Summary

In the Prologue, during World War II, outside of the town of Jozefow, Poland, on July 7, 1942, the German Order Police arrived to bring the village’s 1,800 Jewish inhabitants to the marketplace. There, strong Jewish men were separated and sent away to work camps, while the rest were taken to the woods, forced to lie down, and shot to death. The commander of the Germans, Major Wilhelm Trapp, had previously given his soldiers the choice to participate or refrain. Only about a dozen men refused to join in the murders. How such ordinary men could choose to refuse conforming to dangerous situations, and why, is what Eyal Press explains his book will be about. Press goes on to say that such thoughts are intriguing to readers, who always wonder how they would behave in similar situations. Press explains that even in democratic...