On The Choices of Ordinary Men
“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
A. Solzhenitsyn, “The Gulag Archipelago”.
In very basic terms, the Holocaust took place as at the most mundane level, individual human beings killed other human beings in large numbers. In his book Ordinary Men, Christopher Browning tells the story of Reserve Police Battalion 101. A battalion of policemen are ordered to execute all the Jewish women and children in the village of Józefów, Poland. Major Trapp, the leader of the battalion, gives his men the chance to abstain from participating. Quite a number of men decide to step out. However, about 80 percent of them choose to follow orders from beginning to end, eventually executing about 1 500 people. These men were regular citizens — working-class, middle-aged family men. They were not killers.
Why? How did a group of ordinary men, void of any particular racist hatred or ideological agenda, turn into seasoned mass murderers? How can even the most normal of people choose to become cold-blooded killers? The answer is complex yet straightforward. Peer pressure, conformism, fear of ostracism, normalization of violence and lies, distancing from the outcomes of one’s actions, the belief that the root of evil resides somewhere else. Much of it is explored and explained in Browning’s book and dozens of other works throughout human history. But remember that to explain does not mean to excuse.
While millions of men and women suffered at the hands of other men and women, other millions serenely went about their daily lives. The evil that had crept into their society was not their problem. And for us, ordinary Belarusian citizens, the current repressions and falsifications are “not our problem”.
Wait. How dare I even mention these together? You are not a murderer of thousands. You are just a school teacher who signs a fabricated election protocol. You are just a policeman who gives false testimony against peaceful protesters. You are a just doctor who reports a COVID-19 death as “pneumonia”. You are just a university dean who urges students to take part in “early voting”, threatening expulsion. You are just a department manager at a factory who fires a good employee for speaking up. You are just a crew member that helps broadcast lies and slander on national TV. You are just a court clerk who turns a blind eye to a subverted procedure. Or even a mere observer who decides to remain silent. You are nothing like those “murderous criminals”. You would never cross that line! It’s different! Had you been in their shoes, you would never have done it!
Is it? Would you? Would I?.. I do not know the answer, but history gives a hint. In her last interview in 2016, Brunhilde Pomsel, the secretary of Joseph Goebbels, dismissed the suggestion that she’d done anything wrong and that others would have done anything different in her shoes. “Really,” she said. “In Goebbels’ office, I didn’t do anything other than type.”
In Belarus, there are tens, hundreds of thousands of ordinary people, now in a position to make such “small” choices. More than 60 000 ordinary people in local election committees alone. Many more in other government structures. They make small choices that make a large difference.
We cannot afford to forget what happened only a few generations ago. How “minor” evils tend to escalate and breed even more evil through our quiet acceptance. If we do, we make sure that we will not notice the conditions that allowed terrible things to happen in the first place. We cannot assume that we are morally superior to the people who lived before us. History is a mirror that shows us the evil that lives within the human heart. It is scary. It is easier not to see. We all understand. But it is our supreme responsibility to look in that mirror and make the right choices.
P.S. Dante’s “Inferno” reserved The Seventh Circle of Hell for those who engaged in violence. And The Eighth Circle — for those who committed fraud. Fraudsters and liars would be sent yet a level deeper than those “ordinary men” who choose to use violence against unarmed peaceful protesters. So I won’t even mentioned the latter as, pardon my reductionist comparison, “lesser sinners”.
P.P.S. As Browning writes (p.170), for those men in Battalion 101, the lack of choice was an illusion. Each man could have chosen not to participate, and some did. Furthermore, all the men who abstained were protected from punishment. In fact, no defense attorney (representing accused war criminals) “has been able to document a single case in which refusal to obey an order to kill unarmed civilians resulted in […] dire punishment.”
Yes, you may lose your job. You may lose your bonus. You may lose your privileges. But don’t lose your conscience. We are responsible for our choices, no matter the circumstance.
Pardon my dramatic tone. I do not claim moral authority. I merely invite everyone to decide for themselves.
