Essay Questions

The inhumanity of the German soldiers is acutely presented as an efficiency. Show how this is presented in Patrick Desbois’s Holocaust by Bullets.

The German soldiers are faced with strict orders to ensure efficient use of supplies no matter what. The inhumanity of this efficient management and preservation of supplies is presented in the soldier's misinterpretation of the same as an order to kill but without wasting the resources in any way. In a way, the soldiers interpret it wrongly and hence adopt the one bullet per victim policy in order to ensure that no extra bullets are wasted on the same individual. Even though the soldiers manage their supplies efficiently, inhumanity is presented as a backdrop to this efficiency. In this line, the writer is able to present the inhumanity that is the backdrop of the efficient management of resources during the war.

Show how the plight of the poor and the elderly in the USSR affects Father Desbois’s life in Holocaust by Bullets.

Father Desbois is presented as a caring individual. As a minister, he travels the greater parts of the USSR including Ukraine, Russia and Belarus. In his ministry, Father Desbois goes around praying for the people as well as listening to their problems. He also offers help to them where he is able to do so. During his work, the man becomes increasingly overwhelmed with feelings of sadness after listening to the people's memories of the second world war. Desbois, because of this feeling decides to conduct a research and catalogue sites that the locals suspect are locations of mass graves of the Jewish in the region. In this way, Father Desbois’s life and course of action become informed by the burdens of the memories of the locals.

In what way are the dead disrespected in this work by the German soldiers?

The German troops sent out to contain the Jews arrive in places including Ukraine as well as Belarus when they are sick, tired and starving. As a result of this, they poorly execute their orders murdering countless people of Jewish descent and disrespecting the dead by burying them in mass graves that are unmarked. In this way, the memories of these people are done away with.