'the Good Old Days': The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders Chapter Summary & Analysis - 'None of the Jews that were killed is any great loss'—Secret verdict of the SS and Police Supreme Court in Munich Summary

'None of the Jews that were killed is any great loss'—Secret verdict of the SS and Police Supreme Court in Munich Summary and Analysis

Chapter 10 includes three sections and considers the peculiar situation of SS-Untersturmführer Max Täubner. In section one, "Verdict against SS- Untersturmführer Max Täubner, 24 May 1943", Täubner is presented as a self-confessed "fanatical enemy of the Jews" (p. 196), but one who was not directly appointed as an executioner. Instead, after a typical Nazi career he entered military service and ended up stationed in occupied areas where he pursued impromptu murders of Jews. He also sought out occasions to join officially-sanctioned murders and participated in them with apparent gusto. During this period he personally photographed atrocities and also allowed men under his command to photograph atrocities. The charges in question stem from an unsanctioned mass murder of Jews that Täubner orchestrated in Scholochowo in October 1941, using his platoon to perform mass shootings of about five hundred Jews. The executions are described as brutal,...
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