2 Matching Annotations
  1. Feb 2018
    1. We – I was very lucky, again there was a man that recognised me, that had stayed in our hotel and he said “Do you like to have a good job?”  And I said, “Yes, he said “Would you like to be the head of the laundry?”I said “Yes”, I didn’t know anything about laundry, but I thought everything is better then – perhaps it looks good. So I worked in the laundry and I had to assort clothes and they were sent out.

      Being in a camp was obviously horrific and terrifying, but this instance of a German soldier recognizing a Jewish woman from before the war and giving her an "easier" job helps remind me that these soldiers were human beings with empathy, even if they were complicit in crimes against humanity.

    1. is kind of “training” forged the path that led to the SS becoming the bloodthirsty mass murder force, in later years, machine-gunning innocent men

      This seems to speak to the idea that most people in the SS began as “normal” soldiers, but as murder was normalized, it became easier and easier to perceive an infraction and punish it, in the mind of the officer.