Ordinary Men

When the battalion redeploys to the northern part of the Lublin district, Gnade and the Second Company settle in the area of Biała Podlaska. The Final Solution began in this area in June 1942 with the deportation of 3,000 Jews to Sobibór. When Gnade and his men arrive, hundreds of Jews are concentrated in the village of Łomazy. Gnade leads the battalion’s first joint killing action with a unit of Hiwis from Trawniki against the Jews in Łomazy. On August 16, the day before the mass execution, Gnade prepares officials in the town and his own officers for the action—all the Jews are to be shot. Gnade’s men are only supposed to round the Jews up for the Hiwis to shoot, although rounding the Jews up includes shooting the elderly and anyone too sick to walk.

After the roundup, about 60 or 70 of Łomazy’s 1,700 Jews are taken into the woods to dig a mass grave. After hours of waiting, about 50 Hiwis come into the town, apparently already drunk and determined to get drunker. When the grave is finished, the Jews, Gnade’s men, and the Hiwis slowly make their way to the forest. The Jews are ordered to undress (the women and some men keep their underclothes on) and then lie on the ground to wait.

Most of the men’s testimonies indicate that Gnade is a virulent anti-Semite with an unpredictable temper that grows steadily worse when he drinks. On the day of the massacre in Łomazy, Gnade is very drunk, which evidently brings out his sadistic side. Thus far in the war, Gnade seemed, at best, indifferent to violence, but at Łomazy he forces elderly Jewish men to undress and crawl in the dirt and mud for a while before getting his noncommissioned officers to help him beat the men with clubs. Just before the shooting, Gnade personally chases Jews from the undressing area to the grave.

The Jews are forced to run into the mass grave in groups and the Hiwis excitedly shoot them, then they force the next group to scramble over a pile of corpses to get into the empty part of the pit. Eventually, the Jews must lie on top of dead friends and family. As the bodies pile up, the blood mixes with dirt and groundwater; soon, the shooters in the grave are standing in a knee-deep puddle of blood and mud. As the Hiwis start passing out from drunkenness, Gnade orders his own men to start shooting. The men are forced to take a different approach than the Hiwis because the pool of blood and mud is too deep and bodies—some of which are still moving—are floating everywhere.

Gnade’s men continue shooting until the Hiwis wake up enough to resume their task. Once the execution is over, the work Jews cover the grave with dirt and then the Hiwis shoot them as well. The thin layer of dirt over the grave continues to move. A few days later there’s a sweep of the town to root out any Jews who evaded the initial execution and Gnade sends orders for them to be shot.

The massacre at Łomazy differs from the one at Józefów in a few important ways. For example, more Jews try to escape, and the men steal their victims’ valuables and clothes. This massacre is easier for the men of Gnade’s company to deal with psychologically because the Hiwis do most of the shooting. Even the men who do eventually shoot seem to find it easier because they don’t pair off with their victims, thus depersonalizing the process. Also, it doesn’t take as long to finish the massacre, and the men are already somewhat habituated to violence because of their participation in the killing at Józefów.

Another major difference between the two massacres is that the men experience a sort of “psychological relief” because Gnade did not explicitly give them the option to opt out of shooting the way Trapp did at Józefów. Without this option, the men assigned to firing squads are not burdened with the knowledge that they chose to do something terrible. Of course, this doesn’t mean that the men didn’t have a choice; some slipped off, but in small numbers. Most didn’t even try to avoid shooting, because following orders falls in line with their natural desire to conform to the majority.

Trapp didn’t just offer to excuse men from participating in violence, he set a tone for the massacre at Józefów—he didn’t want to hurt those who had to die, and his own pain at just giving the orders was evident. For this reason, the massacre was far more emotionally draining than later ones. Later “Jewish actions” are led by company or platoon leaders and they get to set the tone for those events. In this case, Gnade’s sadism seems to have rubbed off on his men, and it helps them take an important step towards becoming truly callous killers.