ГУЛаг Палестины

(3) There was the desirability also of keeping all killings as secret as possible so as not to

arouse the fear or indignation of the general populace. Raul Hilberg describes how even the

roundups themselves were kept as much as possible from view - how much more self-conscious,

then, would the Germans feel about a public killing:

During the stages of concentration, deportations, and killings, the

perpetrators tried to isolate the victims from public view. The administrators

of destruction did not want untoward publicity about their work. They wanted

to avoid criticism of their methods by passers-by. Their psychic balance was

jeopardized enough, especially in the field, and any sympathy extended to the

victim was bound to result in additional psychological as well as operational

complications. ... Any rumors or stories carried from the scene were an

irritant and a threat to the perpetrator.

Precautions were consequently plentiful. In Germany, Jews were sometimes

moved out in the early morning hours before there was traffic in the streets.

Furniture vans without windows were used to take Jews to trains. Loading might

be planned for a siding where human waste was collected. In Poland, the local

German administrators would order the Polish population to stay indoors and

keep the windows closed with blinds drawn during roundups of Jews, even though

such a directive was notice of an impending action. Shooting sites, as in Babi

Yar in Kiev, were selected to be at least beyond hearing distance of local

residents. (Raul Hilberg, Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders, 1992, p. 215)

(4) Public executions would create witnesses able to later testify as to Nazi culpability, and

gunfire in a city would attract attention.

(5) In allowing impulsive killing, mistakes would be made, non-Jews or non-Communists killed.

(6) In an arrest, it would hardly be worthwhile to inform the police participants as to the

perhaps many purposes of the arrest or the final disposition of those arrested; in some cases,

therefore, those arrested, or some among those arrested, might be slated not for extermination

but for interrogation: they might have useful information, they might have monetary assets that

needed to be ascertained or confiscated, they might have rare skills which could be put into the

service of the Nazis - and so permitting the impulsive killing of any of the arrested would

interfere with these plans.

(7) Perhaps among those arrested might be informants who would be questioned and released, and

so again none of those being arrested should be impulsively killed.

(8) An impulsive execution would create the problem of what to do with the body of someone

impulsively executed in the street - to leave the body in the street would be unacceptable, and

yet to send a truck to pick it up would consume scarce resources.

(9) An impulsive execution might lead to blood being splattered over the participants, or might

lead to a bullet passing through the intended victim and hitting an unintended target.

(10) Anyone so trigger-happy as to shoot a woman for walking too slowly posed a danger to

everyone, even to his German superiors, and so would not be tolerated within the German forces.

(11) The Germans viewed the optimal executioner as one who found killing distasteful, but killed

dutifully upon command. Anyone who enjoyed killing, within which category must fall anyone who

killed on impulse, was a degenerate and had a corrupting influence on those around him, most

importantly on Germans who after the war would be expected to return to Germany and resume

civilian life. With respect to German personnel, at least, the attitude was as follows:

The Germans sought to avoid damage to "the soul" ... in the prohibition of

unauthorized killings. A sharp line was drawn between killings pursuant to

order and killings induced by desire. In the former case a man was thought to

have overcome the "weakness" of "Christian morality"; in the latter case he was

overcome by his own baseness. That was why in the occupied USSR both the army

and the civil administration sought to restrain their personnel from joining

the shooting parties at the killing sites. [In the case of the SS,] if

selfish, sadistic, or sexual motives [for an unauthorized killing] were found,

punishment was to be imposed for murder or for manslaughter, in accordance with

the facts. (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, pp.

1009-1010)

The killing of the Jews was regarded as historical necessity. The soldier had

to "understand" this. If for any reason he was instructed to help the SS and

Police in their task, he was expected to obey orders. However, if he killed a

Jew spontaneously, voluntarily, or without instruction, merely because he

wanted to kill, then he committed an abnormal act, worthy perhaps of an

"Eastern European" (such as a Romanian) but dangerous to the discipline and

prestige of the German army. Herein lay the crucial difference between the man

who "overcame" himself to kill and one who wantonly committed atrocities. The

former was regarded as a good soldier and a true Nazi; the latter was a person

without self-control, who would be a danger to his community after his return

home. (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, p. 326)