The current wave of antisemitism in the United States, the destroyed cemeteries, the threats, has made me think more about why it is that people do horrible things. This isn’t a new train of thought for me.
Sometime between working with libraries and finding a position in the publishing industry, I earned my graduate degree in modern German history. Though I primarily focused on Imperial Germany and archaeology, the specters of WWII and the Holocaust haunted my education. They had to.
As a result, I became well acquainted with the study of genocide, the study of why people do terrible things. One book in particular stuck with me. Maybe because it was the first one that I read on the subject. Maybe because it really was that profound.
That book was Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher Browning.
(Though Chris…
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