In July 1942, the commander of Reserve Police Battalion 101 gave his men a choice: those who could not bring themselves to participate in the massacre of Jewish civilians could step aside. 🕯️
Almost no one stepped aside.
These were not SS fanatics or ideological zealots. They were middle-aged German policemen, fathers and tradesmen, men who had lived ordinary lives before the war. And yet, over the following months, they personally shot approximately 38,000 Jews and deported 45,000 more to Treblinka.
Historian Christopher Browning's landmark study Ordinary Men asked the most uncomfortable question of the Holocaust: not how monsters committed genocide, but how ordinary people did. His answer still haunts us. Peer pressure, careerism, obedience to authority, and the slow normalization of atrocity turned unremarkable men into mass murderers.
The lesson is not that humans are inherently evil. It is that ordinary people, under the right conditions, are capable of extraordinary evil.
What does that tell us about the importance of moral courage today?
H/T Hidden Tribe
Dear Jewish friends , the hatred we are receiving is commensurate to our successes in Israel ,the more success the more vitriolic the desperation of our detractors.
Nil desperandum ,
Israel’s defense establishment is developing new systems to counter Hezbollah’s fiber-optic FPV drones after the weapons caused casualties among IDF troops in southern Lebanon.
https://t.co/iRBycJMxvJ