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Date Permissions Signed

6-1-2018

Date of Award

Spring 2018

Document Type

Masters Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

History

First Advisor

Costanzo, Susan E.

Second Advisor

Eurich, Amanda

Third Advisor

Zarrow, Sarah

Abstract

Konrad Jarausch was an educated and generally perceptive man with a strong inclination towards humanism. Nonetheless, he aided genocide in Poland and Belarus. Although he did not stand on a firing line or operate a gas chamber, he did abet the callous starvation of tens of thousands of Soviet prisoners. His responsibility for those deaths cannot and should not be dismissed.

He was not, however, a zealot or a sociopath. Though it is no doubt reassuring to think that the Nazis and their acolytes were uniquely evil, that belief is not supported by facts. In reality, the killing was carried forward by ordinary people from all walks of life. Konrad was one among them, and his story gives cause to refigure the stagnant assumptions we hold about the perpetrators of the Holocaust. Contrary to popular portrayal, their brutality did not depend upon any sort of unique rabidity.

Konrad therefore deserves consideration because his example should humble us. His failure to rise above his situation is a familiar human fault. Regardless of the small charities he extended to some prisoners, those gestures could never countervail the pressure of starvation and confinement which weighed upon them, which Konrad helped enforce. Although he felt tremendous angst throughout his service, he never took the daunting steps towards resolving it. Complicity came easier than resistance.

Rather than being called to refuse one clear choice: to murder or not, Konrad acquiesced to a series of small, dooming decisions. His guilt came in increments. As a perpetrator, he served on the very margins of the Holocaust, and his story invites us to reconsider the boundaries of responsibility for atrocity, and the susceptibility of our own societies to its perpetration.

Type

Text

Keywords

Holocaust, perpetrator, history

DOI

https://doi.org/10.25710/hgb0-fv52

Publisher

Western Washington University

OCLC Number

1039098498

Subjects – Names (LCNAF)

Jarausch, Konrad, 1900-1942

Subject – LCSH

World War, 1939-1945--Atrocities; World War, 1939-1945--Moral and ethical aspects; World War, 1939-1945--Belarus; World War, 1939-1945--Poland; Soldiers--Poland--Correspondence

Geographic Coverage

Belarus; Poland

Format

application/pdf

Genre/Form

masters theses

Language

English

Rights

Copying of this document in whole or in part is allowable only for scholarly purposes. It is understood, however, that any copying or publication of this thesis for commercial purposes, or for financial gain, shall not be allowed without the author's written permission.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.

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