Skip to main content

Photo of German soldier Josef Schultz, after having dropped his helmet and rifle to the ground. Moments later he is executed by his fellow soldiers, because he refused to participate in the execution of jugoslavian partisans and civilians. This story of a moral man should be more known




Jospeh Schultz was a German soldier on the Eastern Front. On the 20th of July 1941, he along with seven of his brothers in arms were sent out on what they thought to be a routine mission. After a short march they soon understood that they were on a quite different mission than what they were used to: Ahead of them, they saw fourteen captured local civilians who were blindfolded , positioned up against a wall.

The 8 soldiers in Schultz’ platoon were halted 10-15 meters away, and an NCO ordered them to execute every one of the civilian. Seven of the soldiers took aim, and in the silence that followed you could only hear the sound of a rifle beeing dropped. Jospeh Schultz disobeyed a direct order, dropped his rifle and walked slowly towards the 14 civilians which only heard cautious footsteps in the grass in front of them. The young Schultz positioned himself together with the soon-to-be executed civilians, and choosed death instead of killing helpless civilians. A few seconds later 14 civilians and 1 German soldier laid dead in the grass.

He was executed by his own brothers in arms by order of the NCO. The issue of individual moral responsibility vs. obedience to authority is dramatized. This eloquent production relies on images rather than dialog to tell its timeless tale of personal values. VHS. Color. 13 minutes. (Comment: If you think about what the message of the movie is, it is possible that it becomes a justification for actually following orders, even if they are immoral, especially if it means life or death. Although a short film, teachers should develop the lesson with an eye to this concern. Note too that this is a story about atrocities committed against "innocent civilians." Shultz’ courage is striking.

However, there are no documented cases that I am aware of of Nazi soldiers or their collaborators being executed for refusing to shoot Jews. For many of the perpetrators, Jewish families and their children were not perceived as "innocent." Christopher Browning’s book, Ordinary Men, provides fascinating insights.) VHS only.

you can click here to watch the video

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Jennifer Lopez gets stuck in formation during Las Vegas performance

Jennifer Lopez has fallen and she can’t get up. The 47-year-old singer needed a little help when she bent over backwards during a show at the Axis Theater inside Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas and couldn’t maneuver her way out of the position. Instead, backup dancers in glittery orange suits had to pull JLo to her feet on stage in a less than graceful break from the choreography. Backup dancers had to help the 47-year-old dancer off the floor. Her reps told the Daily News that the “dramatic knee slide” is part of the performance. Top Videos - Biden vows to win election after shaky debate Next Stay volume_off -2:21 sd share closed_caption fullscreen Auto (225p) 225p 360p Subtitles Off Subtitles EN Top Videos Biden vows to win election after shaky debate 2:21 Japan's emperor, empress take trip down memory lane at Oxford 0:36 Wall St. ends lower after inflation data, debate 1:50 Euro 2024 fans fashion highlights 0:56 Squatters take London's housing crisis into their own hands 3:05 ...

This was How the people survive Nazi concentration camps

In first place by  not being a Jew . Jews had the least probability of survival of all due to the fact that they would undergo a selection and most would be immediately sent to the gas chambers. out of ten Jews only one was selected for work, the remaining nine would be immediately killed. Secondly, by  being a woman . Women are less likely to die of starvation (it’s actually an evolutive trick to grant better survival chances to the human population). But if you were a Jewish woman you were less likely to be selected for work, so it was a double-edged opportunity. Third,  hope to land in a “better” lager . Some lagers were sensibly worse than others. Just let’s ignore the “death camps” like Sobibor or Treblinka, which were solely aimed at killing jews. Most others were work camps or multifunction compounds. In some of these living conditions were slightly better, but this could be enough to make the mortality rate drop by several points. At Dora-Mittlebau about 2/3 of th...

Popular posts from this blog

How common were instances of sexual abuse in Nazi concentration camps

How common were instances of sexual abuse in Nazi concentration camps. The accounts that rap£ or prostitution was common, Were the guards were given "free reign" over the prisoners given view of them as subhuman The Nazis sort of developed a network of state-controlled brothels during the war. This included both the civilian and military brothels. The Nazis even set up brothels for the forced labor inmates that helped with the German war effort as incentives for higher production from prisoners in camps. Back then these brothels were suppose to serving several needs. For the soldiers that were far away from home, the Nazis thought that having these brothels would reduce the possibility of rape in occupied lands and reducing the sexual relations with impure local women or forced laborer's, as well. Heck, the Nazis tried to use these brothel women to cure homosexuality as a treatment with male prisoners that were gay. Regular German women were exempt from serving in these b...

The prisoners in concentration camps have sex with each other

 The prisoners in concentration camps have sex with each other Steady on. Nearly all concentration camps were single-sex, and at those that held both men and women the sexes were usually kept separate, though at Auschwitz III (Monowitz) and possibly also some other sub-camps they worked together. At extermination camps (where the sexes were not separated) most of the prisoners were killed within 24 hours of arrival. Prisoners did not have privacy. Remember that at the time most people had a horror of same-sex relations, especially between men. However, some Kapos and even guards forced prisoners to have sex with them. In Night Elie Wiesel relates how he found his Kapo having sex with a female prisoner, and he (Wiesel) was given 25 lashes for finding them having sex.* In the Women’s Camp at least one guard forced another woman to have sex with her, and at many camps there was a piepel (camp bum boy). *He also describes the hanging of the piepel of a Blockältester ( ‘block senior’). ...