I’ve been watching every documentary I can get my hands on these days regarding WW2. I understand the atrocities of this war are truly impossible to wrap your head around as to “why” or “how”. That being said, as much as I don’t agree with it, I can see how you could manipulate a young, uneducated, angry boy into murdering his neighbor. However I don’t understand how you could get man, after man, after man to lay down to be knowingly shot in the back. If you know you’re going to die there isn’t logically anything left to lose. Why lie down? Why not make them shoot you while you’re attacking them? In some of the documentaries I’ve been watching something like 30 men would kill thousands by digging a hole and machine gunning them in layers. After the first could of hundreds of people are killed why would the others not do everything they could to attack the men with guns? They are going to shoot you anyways- why comply to your death? I just can’t wrap my head around it. I heard that people wouldn’t escape the camps even though it was fairly simple to do so, because if you did they’d go find your wife/children/extended family that was still living in the city and they’d bring them to the camps to execute them in front of you. But it seems to me in these mass shooting extermination’s they were there with you already. I’m sorry if the answer to this question is obvious. I’m just having a really difficult time understanding any of this.
There's not much you can do when you're standing, usually naked, maybe even in a small group of fellow naked humans, in face of even a few men with machine guns. (Obviously, they didn't shoot hundreds at once, so there were no big groups who could suddenly attack.)
Those who did run towards them (you don't know that no one did, do you?) would get shot. Those who didn't - due to being paralyzed with shock and fear, or just understanding that it won't bring anything, or maybe hoping for a miracle at the last second, as humans are wont to, or, most probably, simply being unable to do anything due to age - didn't. Same with the grave-digging.
"Jews showed up, who still believed into their resettlement until shortly before the execution thanks to an extremely clever organization"
http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2017/03/evidence-on-babi-yar-massacre-29-30.html
Two or three narrow entrances led to this ravine through which the Jews were channelled. When they reached the bottom of the ravine they were seized by members of the Schutzpolizei and made to lie down on top of Jews who had already been shot. This all happened very quickly. The corpses were literally in layers. A police marksman came along and shot each Jew in the neck with a sub-machine-gun at the spot where he was lying. When the Jews reached the ravine they were so shocked by the horrifying scene that they completely lost their will. Itmay even have been that the Jews themselves lay down in rows to wait to be shot.
http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2017/03/evidence-on-babi-yar-massacre-29-30_18.html