Is it possible to explain the motivations of Holocaust perpetrators? (by Valentin Boulan)

PublisHistory Blog

Many Holocaust studies have focused not only on the victims, but also on perpetrators. This interest towards the Nazi killing machine is in many ways understandable. Firstly, because perpetrators can be seen as an opportunistic topic of study, for which countless primary sources, such as official documents from the Reich’s bureaucracy and perpetrator testimonies, became available at the end of the war. This, in turn facilitated the work of historians, most notoriously that of Raul Hilberg . Furthermore, the atrocities of the Nazi regime naturally provoked a particular curiosity and need to understand among Western writers, who sought to explain how a modern, seemingly civilised society could decline into such a destructive force. Whatever the reason, the motivations of Holocaust perpetrators have become the subject of a heated debate, in which distinctive sides have emerged. On the one hand, the most controversial school of thought, supported in Daniel Goldhagen’s book…

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Israeli archaeologist digs into Nazi death camp…Sobibor

dailyoddsandends

The most touching find thus far, he said, has been an engraved metal identification tag bearing the name of Lea Judith de la Penha, a 6-year-old Jewish girl from Holland who Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial confirmed was murdered at the camp.

Haimi calls her the “symbol of Sobibor.”

KIRYAT MALACHI, Israel (AP) — When Israeli archaeologist Yoram Haimi decided to investigate his family’s unknown Holocaust history, he turned to the skill he knew best: He began to dig.

After learning that two of his uncles were murdered in the infamous Sobibor death camp, he embarked on a landmark excavation project that is shining new light on the workings of one of the most notorious Nazi killing machines, including pinpointing the location of the gas chambers where hundreds of thousands were killed.

Sobibor, in eastern Poland, marks perhaps the most vivid example of the “Final Solution,” the Nazi plot to…

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High Street

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Photograph of the Jewish Holocaust memorial in Berlin Germany by architect  Peter Eisenmann / © Hovercraftdoggy

 

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