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Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed

The book Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed by Philip Hallie tells the story of one particular village in World War II in which the people banded together to save thousands of Jewish refugees from death. There is a religious component to the actions taken by the villagers in that their local pastor, André Trocmé, as instrumental in turning the bible study groups he had formed into action committees to save Jews. As time passed, what these people were doing became more rather than less dangerous, and this was not merely because of the increasing possibility that they would be found out but because reprisals were becoming more certain and more harsh.

A secondary but important theme in the book is the importance of developing and nurturing a sense of community. The fact that this village was able to perform as it did is because of the underlying bedrock of community that brought the people together, that gave them a moral center, that connected them not only with each other but with the world outside their small region of France. There are rules by which human beings are expected to live, for one thing, and while most people may be lax in how they apply thee codes, the people of this village clearly took them to heart. The fact that they exist somehow and somewhere, however, raises the issue of how they are to be enforced, since there is no court, no authority, no law enforcement body working to see that they are. The classic answer, says Hallie, is that the individual must look into his or her soul to find the answer. Hallie develops the idea that ethics are finally only a reflection of character.

Christopher R. Browning in Ordinary Men examines a different response to the same war by focusing on one group, Reserve Police Battalion 101, a unit of the German Order Police, which was made up of ordinary individuals who carried out numerous killings and other atrocities in the Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jews of Poland. Brow...

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Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 08:19, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1680531.html