Letters

The killing of children

How do ordinary men become murderers of children?

Wed Dec 20 2023 - 01:10

Sir, – Fintan O’Toole’s article is heartbreaking as he focuses on the unbearable killing of children in the conflict in Israel and Gaza (“Slaughter of innocents cannot be easy for the perpetrators, but their tears are for themselves”, Opinion, December 19th).

His reference to the sense of regret that many members of the Einsatzgruppen felt when faced with shooting children is ahistorical, however. While there were a paltry few documented instances of remorse expressed by those who chose to carry out these mass murders during 1940 and 1941 in the period known as the Holocaust by Bullets when one and a half million Jewish men, women and children were shot to death in pits, what is remarkable is how so many of them volunteered for the job from across the professional class.

Ordinary men became mass murderers with little or no military training and with equally small encouragement. The progression to the Final Solution and death camps using gas, a decision taken at the infamous Wannsee conference outside Berlin in January 1942, came about through the inefficiency of murdering Jews by shooting them rather than any great reluctance on the part of the killers to continue killing. – Yours, etc,

OLIVER SEARS,

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Holocaust Awareness Ireland,

Dublin 2.

Sir, – Fintan O’Toole’s piece is an uncomfortable read, a throwback to Nazi Germany – “I was carrying out orders”, spare a thought for poor me.

Fintan asks why do men (foot solders) kill children and suggests they do so to prove to themselves and their superiors that they are hard men and loyal.

I wouldn’t be quick to rationalise such men having any tears who indiscriminately kill children.

The Hamas attack on October 7th was carried out by evil men. That is its name.

Israel’s continuing bombardment of children perpetrated remotely and cowardly is also by evil men, some dressed up as soldiers, superiors and politicians.

The uncomfortable truth is such men do exist and their tears are of blood. – Yours, etc,

AIDAN RODDY,

Cabinteely,

Dublin 18.