Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland

Third Company, commanded by Captain Wolfgang Hoffmann has been “largely spared form the killing that [is] becoming the predominant activity of the other units of the battalion” (114). However, this changes in October 1942, when they are ordered to clear the “‘collection ghetto’ at Końskowola, containing some 1,500 to 2,000 Jews,” with the now “standard procedure” orders that “the old, frail, and sick as well as infants [are] to be shot on the spot” (115).

The ghetto has been “afflicted by an epidemic of dysentery, and many of the Jews [cannot] walk to the marketplace or even rise from their beds” (116). Accordingly, the police officers shoot many Jews during “their first sweep through the ghetto” (116). One officer, too “disgusted” and “ashamed” (116) to shoot defenseless people in hospital beds, intentionally misses. His sergeant calls him a “traitor” and a “coward” (116) but does not report him. About 100 of the 500 to 1,000 Jews selected for work camps are shot on the march to the railway station, as they are too sick to carry on walking.

Captain Hoffman will later claim to have no memory of this action, something which may be grounded in “judicial expediency” but may also relate to health problems, specifically “diarrhea and severe stomach cramps” (117) that leave him unable to personally attend many of the company’s actions.