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Shortly before beginning mass executions or deportations, Reserve Police Battalion 101 would round Jewish people up and bring them to the marketplace. As such, marketplaces represent the dehumanization of the Jews into mere animals or even objects. In the marketplaces, there would often be a selection process where German military or police commanders would essentially shop for the Jews who looked like they would make good workers. These people would be taken away to work camps to help dig trenches or even work in factories to make weapons or ammunition for the German military. The remaining Jews would frequently be disposed of through executions or deportations to extermination camps like Treblinka, where large numbers of Jews could be killed in gas chambers all at once. Part of what made this kind of violence possible was the widespread belief that Jews were subhuman, and the choice to gather Jews in the marketplace and then “shop” for the fittest and simply throw out the rest illustrates the alarming extent to which the German police and military had dehumanized the Jews in their own minds.
Marketplaces Quotes in Ordinary Men
The Ordinary Men quotes below all refer to the symbol of Marketplaces. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 7
Quotes
When Trapp first made his offer early in the morning, the real nature of the action had just been announced and time to think and react had been very short. Only a dozen men had instinctively seized the moment to step out, turn in their rifles, and thus excuse themselves from the subsequent killing. For many the reality of what they were about to do, and particularly that they themselves might be chosen for the firing squad, had probably not sunk in. But when the men of First Company were summoned to the marketplace, instructed in giving a “neck shot,” and sent to the woods to kill Jews, some of them tried to make up for the opportunity they had missed earlier.
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Marketplaces Symbol Timeline in Ordinary Men
The timeline below shows where the symbol Marketplaces appears in Ordinary Men. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 7: Initiation to Mass Murder: The Józefów Massacre
...infants and those too sick to walk. Some men will bring the Jews to the marketplace where policemen from First Company will select men for work camps, and the rest of...
(full context)
...in doorways, but others say they let the women take their small children to the marketplace and they weren’t shot until later. Regardless, on that day First Company is given instructions...
(full context)
Chapter 10: The August Deportations to Treblinka
...(who are quite drunk and trigger happy) and the policemen drive the Jews into the marketplace, where they’re forced to sit or stand under the hot sun and are occasionally beaten....
(full context)
Chapter 13: The Strange Health of Captain Hoffman
...shooting can be heard everywhere, including the hospital where men kill every patient. In the marketplace, the Jews are separated by sex and some of the men are selected for the...
(full context)
Chapter 17: Germans, Poles, and Jews
...flush the Jews out of their homes and then bringing even more Jews to the marketplace all afternoon. Hoffmann claims to remember a pair of Polish students giving him vodka and...
(full context)
