On the role of dehumanization of victims in the perpetration of mass killings: Research notes

Abstract

This article discusses the shared idea that dehumanization plays a fundamental role in mass killings, helping executioners in no longer perceiving as fellow human beings those they had to kill. Using perpetrators’ letters and judicial interrogations from German people involved in the War in the East between 1941 and 1944, the article questions what some of the killers say about their victims’ attitudes and actions, and their observations of them. It examines the recognition of attitudes of humanity by some of the executioners themselves and asks a simple question: What are we to do with these traces? The answer is that these last exchanges between some executioners and their victims deserve our attention because they compel us to argue that the executioners killed in spite of having sometimes recognized the humanity of their victims. Such an argument (killing nonetheless) has strong implications for interpretations of extreme violence.