Hannah Arendt pointed out the linguistic tendency under Nazism to speak of those receiving orders as bearing a “burden,” implying that those who followed instructions were themselves victims.221 It was a sign of an intact moral sense to criticize the executions precisely
Priebe’s story continues:
The Jews suffered badly during the Russian advance, when the Russians were in POLAND. A great many of them were shot by the Russians too. An old lawyer said to my father: “I would never have believed that things would come to that in GERMANY.” All these things I know from my father, how the S.S. carried out their house to house searches; from the doctors that were there they took everything; all jewellery, they didn’t even stop at wedding rings. “What have you got there?” “A wedding ring.” “Give it here, you don’t need it.” Then there’s also the damnable fact that the S.S., in their uncontrolled sexual activities, didn’t even stop at Jews. EAST GALICIA is now completely free of Jews. There’s not a single Jew left in EAST GALICIA. Many Jews arranged to get papers and are still living in POLAND; they’ve suddenly become Aryan.
When they went to work in the morning—we always had to pass the place on our way to the bombing ground—each morning they came along, old women and men, in separate parties. The women came along, all arm-in-arm; they were forced to sing their Jewish songs. You couldn’t help noticing some very well-dressed women among them. There were some really attractive women there. You could really have called them “ladies.”
The story went round that they were simply driven into a sort of reservoir. Then water was let in and ran out again at the other end. By then there was nothing left of them at all. The number of young SS fellows who had nervous breakdowns simply because they could carry on with it no longer! There were some real thugs amongst them too. One of them told my father he didn’t know what he’d do when all the Jews were dead. He had got so used to it he could no longer exist without it. I couldn’t do that either. I simply couldn’t. I could kill fellows who had committed crimes, but women and children—and tiny children! The children scream and everything. The only good thing is that they took the SS and not the Armed Forces for that.222
