of German Reserve Police Battalion 110:1
were dropped off in yosef Oh a little
Polish village it was the day of the
first big assignment for these family
fathers from Hamburg they were too old
to be of any value for the German
Wehrmacht with the tears in his eyes the
commander told his men the horrible
thoughts they were given all Jewish men
were feeling off the work at spaghetti
for work games and all of the Jewish
people elderly people women and children
had to be shot death but the commander
gave his men an extraordinary offer he
said those who do not feel able to
perform this task don’t have to do with
one man stepped forward and handed over
his weapon the immediate objection of
his officer was turned down by the
commander which showed everybody that
deserting wouldn’t have any consequences
yet only 10 only 10 of the 500 men
actually withdrew the massacre of Yosef
Oh would go down in history as one of
the most horrifying war crimes of the
Holocaust
afterwards all men who shot by the
behavior appalled at what they had done
why had so few men seize the opportunity
of evading these murders hardly any of
them was anti-semitic and none of them
had been raised with ideas of the
earthly humans and had that really bad
experience with Jews so how come this
ordinary man becomes such beasts as a
child I was frequently confronted with
the deeds of the Nazi soldiers in the
Second World War
with a German mother I pretty quickly
got used to being called Moff which is
the Dutch version for kraut
and as a little child it made me wonder
are Germans really that bad I mean even
today being German often has a negative
connotation
so did the men of Police Battalion 101
turn out to be such beasts just because
they were German or would anyone be able
to perform such deeds compared to the
beginning of the last century when
people grew up in a system of authority
when order was order today we have this
delusion of having become self
independent and individually independent
determined people but is this really the
case the rise of Islamic state the war
in the Middle East the terror attacks
closer to our homes the cities as Paris
Brussels and these violence before so
much anger sadness and fear in the world
why do people do this yeah why do people
even go to war why don’t they just stay
at home as a final school research paper
at the magista of Venus high school here
in snake we decided to research how
easily we actually can be manipulated
sown on top in October of 2015 we
conducted our own version of the famous
Milgram experiment in 1951 Stanley
Milgram tried to find an answer to the
question of many people ability in his
quest to explain the horrific deeds by
Nazi German soldiers in the Second World
War he made fallen tears give electric
shocks to other persons to find out what
the influence of punishment our learning
was or at least that’s what Milgram made
his test persons believed in fact there
were no electric shocks involved at all
and the other circle – person was an
actor the real test was to see how far
this person would go in inflicting pain
to another human being
65% of Milgram’s test subjects didn’t
stop before they had given the final
shock which had a voltage of 450 Falls
three times
would have been a real setting they
would have given a deadly dose to
another human being the test person
simply did as the instructor asked them
to do without being threatened or forced
to do so no grams results gave quite an
insight into human conformity and
obedient behavior but this experiment
was conducted 55 years ago
which results be the same today our
society has changed a lot in the past 55
years and for that reason we asked 13
and 14 year old school students in the
second year of the Athenaeum tract which
is the highest level of the adult
secondary school system to participate
in a short term memory test or at least
that’s what we made them believe we
conducted three versions of Milgram’s
experiment to see how different
circumstances would determine how far
our test subjects would go inflicting
pain to another human being
the first test subjects was to run by a
big group that would push them to go on
wouldn’t hesitating he wanted to see
what effect the pressure would have on
the results yeah the second version was
basically the same as the first one but
this time instead of peer pressure we
studied the effect of the influence of
an authority which in our case was at
all professor in a black suit and our
last version the third version was a
baseline measurement with no pressure by
group or by an authority to compare the
other two versions to despite clear
signs of stress every test person went
on until the end of the test in all the
three situations this means that the
Dayton stop before giving a shock of 250
falls three times and before we told him
to stop they went on because they
trusted in our authority and were
unreflective about possible consequences
of their actions after the recent terror
attacks all across the world we again
can see what people are actually capable
of when they are influenced in the right
or rather the wrong way despite
increasing individualism and the high
value given to personal freedom we
believe that the modern people of today
are not really different from the
soldiers in the first and second world
war the students of our school obeyed to
a seemingly violent command just because
they were told to order is order in our
research the behavior of this Dutch
pre-university second graders didn’t
really differ from the behavior of the
German Nazi soldiers
the mainstream educational system in the
Netherlands focuses on passing on
knowledge to their students rather than
stimulating their personal development
and as great as our high school was I
don’t have the feeling that this
contemporary system of teaching has made
me the person I am today school was more
about learning and reproducing effects
with a very little room for reflection
and discussion in our experiment we
focused on 13 and 14 year-olds this is
the age where young boys and girls are
looking for the identity and many of
them come into contact with things like
smoking drugs and sometimes even things
like Loverboy’s for the first time this
is the age they should be given the
courage to say no raising people in such
a way that will enable them to think and
act independently shouldn’t this be the
main task of our educational system yeah
we humans are very easily manipulated
the subjects in our experiment we really
no exception in our daily lives we are
constantly being affected by people and
situations all around us as were the men
of Reserve Police Battalion 101 and so
are we today but to what extent we let
ourselves be influenced that’s our own
decision so try to identify in what way
you are being affected and by whom and
try to think before you act
because after all the price for freedom
is responsibility thank you for your
time
[Applause] [Music]
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