-called Trawnikis,” or “non-Polish auxiliaries from Soviet border regions” (52) recruited from POW camps, as well as some members of the Security Police. However, “three Order Police battalions, totaling 1,500 men, represent the single largest police manpower pool” (51) at his disposal.

In spring 1942, Globocnik begins deporting Jews to extermination camps at Bełżec and Sobibór. By late June, “scarcely three months after the first deportations from the Lublin ghetto, about 100,000 Jews from the Lublin district [have] been killed, along with 65,000 from Kraków and Galicia” (53). However, the mass murder is halted by transportation issues and remains slow for almost a month. Battalion 101 arrive in the Lublin district “during this enforced lull in the Final Solution,” having “received orders for a ‘special action’” (53) but not knowing exactly what awaits them.

Initially, the battalion are involved in the “consolidation process” of “collecting Jews in smaller settlements and moving them to larger ghettos and camps” (54). Although this does not include mass executions, “Jews who [are] too old, frail, or sick to be transported [are] shot in at least some instances” (54). However, Globocnik soon “los[es] patience with this consolidation process and decide[s] to experiment with renewed killing” (54). With deportation trains unable to access the extermination camps, “mass execution through firing squad [is] the available alternative,” and “Reserve Police Battalion 101 [is] the unit to be tested” (54).

Battalion 101 are ordered to round up the 1,800 Jews living in the village of Józefów. Jewish men of working age are to be sent to one of the camps while the “women, children, and elderly [are] simply to be shot on the spot” (55). When Major Trapp says that “any of the older men who [do] not feel up to the task before them [can] step out” (57), around a dozen men accept the offer. Lieutenant Heinz Buchmann also asks for another assignment, declaring that he will “in no case participate in such an action, in which defenseless women and children are shot” (56).

The battalion are assigned either to round up the Jews in Józefów or “to proceed to the forest to form the firing squads” (57). Trapp does “not go to the forest itself or witness the executions” (57) because he “[can] not bear the sight” (58). Policeman recall seeing him “weeping like a child,” asking “Oh, God, why did I have to be given these orders,” and declaring that “such jobs don’t suit me. But orders are orders” (58).

The first Jews arrive in the forest and the firing squad “[come] forward and, face to face, [are] paired off with their victims” who are ordered to “lie down in a row” (61). The policemen place “their bayonets on the backbone above the shoulder blades as earlier instructed, and […] [fire] in unison” (61). Aside from “a midday break, the shooting proceed[s] without interruption until nightfall” (61). Inexperienced men shooting at point-blank range make mistakes and often “the entire skull explode[s]” (64) and the men are soon “gruesomely besmirched with blood, brains, and bone splinters” (65). Alcohol is given to the shooters.

Confronting the reality of mass murder, some men try “to make up for the opportunity they had missed earlier” and ask to be relieved because the task is “repugnant” (62) and they are “not able to carry out further executions” because their “nerves [are] totally finished” or they have a “very weak nature” (66). Sometimes this occurs after they begin engaging in conversations with their victims and learn that they are from Germany or even from Hamburg, like most of the battalion. Other men do not ask to be relieved but “intentionally […] [shoot] past” (62) their targets, wounding rather than killing them, with one policeman later reporting that he “intentionally missed. I then ran into the woods [and] vomited” (68).

Others simply hide or appear to be busy elsewhere. One such policeman is later confronted by his comrades, who berate him “with remarks such as ‘shithead’ and ‘weakling’ to express their disgust,” although he otherwise “suffer[s] no consequences” (66). For various reasons, an ever-growing number of traumatized policemen gather in the village marketplace having been assigned new duties or “advised to ‘slink away’” (68) by some of the more sympathetic officers.

Seventeen hours after the battalion’s arrival in the village, the shooting finishes and the men return to their barracks “depressed, angered, embittered, and shaken” (69). They barely eat but drink “heavily” as Trapp attempts to “console and reassure” the men, “again placing the responsibility on higher authorities” (69). As if “[b]y silent consensus,” no one talks about the massacre and the “entire matter [is] a taboo” (69). That night, “one policeman [awakes] firing his gun into the ceiling of the barracks” (69).

Part of the reason so few men initially excuse themselves from the massacre is the fact that there is “no forewarning or time to think” (71) about the realities of what is to come. Equally important is “the pressure of conformity—the basic identification of men in uniform with their comrades and the strong urge not to separate themselves from the group by stepping out” (71). To do so would mean “leaving one’s comrades and admitting that one was ‘too weak’ or ‘cowardly’” (72). One policeman, “more aware of what truly required courage,” will later admit that he took part in the shooting precisely because “[he] was cowardly” (72). Most will later deny that they had a choice, despite Trapp’s offer, “claim[ing] that they had not heard that part of the speech or could not remember it” (72).

Anti-Semitism can be considered a factor in their decisions as, while the men may not have “consciously adopted the anti-Semitic doctrines of the regime, they [have] at least accepted the assimilation of the Jews into the image of the enemy” (73). Following this, their “concern for their standing in the eyes of their comrades [is] not matched by any sense of human ties with their victims,” as “Jews [stand] outside their circle of human obligation and responsibility” (73).

An estimated “10 to 20 percent of those actually assigned to the firing squads” (74) ask to be reassigned or otherwise avoid their duties but few do so because of “[p]olitically and ethically motivated opposition,” or “opposition to the regime’s anti-Semitism in particular” (75). Lieutenant Buchmann offers the “most dramatic” example of this, insisting that “short of a direct personal order from Trapp, he [will] not take part in Jewish actions” (76).

Most men, however, stop shooting because of “sheer physical revulsion against what they [are] doing” without “any ethical or political principles behind this revulsion” (74). Afterwards, “resentment and bitterness in the battalion over what they had been asked to do […] was shared by virtually everyone, even those who had shot the entire day” (76).

Accordingly, the greatest obstacle for the commanding officers is “not the ethically and politically grounded opposition of a few but the broad demoralization” (76) of everyone involved. Faced with the men’s “reaction to the sheer horror of the killing process itself,” they conclude that “the psychological burden on the men [has] to be taken into account and alleviated” (76).

To help avoid “psychological demoralization,” Battalion 101 are assigned primarily to “ghetto clearing and deportation,” which involves “terrible coercive violence […] as well as the systematic killing of those who could not be marched to the trains,” with the “bulk of the killing” (77) moved to extermination camps. They will also share many of their duties with “the Twanikis, SS-trained auxiliaries from Soviet territories,” who will be assigned “the worst of the on-the-spot ‘dirty work’” (77). This division of labor will allow the policemen to “become accustomed to their participation in the Final Solution” and develop into “increasingly efficient and calloused executioners” (77).

Battalion 101 are redeployed to the Northern “security sector” of the Lublin district. On August 16, the battalion’s Second Company, commanded by Lieutenant Gnade and stationed in Łomazy, are told to be ready for “a Jewish ‘resettlement’” the following day, during which the “entire Jewish population [is] to be shot” (79). To spare Second Company the “psychological burden” (79) of mass murder, “the Hiwis from Trawniki [will] do the shooting” (80). However, the policemen will still have to execute “infants and the old, sick, and frail who [cannot] be easily taken to the assembly point” as part of the “roundup” (80).

Second Company round up 1,700 Jews and send “sixty to seventy young men” (80) from among them into the woods, to begin “work digging a mass grave” (80). When the Hiwis arrive, they “immediately […] [take] a break” and begin drinking “bottles of vodka” (80). Gnade and an attending SS officer also begin “drinking heavily” (80). Second Company escorts the Jews on the “one-kilometer ‘march of death’” (80) into the forest, during which anyone “who collapse[s] on the way [is] simply shot” (81). In the forest, the Jews are “ordered to undress” while policemen “collect clothing and valuables” (82).

Lieutenant Gnade is “‘a Nazi by conviction’ and an anti-Semite,” as well as being “unpredictable—affable and approachable at times, brutal and vicious at others” (82). His “worst traits [become] more pronounced under the influence of alcohol,” and in Poland he is “degenerat[ing] into a ‘drunkard’” (82). This “increasing dependence on alcohol [is] not unusual in the battalion,” with one rare nondrinker noting that his “comrades [drink] so much solely because of the many shootings of Jews, for such a life [is] quite intolerable sober” (82).

Gnade is “drunk senseless” and reveals a growing “streak of sadism” (82). He selects around “some twenty to twenty-five elderly Jews […] with full beards” and makes them undress and “crawl on the ground in the area before the grave” (82-83) while he “scream[s] to those around” to get clubs until they “vigorously beat the Jews” (83). Gnade then begins “to chase Jews from the undressing area to the grave” (83).

The grave has “mounds of dirt piled high on three sides” and, on the fourth side, “an incline down which the Jews [are] driven” (83). The Hiwis, “often with bottle in hand,” position themselves on the raised walls and shoot down as the Jews are driven into the pit, until “the grave [is] filled with corpses almost to the top” (83). Like Gnade, they are increasingly drunk and soon have to stand in the grave itself so as to avoid falling off the walls. As “groundwater mixe[s] with blood,” they are “soon standing in it up over their knees” (83).

When the Hiwis fall “into a drunken stupor” (83), Second Company are ordered to take over the shooting. They are formed into squads and “relieved by others in rotation after five or six shots” (84). Many of the Jews are “not fatally hit during the execution and nonetheless [are] covered by following victims without being given mercy shots” (83). Around two hours later, “the Hiwis [are] roused from their stupor and [resume] shooting in place of the German policeman” (84). When they finish at around 7 pm, the “thin covering of the overfilled grave continue[s] to move” (84).

Battalion 101’s second massacre is different from “the improvised and amateurish methods employed at Józefów” (85). Although the policemen had to take over briefly, the “Hiwis, not just liquored up after the event to help them forget but drunk from the start, [do] most of the shooting” (85). Despite being essential to the operation, “[t]hose spared such direct participation seem to have […] little if any sense of participation in the killing” (85). Even when they do take over the shooting, the policemen do not “have to pair off with their victims face to face,” so the “personal tie between victim and killed [is] severed” (85).

There is another key difference that offers “another kind of psychological ‘relief’ for the men—namely, this time they [do] not bear the ‘burden of choice’ that Trapp had offered them so starkly on the occasion of the first massacre” (86). Although they ultimately have a choice, it is “not offered to them so openly and explicitly” through official channels, so they do not have “to live with the clear awareness that what they [have] done had been unavoidable” (86). As such, “following orders reinforce[s] the natural tendency to conform to the behavior of one’s comrades” (87). Many find this easier than “the situation at Józefów, where the policemen were allowed to make personal decisions concerning their participation but the ‘cost’ of not shooting was to separate themselves from their comrades and to expose themselves as ‘weak’” (87).

Before the first massacre, Trapp had “not only offered a choice but he had set a tone,” telling the men that “[w]e have the task to shoot Jews, but not to beat or torture them” (87). Because the second massacre is committed by a company, rather than the whole platoon, Trapp is not present, and the “tone” is set by “Gnade’s gratuitous and horrific sadism,” which helps the men take “a major step towards becoming hardened killers” (87).