Taking Trophies and Hunting Jews

Abstract

This chapter highlights the practice of trophy taking, dispossession, and atrocity in the borderlands of Eastern Europe during World War II. The taking of trophies from an enemy during wartime, like the conduct of atrocity, has been a recurrent practice throughout history. The chapter presents numerous forms of the act of trophy taking, including snapping photographs, plundering personal effects, and confiscating the teeth or hair of the victims. The chapter looks at how perpetrators' creation of killing games and the integration of hunting rituals offer insights into the ways in which racial ideology became intertwined with conceptions of masculinity and acts of mass murder. The organization of these deadly “games” provides another clear indication of the enjoyment taken by some SS men in the performance of their duties and their shared bonds established through group violence. The chapter reveals a mentality that facilitated and normalized mass murder.