Inferno, by Max Hastings (Alfred A. Knopf: New York 2011). A great, insightful history of World War II. This post is taken from my recent Facebook post, about the Victims chapter within the book.
I've been reading "Inferno," by the excellent British historian and writer Max Hastings. It's a well-written history of World War II, a week by week, sometimes hour by hour account. I feel compelled to share a little of the book with you.
Hastings includes a 27-page chapter called "Victims," an overview of what the different subjugated populations suffered during the war. Mass deportations, massacres, hunger, and misery were inflicted on tens of millions in Europe and Asia. 1.5 million Poles were deported to Siberian exile by the Russians. 350,000 of them died of starvation, about 30,000 were executed. Hastings writes, "In addition to almost 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis, over 3 million Russians died in German captivity, while huge numbers of non-Jewish civilians were massacred in Russia, Poland, Yugoslavia, Greece and other occupied countries." (In Greece, a Wikipedia article estimates 500,000 to 800,000 deaths during the war, out of a pre-war population of 7,222,000.)
The Victims chapter naturally includes an account of the Holocaust. The Jewish holocaust exists "in its own dimension," in Hastings's words. Hitler and the Germans pursued the annihilation of European and Russian Jews even at huge costs to themselves and their ability to fight on many fronts. Almost all levels of German society, and most of the subjected countries under German control, willingly contributed to the deranged effort.
I was especially moved by several accounts Hastings gives of the "ordinary Germans" who carried out the early executions of the Jews. "On 13 July 1942, Reserve Police Battalion 101 arrived in a convoy of trucks at the Polish village of Josefow, whose inhabitants included 1,800 Jews. Mostly middle-aged reservists from Hamburg...they gathered around their commander, fifty-three year old Maj. Wilhelm Trapp, a career policeman...In a choking voice, and with tears in his eyes, he told them they had a most unwelcome assignment...to arrest all Jews in the village, remove to a work camp men of working age, and kill the remainder...He then invited any man who felt unable to perform this unpleasant task to step aside...At least twenty were permitted to return to barracks...Yet a sufficiency of others stayed to do the business. Georg Kageler, a thirty-seven year old tailor, killed his initial batch easily enough, but then fell into conversation with a mother and daughter from Kassel, who were destined to die next...he appealed and was sent instead to guard the marketplace while others did his share of the shooting...One member of the battalion, Walter Zimmerman, later gave evidence: 'There were always some comrades who found it easier to shoot Jews than did others, so that the respective commando leaders never had difficulty finding suitable shooters.'"
Not all Germans were complicit. "A small minority displayed high courage in succoring the persecuted, at mortal risk to themselves. A young Berlin shoemaker named August Kossman, a communist, hid Irma Simon, her husband and son in his little apartment for two years. The teenager Erich Newmann's mother, a cafe owner, sheltered a young Jewish family friend in Charlottenburg for five months...Rita Kirsh's mother sheltered a young man named Solomon Striem, a family friend...'I cannot just turn the poor hunted man away.' Such extraordinarily courageous people sustained a shred of the honor of German civilization."
So, after reading this chapter, I thought I should share a bit of it with you. These events took place about eighty years ago. May those described here who suffered and died always be remembered. May we also remember always those who sheltered and helped the hunted at great peril to themselves.
