The Reserve Police Battalion 101 was formed in May of 1941 when the Police Battalion 101 was practically completely dispersed due to the reassignment of many of the men to other units. To fill up the then empty ranks, men were drafted into the unit, most of which were

After the murders, these men, who were ordinary when they were drafted into the battalion, seemed to no longer be ordinary. This is because it is not normal to kill and at Jozefow killing became the norm. This meant that the men were extra-ordinary because of their brutality toward the Jews and the killings that they committed.

The orders that were given for this mass murder was to have some of the men surround the village, so the Jews could not escape. The rest of the men were to take the women, children, and elders to the marketplace, and anyone who could not make it to the marketplace, for whatever reason, was to be shot on the spot. The male working age Jews were to be then escorted by a few of the men from the First Company. The remaining men of the First Company were to go and form the firing squads in the forest. In the marketplace, the Jews, consisting of the women, children and elders, were loaded onto battalion trucks and taken into the forest by the Second Company and the Third Platoon of the Third Company. The men chosen to be the firing squad were upset that Major Trapp was not there during the executions. Trapp said and felt that he could not bear the sight of the mass murders that were going to happen in the forest, so he stayed near the marketplace. Although the men of the firing squad had to shoot the Jews, they also expressed that they could not bear the sight of what they were going to do. When asked about killing infants and children later on the men all said that they did not do such a thing, is clearly a lie. (Browning, 57-59)

Early in the morning, on July 13th, Commander Trapp got his men ready and explained the task ahead of them. This is when he told them that if any of the older men did not feel up to the task that lay before them, they could step out. Lieutenant Heinz Buchmann, who was in charge of the First Platoon of the First Company of the Reserve Police Battalion 101, was among the men who refused to shoot the defenseless Jewish women, children and elders, and was therefore reassigned to organize the male working Jews who were to be escorted to Lublin. One of the officers, Sergeant Steinmetz, warned his men that, “he didn’t want to see any cowards.” (Browning, 56) Even with this statement, 10 or 12 men stepped out of line and were told to await further instructions from the major. (Browning, 57)

The Jozefow massacre was one of the many mass murders that the Germans committed during World War II. The men who committed these murders were at first considered ordinary because they were regular people drafted into reserve police duty. During their time with the police, they were ordered to kill the Jews and although not all of them went through with it, enough of them did to complete their duties in Jozefow. People will always question why the men killed the Jews, what made them do it, and how they could live with themselves afterwards. We will never be certain of all the reasons that the killings took place and why each man decided to do what they did. But, what we are sure of is that not all the men in the Reserve Police Battalion 101 went through with the killings; so not all of them were killers.

While at Jozefow, on July 11, 1942 the officers of the Reserve Police Battalion 101 were given orders by the highest authorities that their battalion was to kill the Jewish women, children and elderly on the 13th of July, while the male Jews of working age wer

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