Josh Bussiere

Professor Wertz-Orbaugh
UWRT 1103
11/25/14
Alles hat ein Ende, nur die Wurst hat zwei.
My journey of inquiry started out with Mein Kampf, the infamous book written by Hitler himself.
I chose this book to start with because this is where it all started: World War II and the Holocaust. Mein
Kampf was written in prison by Hitler while serving time for treason. The reason he decided to write the
book was for the purpose of putting his beliefs, his doctrine, and his plans all into one place where his
followers could read them; Hitler even gave some background information on himself in the book to
give people a better look into who he is. In this book, Hitler has several key points that make up the
meat of the book; the core message. Hitler wanted to unite all of the Germanic into one German
country, and this, as history tells us, involved invading those countries in order to unite them. The next
point is that once all of the Germanic people are united the government would make sure everyone had
adequate space to live, and the extra space would come from Russia, which is why Hitler decided to
invade Russia. He also talked about how the Jews were a plague upon the German people. He argued
that the Jews were not only taking jobs and owning factories that should belong to the Germans, but
that they were also contaminating the perfect German blood line. There is one quote in particular from
this book that struck me and ultimately lead me to my second source, and it was when Hitler said,
Through clever and constant application of propaganda people can be made to see paradise as hell,
and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise(Hitler). After this
I began to wonder how exactly the German people could be convinced to commit the atrocities. In my
research to find my second source I came across a particularly disturbing quote from Heimrich Himmler:

The Jewish people are to be exterminated, says every party member. Thats clear, its part of our
program, elimination of the Jews, extermination; right, well do it. The wealth that they *the Jews+ had,
we have taken from them. I have issued a strict commandthat this wealth is as a matter of course to
be delivered in its entirety to the Reich. We had the moral right, we had the duty to our own people, to
kill the people that wanted to kill us. We can say that we have performed this most difficult task out of
love for our people. And we have suffered no harm from it in our inner self, in our soul, in our
character.

While searching the librarys database I came across the book that would end up becoming my
second source, although I didnt know it at the time. Once the question had been raised on how Hitler
got the Germans to be so barbaric this book came back to me as a potential goldmine. The book Im
talking about is Hitler's Willing Executioners: ordinary Germans and the Holocaust by Daniel Goldhagen.
Goldhagen argues that while other studies have been done on the topic, all of them were done from the
wrong viewpoint. He says that they were done from the assumption that the German people are of a
similar moral makeup and mindset as everyone else. His solution was to do his study from an
archaeological viewpoint that studies the Germans as one would a new culture like the Aztecs.
Goldhagen argued that he believes the Germans have something called eliminationist anti-Semitism
that has been hidden in the mindset of the German people since at least Martin Luthers Time. The focus
group of Goldhagens study was the men of Order Police Reserve Battalion 101 which operated in
Poland. Their job was to round up Jews and send them to the concentration camps, then execute the
ones that didnt fit on the trains. Despite the fact that all of the men, mostly middle aged working class
males, had the opportunity to opt out of the work almost nobody did. The German people believed
what they were doing was right and necessary, which explains Himmlers quote (Goldhagen).

While searching the stacks in the library I came across a book called The Dentist o Auschwitz and
decided to at least see what it was about after so thoroughly grabbing my attention with its title. Turns
out that the book is the memoirs of a Jewish man, Benjamin Jacobs, who escaped death in Auschwitz by
taking on the role of camp dentist. I thought that after looking at how ordinary Germans could assist in
genocide it would be enlightening to see what it was like for a Jewish prisoner who had to work in the
camp that was slaughtering their fellow Jews. Jacobs was working as regular labor in Auschwitz when a
friend of his was able to get him the job of camp dentist when it was deemed necessary to have one in
the camp. He was told to take time off in order for his hands, which had been badly lacerated working in
the mines, to heal. During that time all of the necessary equipment was brought in equip a dental office
and Jacobs got to work. He had to work to help as many people as he could with extremely limited
resources. One of the more morbid jobs he had was to extract the gold teeth from Jews who had been
executed in the camp. This man had to not only fear for his life each day while trying to complete his
job, but also deal with being forced to desecrate the bodies of people by removing gold teeth.

After finding The Dentist of Auschwitz I was at a bit of a loss as to where I was going to go, again,
and again I stumbled across a book while searching through the Librarys database. The book I came
across was Auschwitz: True Tales from a Grotesque Land. While the memoirs-of-an-Auschwitz-survivor
genre has been thoroughly saturated with works I was, if Im to be honest, lead on by the thought of
what if the authors had met, and how many of the authors of the Auschwitz survivor memoirs knew
each other in the camp, but I digress. The author, Sara Nomberg-Przytyk, received the post of clerk in
the camp infirmary, thanks to her political connections in the camp that also saved her from immediate
execution upon arrival. She worked under the infamous Nazi war criminal, Dr. Josef Mengele, wanted
for medical experimentation. The author (whose name I admit I am too lazy to type repeatedly) brings a
very refreshing perspective to Holocaust writings. Most works Ive read about the holocaust focus either

on the stomach churning atrocities or one persons story, but she focuses on the humanity of the people
living and dying around her. She specifically portrays Dr. Mengele as a monster, recalling at one point
how he would chat it up with the female patients to make them comfortable so he could find out what
was wrong with them. Then he had them executed. (Nomberg-Przytyk)

While my inquiry didnt follow the most direct path it was led by chance discoveries that turned
out to be gold nuggets. After looking at the German people during the Holocaust I transitioned to what
it was like for Jews to work in the camps killing their brethren. Through this amazing journey that my
inquiry has been I have learned much and have been inspired by the courage and hope of people in the
worst of conditions.

Works Cited
1. Hitler, Adolf, and Ralph Manheim. Mein Kampf,. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1943. Print.
2. Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust.
New York: Knopf :, 1996. Print.
3. Jacobs, Benjamin. The Dentist of Auschwitz a Memoir. Lexington: U of Kentucky, 1995. Print.
4. Przytyk, Sara, and Roslyn Hirsch. Auschwitz: True Tales from a Grotesque Land. Chapel Hill: U of
North Carolina, 1985. Print.