Pre-existing antisemitism alone cannot explain perpetrators’ immediate comfort with atrocity
Evidence
It would be hard (and fool ish) to argue with the assertion that German Holocaust perpetrators were part of a violently anti-Semitic society and that many of them were predisposed to persecute Jews. Goldhagen, however, goes further and argues that because of their attitudes, from the moment perpetrators were sent to the front, they were perfectly comfortable with engaging in activities such as shooting people through the head, burying them alive, and even killing infants. — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide, 336
Categorization
- QUESTION: Where does the actual counter-evidence appear that perpetrators were not immediately comfortable? Worth checking the empirical citations later in the chapter.
- XREF: connects to: Antisemitism explains victim selection, not the crime’s nature — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 703; Perpetrators’ motivations extend beyond antisemitism to authority, duty, and loyalty; The Holocaust was not the logical culmination of prior antisemitism (+5 more)
Broader Connections
- Antisemitism explains who was killed, not why genocide happened
#corroborates(0.92) - Antisemitism explains victim selection, not the crime’s nature
#corroborates(0.90) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 703 - Perpetrators’ motivations extend beyond antisemitism to authority, duty, and loyalty
#expands(0.88) - The Holocaust was not the logical culmination of prior antisemitism
#corroborates(0.85) - Modern scholarship downplays antisemitism’s unique ideological role in the Holocaust
#complicates(0.80) - Ambivalence and ambiguity explain antisemitic othering better than antisemitism does
#qualifies(0.75) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 520 - Individual antisemitism did not preclude rescuing Jews during the Nazi era
#expands(0.72) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 513 - Jewish mannerisms trigger visceral antisemitic reactions regardless of the person’s character
#complicates(0.70) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 927