Collaborators: Hiwi (Hilfswillige) in english: willing helpers (collaborators)
Unable to satisfy his manpower needs out of local resources, Globocnik prevailed upon Himmler to recruit nonPolish auxiliaries from the Soviet border regions. The key person on Globocnik's Operation Reinhard staff for this task was Karl Streibel. He and his men visited the POW camps and recruited Ukrainian, Latvian, and Lithuanian "volunteers" (Hilfswillige, or Hiwis) who were screened on the basis of their anti-Communist (and hence almost invariably anti-Semitic) sentiments, offered an escape from probable starvation, and promised that they would not be used in combat against the Soviet army. These "volunteers" were taken to the SS camp at Trawniki for training. Under German SS officers and ethnic German noncommissioned officers, they were formed into units on the basis of nationality. Alongside the Order Police, they constituted the second major manpower pool from which Globocnik would form his private armies for the ghetto-clearing campaign….

….In Lomazy Gnade held a meeting with his noncommissioned officers, who received instructions for clearing the Jewish quarter and assembling the Jews in the schoolyard. The NCOs were told that the Hiwis from Trawniki would do the shooting, so the policemen would for the most part be spared…..

…. Immediately large numbers of Jews were driven into the grave, and the Hiwis took their positions on the walls that had been thrown up. From there they shot the victims….The Hiwis, often with bottle in hand, as well as Gnade and the SS officer, became increasingly drunk…. The number of shooters steadily diminished as one by one the Hiwis fell into a drunken stupor.

-Browning, Christopher R. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 And The Final Solution In Poland. New York: HarperPerennial, 1998. Print
Why do you think the Hiwis were willing to join the Nazis and commit atrocities(terrible crimes) against the Jewish population of Poland?


How did the hiwis behave once the Nazis actually began making them murder the members of the Jewish community in Poland? In other words, does it seem like they still wanted to be “volunteers” for the Nazis?