Ep. 22- Nazi Perpetrators and Disgust with Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic

How did Holocaust perpetrators feel about what they did and how were they able to keep doing it?  The question of perpetrator motivation has been one that scholars of the Holocaust have been interested in from the beginning.

But what about the phenomenon of perpetrators who seem to have been disgusted by what they were engaged in?  What does this signify? Is it some deep moral objection or something else.

In this episode, I talked with Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic about her truly thought-provoking work on interpretating these expressions of disgust.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic is a philosopher and teaching associate professor at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.

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You can find a complete reading list with books by our guests and also their suggestions here.

Transcript

Waitman (00:00.806)
Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Holocaust History Podcast. I'm your host, Waitman Bourne. And today we're talking about perpetrators and perpetrator motivation and the ways in which perpetrators react to what they have done. And I think you're going to find this be really, really interesting because we're talking about this idea of disgust or a so -called sort of psychosomatic reactions to

doing horrible things, doing crimes. And I have with me Dieter -Marie Munch -Irisich, who is the author of a book called Perpetrator Disgust, the Moral Limits of Gut Feelings. And let me tell you, this book really made me stop and think about things that I thought were true and ways in which I approach perpetrators. And so I know you're going to really enjoy hearing her work. So Dieter, welcome.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (00:59.422)
Well, thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here and talk with you today.

Waitman (01:04.934)
Awesome. Can we start just by, can you tell us a little bit about where you're coming from, your background, how you got into this topic? Because it's a topic that also covers, you know, like a bunch of different disciplinary areas as well.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:20.03)
Yeah, yeah, so I am trained in philosophy originally and I got already as an undergraduate really frustrated with the very sort of abstract academic philosophy that was so practiced at my university. So quite fast I started so like tiptoeing into genocide studies and it was kind of through someone like Hannah Arendt and Theodore Adorn, all these like philosophers who was thinking about the Holocaust.

And then eventually, actually, I took some courses and I ended up doing an internship with the prosecution at the former tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, ICTY, in the zeros. And then, yeah, we sort of basically through that, both through Hannah Ann, but also through some of the cases that I worked on, there was a lot of displays of this phenomenon that I ended up.

writing on during my PhD and then later in the book about soldiers who felt really physically ill when they were participating in mass shootings like vomiting and maybe even like almost fainting or fainting or just feeling like really convulsive bodily symptoms like shaking. So I kind of like came across it for a few years like many places in the literature and that sort of like inspired me to apply for a PhD grant which I got then which I could sort of really delve into it for a few years.

Waitman (02:46.278)
And so where does this fit into, I guess, perpetrator studies? Because that's sort of, you know, we'll get to this more when we start talking about, you know, these reactions, but how does this fit into sort of the longer history of, you know, we'll say, I mean, even in some ways during the Holocaust, obviously people were trying to figure out why the Nazis are doing what they're doing. In fact, many of the victims,

At the time, we're trying to figure out, you know, why not to do what they're doing because that's, that was necessary for survival. But if we look at this from a sort of a longer duet, you know, how does this fit into the ways in which we have tried to explain or understand perpetrators and how that's developed over, over time?

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (03:34.878)
Yeah, I think that's a really good question. I think, well, I see my work in many ways of sort of like following the line that someone like Hannah Arendt pointed out with her sort of criticisms of the way perpetrators like Eichmann were seen as monsters or something completely sort of outside the scope of human nature. So really what she was trying to do with that argument in her book, it was basically essays, right? Like that she wrote based on her.

sitting at the trial in the beginning of the 60s in Israel, but her basic idea was basically that this isn't just something that happens outside the scope of human nature. It is us. This is exactly what humans do and can do to each other. And so let's begin with that sort of premise before we make it completely different and outside. And then of course, inside perpetrator studies, I think that's sort of like...

paradigm shift or whatever you call it has of course spiraled off in many, many directions after that with micro studies of perpetrators. And I think even just like the formation of what we maybe today call perpetrator studies have sort of trails in that, but of course made their own significant contributions that doesn't necessarily relate to her at all. But especially someone like Browning, I also see Christopher Browning's work on ordinary.

as following the same line of thought. So she was really trying to see them as humans, but expand as well the idea of what human nature is.

Waitman (05:12.71)
Yeah, I mean, and just an aside on our end, it's always interesting because I, you know, I think people, other people have made this argument that like her, her theory is in many ways correct. She just chose the wrong person because you know, in some ways Eichmann is, is very much a sort of motivated ideological, you know, anti -Semite. but, but her general idea of the fact that there are people who just kind of are, are banal or just sort of.

cogs in a machine is true. And the ordinary in his piece of it is accurate. It's just that she, in some ways, bought too much into Eichmann's own attempt to portray himself as this kind of uninterested bystander.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (05:56.862)
Yeah, she definitely cuts out or doesn't know too much, I guess, at the time about how anti -Semitic he really was. But it's also, I think, in some ways, she's also really trying to just give us, I think, the way you can really see her as contributing to something new is really going against the grains of how he was portrayed at the time. So if you look at the...

biographies that they were published because of course the trial of Eichmann was like a huge thing at the time and there was all these like masters of death and I forget the but it was really like this extreme just like completely alienating and I think this is exactly what she and and then of course I think any Holocaust scholar after her has tried to do is say well they weren't they were of course they were ideologically different you know but they were also very much someone we can comprehend and I think that's the whole like

locus of what we try to do when we look at perpetrators now that it sort of begins from that premise somehow, right?

Waitman (07:02.63)
Yeah, I mean, this is something that I usually say in teaching, you know, and I usually say something like, you know, the vast majority, the overwhelming majority of Holocaust perpetrators are not what we would consider to be psychologically abnormal. That is like pathologically abnormal. Like they're not sociopaths, they're not psychopaths, they're not, you know, whatever. They are within the sort of normal spectrum of brain functioning. You know, they do horrible things, but...

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (07:16.67)
Exactly.

Waitman (07:32.486)
but they're not doing the horrible things because they are literally incapable of empathy or whatnot. And what's interesting about what we're gonna talk about with your work, and you've already introduced it with Arran, is these paradoxical needs, on the one hand, to see them as human, because we want to think that there's good in all of us, which we'll talk about with regards to your work.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (07:37.95)
Exactly, exactly.

Waitman (08:01.83)
But then there's also, from the Holocaust Scholars perspective, the desire to see them as human, because that's the more dangerous, I think, and important revelation, right? Because if the Nazis were all these essentially alien psychopathic killers, then it sort of lets all of us off the hook for worrying about genocide as a problem, because no Nazis, no genocide. But if we then say, actually,

human beings are capable of this. Normal human beings, human beings that in other situations without different factors would not have done any of this kind of thing. That's actually the more disturbing sort of conclusion, right? So, you know, yeah, go ahead. I mean, can we talk then about...

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (08:44.766)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, no, no, I was, yeah, it was exactly, I mean, I was gonna say I really like this quote that people usually pull out as well from Aaron's book about the psychiatrist who apparently like, examinated Eichmann and he said like, he's normal. Yeah, he's so normal. Like he has a great relationship to his family. And he's, he's more normal than I feel now after examining him. And I think that describes, I think, I think it's actually something.

I re -experience a lot of the time. So I was just teaching perpetrators just before the semester ended here. And I mean, it is like unsettling to realize that you can explain sometimes why and how, because it isn't these like radical devils who's sort of like so different from us. So I think, but that will continue to become like an unsettling account because I do think, as you sort of say on those big themes that...

it's just, it is also like an unbearable sort of conclusion to sort of sit with, you know, I think, I think you really experience that as a teacher, every time you have this topic with the students, because you really have to like, reintroduce this and think about it with them, what consequences it have about how you see yourself, you know, as well in some sense, right?

Waitman (10:00.71)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's funny because I had Irene and residency on her earlier. She's an expert in Holocaust education. And we were talking about, you know, how do you teach children about the Holocaust and try to explain, you know, how how this happens. Right. And she was saying that one of the it's challenging because, you know, a lot of the children just stick, you know, they'd say, well, if the Nazis didn't like Jews, why why didn't they just leave them alone? Because that's what

You know, that's kind of what they learn in school or in the playground or whatever, you know, which is if you, if you don't, if not getting along with somebody or you don't like somebody, then just, you know, don't interact with them, you know, but, you know, and so there's this, there is this idea, you know, that we, we want to understand the perpetrators. but I think there's also, as you point out, there's this challenge in, not wanting to see us in the perpetrators.

you know, which is, which is kind of unavoidable because you can have one or the other either, either they're.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (11:06.206)
Yeah, no, I did. Yeah, it's really, it's really just actually I was having this conversation with my son, who's a little older now, but when I was finishing the manuscript a few years ago, he was nine or something. And we were talking about it. And I was telling him this little story of one of the first times I went to the Zoological Museum here in Denmark, like it's this big old, you know, with like,

Waitman (11:10.182)
Yeah, go ahead.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (11:33.406)
what do you call in English, like these animals, like mammoths and saber -toothed tigers. And it's really just like a terrifying, but also thrilling environment to walk around in. And then they had put up this box at the, so like, you know, the same way where you do like past photos with like a black curtain. And then it said before you could enter the black curtain, the most dangerous animal in the world. And as a six -year -old, kind of seven or whatever I was at the time visiting Copenhagen, I was like, my God.

This is I'm gonna go in and just see like the most crazy predator ever, you know And you walk in there and you're there alone and then they put up a mirror and It was it was just it's exactly that conclusion right where you like Okay, it's us, you know We're really the most dangerous, you know living species on this earth both to ourselves and and of course in the light of everything, you know that has developed recently and also

even from my childhood and 80s about climate change, which is a separate issue itself, but I think especially for the concept of what is possible to modulate human beings into doing, I think this is a story that I think where I was able to convey to him without giving all these details, which I think is exactly the problem for education. I think how much do you tell and how much do you leave aside and stuff like that.

Waitman (12:57.702)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, and the, so I guess we should kind of move a little bit to what, to what you were writing about because it, it's this really, really interesting moment and sort of historical moment where, you know, we see this in all kinds of different perpetrator testimony, you know, where,

And people, including myself, have written about this. And even though this person is awful, he still had this reaction, this physical or emotional reaction to what he was doing or she was doing. And this is what you sort of call perpetrator disgust, right? Or the gut feeling that you're talking about. And we're going to talk more about this, obviously, and what it may mean, et cetera, and what it means for understanding perpetrators. But can you talk us, you do a really good job in the book of even just laying out what...

What is this feeling? What does it come from? Why do we have it? And even this idea of a gut feeling is sort of probably new to a lot of people in terms of like a definition of where it comes from, why do we have them, what are they supposed to be doing?

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (14:04.542)
Yeah, no, no, it's so as you say, like it's so for the concrete sort of cases that I look at in the book, it's it's it's soldiers who either have just participated in mass killings, or some of them are also cases where people come to recollect what happened years ago and also get like a really physical and the defining sort of like criteria had for the cases I look at was it some sort of like

reaction that you can't control, that it's spontaneous in that sense or automatic or whatever word you want to use, that it's something that you, it's not like an intentional emotional state where you like consciously know what's going on. And I think the sort of immediate like interpretation that a lot of people have given this phenomena in Holocaust studies and genocide studies in general is that this must be some sort of like humane like moral instinct showing itself like just like a revolt against this

horrible scene, you know that you are participating in or you see maybe very closely you're like implicit in or implicated in And then I think and I think it's also good to know for for everyone That I think I came into the subject with that same like assumption as well I was really like is this like I remember actually when I crafted the PhD education, it's good I have it now on paper. It was really sort of like I

that idea I was playing with, like, is this like, you know, like some sort of lab, whatever test, you know, that we are actually deep down, no matter what, like, ideological circumstances we're in, there is some sort of deep, something good in human beings revolting against this. But, but, but the thing is, like, just to cut a long story short, to start with gut feelings that we have so much research from the last,

especially 20, 30 years about what emotions are and gut feelings and reactions. So gut feelings are this general term for exactly like impulses, effectively impulses that you can't control, that they are very much modulated by the moral and the social environment that we're in. So they don't necessarily always reflect what we actually do sort of like approve of. So a really good example of this is, for example,

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (16:21.374)
A lot of times when I've done lectures on this, I talk about the way the feeling of disgust is very much modulated by the environment we're in. And a lot of people, this has happened, I don't know, at least a handful of time, men will come up and tell me about how they still, men in middle ages, men of my colleagues have been talking about how they still feel like some form of revulsion when they think about homosexual sex, even though they completely disagree with any kind of homophobic,

regulations or laws or, but there's just something in them that they can't get rid of, right? So that this is what I'm trying to tease out in the book, that there can be a discrepancy between, so like your immediate emotional response and then your principle, so like moral understanding of what's right and wrong in this situation. And I think, and then eventually what you end up doing will be sort of like some sort of like negotiation.

between those two levels, you know, and also I think the other part of it, especially for disgust, if you sort of limit the whole scope of what gut feelings are to disgust, disgust is also very closely related to the, so like a very immediate, just, you know, nausea response, like, which is completely not related necessarily to any kind of like moral, so, you know, you can just have like a physical response that's based on some sort of virus. So that makes.

a lot of these cases really interesting because it is really an open question a lot of the time what is going on here and this is also where scholars vehemently disagree with each other.

Waitman (18:00.006)
Well, and this is one of those things that, you know, we always hear, trust your gut, trust your gut. Like, you know, you have to make an important decision about anything, you know, trust your gut. And like, this is, this is disturbing because it might mean that your gut has been conditioned in some way to have a response that isn't just, you know, because I feel like the sort of non -holocaust related...

to this is that your gut also represents sort of some deep understanding of like, what is the right thing? And so, if you're thinking about proposing marriage to somebody or thinking about buying something, and your gut feels good or bad about it, then that's the truth. But it sounds like what we're actually saying is that it may very well not be any kind of deep truth, but it may be a sort of deep conditioning.

that you've experienced.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (18:58.174)
Yeah, absolutely. I think so. So after actually finishing the PhD side of this project, which was basically the case studies and then the more theoretical things I managed to find research time for later. But in that period, I actually dived into the whole new research on implicit biases and how they're very much enmeshed or however you say in English with our emotional and affective responses. So for example, like...

the way you can feel fearful around certain people, even though there's really no reason to, you don't have any factual, whatever you say. And there's just so many ways where we feel uncomfortable, uncomfortable about some people, and we don't really notice these affective states, but they are very much conditioned by who we think are similar to us and are easy to be around. So it's really...

there's really like forces down in our bodies that are pushing us to different directions in our social and also like work life. And it has all sorts of implications. And I think, and even just like on a real, like, I mean, it's, I'm also one of those persons who, as an academic, who have like a very bad back problems and stuff. So I go to like yoga classes, but there's always this talk in yoga class, all like.

this wisdom of the body and what it can tell you. And it's really just like, it's really dangerous, I think, to project all this intentional, meaningful things onto it. It's a lot of the times it is also just like, yeah, bodily responses.

Waitman (20:28.486)
Mm.

Waitman (20:34.214)
It's kind of like, you know, when, when people say, you know, like they get done running and they feel like amazing. Right. And on the one hand, that's, that's absolutely physiological, right? Cause you have endorphins that make you feel good, you know, but, but it's also kind of like, I always joke that it's kind of like your body's like, thank God we're done running. Doesn't it feel good to not be running anymore? You know, like, like, you know, it's like the, you know, the fact that, I tell, I tell students at some time when they're really upset or something, which is that, and maybe I'm wrong, but you know,

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (20:53.246)
Yeah.

Waitman (21:04.454)
that basically we have a stress response that has not evolved from when we were a prey or predator kind of situation. And so like, you know, our body has the same physiological reactions to a tiger is going to eat me as it does to I'm upset about this test. And so we have the same physiological responses, like whether it's, whether it's bowel problems or nausea or whatever, which are all designed back in the day, evolutionarily to save us.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (21:22.174)
Yeah, exactly.

Hmm.

Waitman (21:34.086)
Right? You know, like you're, you stop processing food because your body's like, you're going to need that to run, you know, and you, you, all those things, right. but the body emotion physically doesn't know the difference between I'm stressed. So like, you know, what's interesting is that human beings in some ways are one of the only creatures that can generate the fight or flight response just by thinking about it. You know, like, like, like a horse is in the field and it's eating and it's not going to.

just take off running because it's afraid unless there's something to make it afraid. But we as human beings can, you know, work ourselves emotionally or intellectually into having a fight or flight response, right? Which is, which is weird and crazy, but it's.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (22:06.686)
Mm.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (22:11.71)
Mm.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (22:15.646)
Yeah, no, it's really, it's really.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (22:20.894)
No, that's really, I think you're really stressing like the core of actually some of the arguments I make in the book because the stress response of these perpetrators in these situations. So I was talking to a guy who was doing some kind of like track and field on a very high, like extreme level. So he also like vomits like right after like this crazy marathon plus whatever, I don't know, obstacles that's also in there.

Waitman (22:21.542)
Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (22:47.07)
And it's really important to think about stress responses in themselves. It has really, I mean, it can be shaped by moral instincts in the sense that not deep before cultivation, but some ideas that were central for you in your civilian life. But it can also just be the stress of the moment in the sense. And then really what's crucial for how we think about these.

responses is how we interpret them ourselves. And that's not necessarily something we sit down and do and are like a slow, it's something the brain immediately does with the scripts and the schemes and whatever it has available. And of course, I think for these, in this setting of these like highly ideological settings of perpetrator organization, there's immediately like a really good explanation available given to them by the elites of the organization for why you feel so bad.

So that's why it's really important to understand the role of propaganda in mediating when they feel really sick and awful, you have people like Heinrich Himmler, who comes in and gives a speech about like, we know you, I mean, he talks about perpetrated disgust or whatever you want to call this, these breakdowns completely in great detail. We know you feel, I mean, everyone will feel sick about this. And this is exactly, he says, what makes you.

decent human beings, like your moral integrity is intact and you can continue, my ladies and gentlemen, or only gentlemen in this case, like it's, so it becomes like in a strange way, because I think a lot of us, when we come to this topic, we think, they feel bad and then they must realize that it's wrong what they do. But no, no, no, this is exactly actually the explanation that they apply to it, which may or may not be right, that there is a moral response in some sense or conflict.

actually sort of enables them to continue in the sense that they are sort of like feeling this, you know, the crying and shooting sort of validates for them that I'm not a more monster in some sense, that I'm actually still a human being with normal moral capacities. And I think this is one of the things that took a long time for me to arrive at that.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (25:02.462)
even though of course that analysis is out there, it's not something that I invented, like there's a ton of people who write on this as well, so it's more like in connection to the emotional response that I've said a few words.

Waitman (25:14.662)
Yeah. So, so, I mean, let's talk about this a little bit in detail because the, the, the post -dawn speech that you're talking about, the, the October 43, you know, him or speech, he absolutely, he absolutely says that he's like, you know, you guys know what it was like to stand in a, you know, grave with a thousand bodies, et cetera, et cetera. And I think, you know, you're absolutely right that, that, you know, we sort of interpret that as a part of it is like, is, is actually reverse victimhood, right? It's, it's, it's, I'm the, I'm the one that has to deal with horrible things and it's hard for me.

because it's all about me. And the reason it's hard for me to do this is because I'm a good German and we are people with deep emotional carrying and that kind of stuff. And that's why it's so hard for me to do this. But it's the other form of disgust that I think really in some ways you're talking about. We can talk about that as well. Because I don't know if you've seen Zone of Interest, but I had a film critic on last week.

And, you know, I told him that actually at the end of the film, the host character, the commandant of Auschwitz, vomits. And I actually said that my take on it is that that was stress -related in the sense of that was him being stressed about how much work he had to do and how much pressure was on him to succeed, right? Rather, the kind of stress that you might have before a big presentation or...

you know, something that's important to you, not this sort of warning light of humanity that like, hey, deep down inside, right? But that's the part that I think really probably triggered you on this scholarly journey, which is this interpretation that's often out there that, and I'm guilty of it as well, you know, in my own work, and I'm now rethinking that. But this idea that well, because so -and -so,

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (26:44.99)
Yes.

Waitman (27:09.766)
whether it's Boxaleski or Himmler or unknown soldier at a killing site, because they have some kind of deep down unconscious or uncontrollable reaction, that therefore that must mean that there's some small bit of good to kind of, this is like the Darth Vader, deep down inside, he's a good person kind of thing. And you argue that actually that may not be the case at all.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (27:23.454)
Thank you.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (27:32.414)
No, I think it's at least I want to make sure that we don't sort of rush to that interpretation right away. And I think in some ways, I think I'm almost thinking, I mean, I'm not a film scholar or literary scholar in that sense, but these popular depictions of especially Nazi perpetrators as feeling really sick about what they do.

I'm just up there everywhere and I felt exactly like you. I actually really enjoyed the zone of interest because I think the way to really convey the thesis of ordinary people, I think that was so disturbing and so good and I think it was in many ways, I really liked it in that sense. And then when that scene came in the end, I was like, no, no, no, don't do it, please don't do it, don't.

Because it's a little bit of a trope that I think I also quote a few other instances in Holocaust movies where they have to sort of feel, and it's the same thing Joshua Oppenheimer does. He chooses at least to put that at the end when in his movie documentary, The Act of Killing, which is about, so this is about sort of small time criminal gangsters who turned into mass murders in 1965 when they were recruited.

Waitman (28:29.798)
Yes.

Waitman (28:45.158)
Mm -hmm.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (28:55.07)
to take care of in Indonesia, who was recruited to take care of these really just horrible mass killings of what was supposed to, or at least allergic people who they saw as the communists. And also at the end of that movie, one of the characters that we follow also have this really sort of vomiting fit. And I think it really sort of like...

Waitman (28:55.526)
in Indonesia.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (29:22.43)
allows us, I think it's sometimes it's even you can even wonder whether it's sort of like a it's it's almost like a filmic trick to sort of make us be able to sort of like sit with that conclusion that they they still have something left and I think it's important to say that I I think that I think it's it's okay to especially with this cases from the act of killing and also other case studies not

the zone of interest necessarily, I think you're right that that should be interpreted as a stress risk. I mean, I think he's just all of his biography is just like what on earth, like I don't think he was really dedicated to what he did. But it's still, I think it's okay to interpret it in some cases as a moral conflict, but it's very, very important not to have this idea that now it's like the real moral self emerging itself. It's as if there's like one path.

that human nature and action sort of takes. And I think this is the, I call it, this is like a real high scale philosophy word, but you know, there's this idea of teleology, that things are like purpose driven. So there's almost this idea as if like, if he could be really himself, like he wouldn't do this. Like it's, and that I think is a very romantic, hopeful idea that we have to sort of like let go of, because in some ways it almost,

Waitman (30:39.686)
Right.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (30:48.638)
excuses them in some ways that they were just so like trapped in this time and these ideologies but if they could have really been themselves but they they chose like we have i mean i think that it's infuriating especially with Hirsch because it's so clear that he was like one of the highest commanders and this whole household of robbing and just like i mean it's and i think it's it's the same

problem I see when people see this with Adolf Eichmann where we have the similar kind of cases where he... So yeah, so I think, but I think I will, I do want to reserve like space for, I mean because I don't want to pretend like my account isn't going to say like I know exactly what happens in these moments that would be I think sort of like falling prey to the same maybe...

fast interpretations that I attribute to other people. So I think it's okay to say, well, I mean, there will definitely be cases maybe where we can have other evidence that can substantiate a story where we can see, okay, this is a person who was troubled. They were, but I think at the end of the day, what we will evaluate them on, on who they really were, I think should always be based on the acts that they perpetrated. So this is kind of like, to go back to that in some sense, if that makes sense. Yeah.

Waitman (32:08.166)
Well, and this is, this is one of those things that, and I agree with a hundred percent when I'm doing my work, you know, I just finished a book on the Inoska camp and I have a whole chapter about the SS and what they're doing in the camp. And first and foremost, you know, the best, the best evidence that I have is what they've done or what they've alleged, been alleged to have done, right? Like these are, these are the things they have consciously had to put one foot in front of the other.

and do. You know, I have testimony from them after the war about it. I have testimony from survivors. And so like, it's kind of like the next step, or the luxury, if you will, in a perpetrator understanding is being able to think about why they did it. You know, and work through what they may have said about it. But if I can't put them on the couch, literally and ask them.

you know, then it does enter into this realm of, you know, there is obviously doubt about exactly what's going on, but ultimately we can still make, I think, a number of, you know, conclusions about people based on their behavior, particularly in scenarios where there is any possible amount of individual choice or initiative involved, right? I mean, like one of the things in this camp, for example, there are lots of just sort of horrendous games and

kinds of torture and torture against different kinds of people, different victim groups, you know, and, and, and much of it is voluntary, right? It's not, it's not, we're going out and shooting people in a ditch. It's like, I'm bored. I'm choosing to do a thing. And in that sense, the, the actions then become really important because clearly you have consciously and rationally and decided to do a thing. And so then we can say, well, what does your choice about doing that thing mean? But going back really quick,

Let's look at disgust and let's look at what you were talking about, because I think this is really interesting. And I want to get to sort of the three perspectives that you have in the book on the ways in which we can explain disgust. So maybe we start by what is disgust? What do you define disgust as? And then move into what are the sort of the what are some of the ways in which we can interpret that? And then then maybe we'll move to sort of the moral limit and the sort of the piece at the end.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (34:27.934)
Yeah, yeah, yes. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So disgust is an emotion that for actually for a long time researchers didn't really look into it. Like there was a lot of emotion research going on already in the beginning of the 20th century, but people sort of like avoided disgust for some reason. But that has sort of like really changed the last 20 years. So there's been a lot of experimental evidence about what disgust is. And it has sort of like, I think,

sort of counteracted some of the intuitive ideas that a lot of us can have about what disgust responses actually are. So one of the really important things about disgust is that disgust as an emotion isn't something you're born with. You're born with the mechanisms, the biological mechanisms that will become or can become what we call disgust in the English speaking world, right?

But so we're born with like the gag reflex. So any infant can gag, for example, you know, it's really vital, right? And then also what we call the distaste reflex, which is the reflex that if you give an infant like a little slice of orange or, you know, something sour, they will immediately do this. now I can't do it in the podcast, but people probably, if you've done this, you, yeah, if you've...

Waitman (35:40.262)
grimace, like making a face, yeah.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (35:43.006)
try to give an infant a lemon slice and you'll see this like, it looks like disgust. So that's clearly also some facial configuration and mechanism that we're born with. But it's not until they found out, until kids are like three or four years that they start really rejecting stuff as disgusting. And I think we all know this, if we had babies or we've been around babies or trying to change their diapers or whatever, like just like, they really don't care about, like they don't have this, like it's not.

evolved or whatever you write, it's not developed yet. So really, what is so it's so it's in that sense, like it's universal in the sense that we have these capacities. I think every human community will have these boundaries of what is disgusting and what is not. But of course, the content of the objects that you will find disgusting and the boundaries will be defined by by all of these cultures and civilizations and languages. So they will point out.

A lot of the times a large scope of objects will be the same, of course. But typically they call core disgust objects something to do with hygiene and stuff like that. But when we come up to these social, more moral disgust objects that we consider in different cultures, then we see great variation. But then, of course, the tricky thing is that once you've internalized a disgust response, it really fits.

It's just like really hard to get rid of. Not impossible at all, which any good nurse or doctor will know. Like you can really like a proper person who's a carer for a sick person will not display like show like a gag response as a nasty smell. But so it's not completely fixed. And I think this is exactly also what the cases show in the book that I work on that it is something you can habituate yourself into, unfortunately, in these cases.

committing and being at these killing sites, smelling it, seeing it, being there, and be okay with it at some point. And then also, as you said before, even move on to forms of behavior that you probably couldn't even imagine you participated in before you entered the battalion. As you say, like, you know, killing for fun, torturing for fun, or just having like a ball, basically, while you're doing these things. So just to connect those two things. But I think...

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (38:08.19)
One of the things about disgust is that still, I think because it feels so automatic and spontaneous, I think it's really hard for a lot of us to not think of it as like some sort of like deep wisdom showing itself to us. And this is also the debates right now still, like I think in a lot of like biotechnology and any sort of like, you could find this.

appeal to like it's disgusting also in moral domains right political domains we really use disgust as this like heuristic to sort of like tell people that's the limit like until then then they're not any further or whatever you say like it is just a really powerful way of displaying like this is like our moral commitments basically so yeah

Waitman (38:54.022)
And so then how, what are the ways that we can interpret this, right? So if we have an example of, say the perpetrator in, I'm now blinking in the movie, an act of killing, right? Or a perpetrator in the Holocaust who is, during or after a mass shooting is experiencing some form of what we call disgust. Then,

What are the ways and I guess what is also the sort of the theory and the science behind how do we interpret that? What does that mean about how they feel or think, I guess really, about what they're doing?

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (39:36.318)
Yeah, no, no, this is exactly been like the dispute in the literature between different historians. So I think if we stick with the Holocaust cases, so I think in that field, there's a really famous discussion between Christopher Browning and Daniel Goldhagen. And it's interesting for the reason that they both look at, at least in some instances, the same police battalion and the same...

men who was feeling really sick when they had to, literally vomiting and crying and all sorts of very strong emotional reactions when they were perpetrating these horrible acts against the civilian population on the Eastern Front. And so someone like Browning will say, he will go with what I call the moral view of disgust and saying that this must be some sort of like...

humane instincts showing themselves. And it's very brief where Browning says it's more like he's trying to like just make sense of it in that way. But then Browning, sorry, Goldhagen comes in, they've been working on the same cases apparently for the same time. He comes in a few years later says, well, no, like this must be completely non -moral aesthetic, disgust responses to the fact that it was very smelly there, some sort of stress response. Like it can't be more in any sense because I think,

The reason why someone like Goldhagen says this, he has this idea that there is nothing like German soldiers at this time in history has to overcome. They're already ready to commit these atrocities against the Jewish neighbors because they have this eliminatory perspective on what needs to be done basically. The only solution is so it can't be, like there can't be any moral scrubbles basically.

So those are like, so like the really like the outer lines in some ways or the two. But what I've been trying to do in the book is trying to navigate between them in some sense to sort of say, I really agree with people like Goldhagen and also others like Harald Welser that we need to be very careful that we don't project. So like normal human responses onto them to sort of think about what would I feel if I was standing there? Would I also feel this? I mean, it is a really different,

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (41:55.006)
ideological environment that they're in. I mean, historically speaking, it's very, you know, it's a little fast, maybe to just project like your sort of like horizon onto them in some sense. So that long I'm with them. But at the same time, I think it goes too far to say that there can't be any sort of like moral conflict involved in this. I mean, for all the cases considered, I think we really have to be much more pluralistic in the sense of saying that.

Some of them could be like moral scrubbles, but in the end of the day, and I think you can say that and still insist that that doesn't sort of free them of any responsibility. I mean, it's not, it's still like they chose to continue with the killing, which both of them of course can document because that's the truth. Like even though they just, they got in maybe some people to do the dirty work, but they still participate. I mean, a lot of them actively participated and just had a.

Waitman (42:49.958)
I mean, exactly. And the worst thing about both those interpretations, not about the interpretations themselves, but about sort of the logical outcome is that in most of those circumstances, whether you think that someone was disgusted because of just the sort of details of it, which you call the aesthetic, you know, this is just gross what I'm doing, or whether they're disgusted because deep down inside, that's like a little more moral warning light going on. In either case, what...

the psychological work that most of them did was overcoming those feelings in order to continue to do the thing that is awful, right? Which again, going back to our original conversation about sort of the nature of humanity and also the nature of perpetrators is the much more terrifying conclusion and one in which I guess you could argue that both Goldhawke and Browning are in agreement in that sense, that, you know, that...

regardless, you know, the dangerous thing here is that human beings have the capability in most circumstances to overcome or ignore that, either ignore the warning light, if you're going from sort of the moral explanation, or overcome, you know, what can be serious physical discomfort in order to do a terrible thing, where, you know, and you talk about cognitive dissonance a little bit, whereas, you know, the...

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (43:58.782)
Hmm.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (44:05.694)
Yeah.

Waitman (44:13.414)
Cognitive dissonance would say, and this is really quickly, the theory that we're only sort of psychologically and emotionally at peace when our thoughts and our actions are kind of aligned. We're doing what we think is right and we're thinking what we're doing is right. And so when those things are not in alignment, then we experience distress. And so obviously when your thoughts, your feelings, your values are not in alignment with your actions, you have two choices. You can either change your actions,

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (44:22.942)
Hmm.

Waitman (44:42.15)
So they come back in line with your thoughts and your feelings, or you can change your thoughts and your feelings. So they're in line with your actions. And, you know, in this context, we want, we would rather that people did the latter and, and, you know, or the former and stop doing what they were doing. So they would feel better about it. But actually what happens is that most of the time they end up, you know, figuring out a way to keep doing what they're doing, despite how they feel about it.

And I think one of the things that I would love to hear more about is this third, the third way, right? Which is the ways in which these disgust reactions serve to really enable the criminality, enable the actions. Like they are, you make the argument in the book, it's just fascinating and I think in many ways convincing, you know, that actually,

These serve a purpose in making it easier for us to continue to do these things.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (45:45.31)
Yeah, no, I think it's so if you take like as you say like the metaphor of that that they interpret that even the soldiers themselves see this more this discomfort as some sort of like more little light or voice speaking It can become like even this interpretation the moral interpretation of it can even become extremely destructive in the sense that it

It sort of tells a little story of yourself, as you said earlier in the conversation, about you as a victim who's like forced to do these things and you don't really want to do it. But you, and I think, so in that sense, they're basically, I mean, with Primo Levi's word, placing themselves in this gray zone between victims and perpetrators where they're sort of like pushing their way in, right? And also,

feeling in some ways like resentment in the fact that I'm being put in this situation. I have to deal with all this like horrible work. So that's really like horrible for us. Like we have to stand here. I quote like several of the soldiers, one of the commanders from Treblinka that was interviewed was when he sort of says like, we vomited and we cried like we vomited and cried like all winter. Like it was just horrifying, right? But he says this in a, in a,

context to post -war context to an interviewer where he wants to sort of convey in some sense also his own humanness in the situation, right? Because I think a really important thing is also what you mentioned before the To be to be careful like he probably doesn't even know like why he vomits at the time like we don't always know like why we act we act so like spontaneously but it can become like a helpful or useful story for himself to

to be able to stay there in this. And I think this is really the danger of it, that these stories can be useful for the propaganda as well, like the way someone like Himmler will speak about it and the way they think of themselves as still having this integrity in some sense. And I think this is also, of course, this is people write books about this, like the whole...

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (48:03.294)
the inside look from the perpetrator perspective of themselves as like really moral, like on the right track of history in the sense like that this is something that needs to be done. Like it's really horrifying, but it's not, I'm not wrong in doing it in that sense, even though there might be obstacles, but yeah. So I think this is the...

This is the terrifying conclusion of it, that it actually helps them shape or participate even more in it. Yeah.

Waitman (48:39.654)
When you make the argument at one point, I think that in some ways this is like a.

It's like a safety valve for stress in the sense that, you know, that there is actually enjoyment, I don't know if I'm doing the wrong word, but like satisfaction and feeling disgust because it sort of lets off excess stress about what you're doing, but then enables you to continue doing what you're doing on a daily basis. Am I getting that right? Or can you explain that in more detail?

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (48:56.414)
Hmm.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (49:13.758)
Yeah, I think one of the... In the third chapter, I think some of the people that I... I'm basically getting on other people's work here as well, a ton. But the idea is basically also that... I mean...

the conflict that you can maybe feel somehow against being in that situation can be sort of unleashed as some sort of like rage against the victims in some sense that can sort of counteract whatever conflict you had. So it's sort of like you overdo it in some sense. And then I think the lesson that we had from a ton of these studies is that it's that data, those actions themselves. So like, it's kind of like a point of no return in the sense that then if you have to, as you say before, like.

Waitman (49:47.718)
Mm.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (50:02.654)
obtain some sort of stability in your sense of self, you have to be able to justify those actions. Otherwise, you have to really live with an idea of yourself as completely. So the dissonance will just be too much if you don't find the right justification for that. And then it's kind of like you're on a roll. Then it just goes on from there. And that's when we see that people can find joy and just...

enter, I think, in some ways. I think this is where I think it's important to understand when we talk about ordinary people that I think the universe in some sense, that's maybe a strong word, but the sort of like moral universe that they enter at this point, I think, is very different from anything that we can imagine when we sit here in a completely different... And I think just the evidence we have now much clearer.

than I think we had in the time of Aand, how much I think they had it already at that time. So it's not, but of the music was playing during the slaughters and I mean, I think you know all this much better than I do. So it was also like a time people even would miss later on that this sort of excess of just any sort of anything could basically happen. And I think this is also like a terrifying.

side and I think the really important thing here is to make sure that you make these arguments and say this is exactly also human nature like this is something that we contain as a possibility but of course it doesn't just happen over the night it's not that kind of ordinary but it's something that is not like animal behavior or monsters it is right there like human beings and I think one of the pictures

One of the picture series I always use with my students is this album that came out from Solahyde, you know, the SS -Gards little recreational place, which was just outside the giant Auschwitz -Birkenau complex, which you had a ton of like personnel, but they had this little wonderful place where they could go in the mountains and eat blueberries and just sing along. And I think it's important to...

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (52:21.502)
I think that this sort of like, these good old days, I think it became like that for people. Like it wasn't just like a continuous horror show in that sense that they, so I think these moments of perpetrator disgust, for a lot of them, it's a few times and then unfortunately it is sort of like, it evaporates in that sense, at least in the case studies that I've looked at. And then it can come back later on in life when you return to a civilian situation and I guess in some sense,

the moral codes have changed and you can also begin to understand it differently. And I think maybe whatever moral disgust you were feeling over the actions are more like able to be articulated as that in those contexts. So it's also a matter of like what makes sense to call it in those moments where I think for a lot of the soldiers to feel, to be seen as a weakling in those moments can also be like really dangerous inside.

Waitman (53:10.822)
Yeah.

Waitman (53:19.526)
It's also interesting, I think the temporal element of this is really interesting, the chronological element of what were you feeling when and how you interpret that, right? Because for example, in a Holocaust example, it could be that you feel, let's say you have a disgust reaction in the moment of killing or whatever you're doing.

And that could still be really one of a number of reasons behind it from the basic, you know, this is disgusting, this is gross, you know, just physically, sensorily, this is not nice, to maybe some, you know, conflict with my inner beliefs or just something else. But then after the fact, you know, whether it's 10 years later, 20 years later,

you, a might interpret that reaction differently for your own sort of autobiographical purposes. I E you know, and I felt sick. whereas the, and I felt sick because I deep down inside didn't agree with this, whereas that may not have actually been the reason for it at the time. But conversely, you could have a new disgust reaction in that 20, 30 years later when you're thinking about it.

which might be for completely different reasons and be informed by, you know, different, you know, different societal context. I'm thinking that there's an example from the Mili massacre, you know, of one of the soldiers, you know, later on he killed himself, but in this documentary, this is 20 years after the fact, and he's sitting there with all his medications, et cetera, because he's just a wreck, psychologically.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (54:59.262)
Thank you.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (55:15.102)
Mm. Mm.

Waitman (55:16.326)
and you know, he does, it doesn't seem like he was a wreck at the time. but for whatever reason he is now. And again, you know, I think what's amazing about your work is that it opens up the possibility for, for explanations beyond that. You know, he disagrees with what he did. but there is also this element of, you know, as you point out, you come back if, if discussed is a conditioned can be a conditioned response.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (55:24.254)
Hmm.

Waitman (55:46.054)
then when you come back to an organization or an institution or an environment which fundamentally disagrees with what you did, then you might also be conditioned to be disgusted by what you did, right? Which seems like, what I love about the complexity of your work is that there's no easy answer to any of it.

But you provide a framework for understanding of it that is, I think, particularly useful because particularly the idea that just because someone is sick or upset about something doesn't mean that they are, that that's sort of the angel on their shoulder saying, this is bad. It could be a number of things to include, you know, and it can, and then, but not only that it could mean different things.

but that it actually has an effect on the continued perpetration of those things, which I think is really, really disturbing but interesting.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (56:52.574)
Yeah, no, I think and also I just want to make sure also I think this is so the book is actually this is going to be like a books and potion on the book and in one of our philosophy journals and I think and for a lot of philosophers it's really hard for them to swallow this idea that I don't think there's any morally inherent like direction in these like there isn't let me like true way these emotions could be because there's a lot of ideas about floating out there still in the

I think in a scientific paradigm about emotions that I think should be discarded by now, but that there is some sort of like one -to -one mapping on that you could sort of, that there would be a way to say, what were they feeling? They were feeling this. And I'm much more on this new, which is also very much backed up by neuro evidence by Lisa Feldman Barrett and her giant paradigm of colleagues, where they really emphasize that we construe like our own emotions, not in the social construction sense, but in the sense that the meaning,

the tools we have for making sense of what the body, the signals that comes from the body is basically like what the brain continuously do through whatever past experiences, schemes, whatever you want to call it. I call it humanoid resources we have. So it is really true what you say, like in the sense that it can also, I mean, it can facilitate your reflection over your discomfort. It can facilitate great like moral progress in the sense of a specific environment sense.

And I think right now I'm actually working on a lot of cases with veterans experiencing what they call now moral injury and I think that those are a lot of the cases are much more clear examples of people who really felt terrible about what they did and explicit more remorse and guilt feelings and it's actually really hard for a lot of military psychologists to like So give room for that because of course it has giant political implications to really like validate

those feelings of guilt because it reflects back on what the institution asked them to do. So that becomes a really hard place to be as an individual because you're, as you said, you're on a journey suddenly that's taking you somewhere beyond the ideology of what we want to call it, the morality or the politics of your institution. You're so like another place now. And then you were at the time when you were stationed maybe.

Waitman (58:55.174)
Yes.

Waitman (59:19.366)
Well, and you raised the interesting point in the book that you have come back to me, which is sort of the challenge for, you know, professional mental health professionals in these situations, which is, as you point out, you can't just say, well, no, no, your feelings are, you know, your feelings are nonsense and you're fine. You know, like, don't, don't worry about them. You know, you're, you're just having this emotional reaction because actually,

It could be, it is, it is, it can be a helpful thing to have to work through. And so that, you know, a therapy session, you know, for example, I'm guessing a lot of these moral injuries, you know, as someone that was in the military, you know, and was in Iraq, that, you know, a lot of this is, is cases that were sort of people get killed. It's not a war crime. You know, nobody's going to say that, you know, it was, it was a criminal behavior, but you feel bad about it because civilians were killed or children were killed or whatever.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:00:09.374)
Hmm.

Waitman (01:00:16.998)
And this is one form of moral injury where you come home and you're like, I feel terrible about this for whatever reason, probably more than just the non -aesthetic or the aesthetic sort of details of it. But it's hard for a caregiver or a therapist to sort of say, forget about it, you're fine. Because that invalidates the idea that you actually...

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:00:30.494)
yeah. Yeah.

Waitman (01:00:43.142)
do feel bad because killing somebody is bad. And it's okay to feel bad about killing somebody, right? But they want their patient to feel better. And so does the act of making the patient feel better mean that you're basically telling them that it was okay that this child was killed, right? Again, we're saying the person is not culpable in any sense, but that they still feel bad about it because they're a human being and they care and they didn't want a child to be.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:01:06.078)
Mmm.

Waitman (01:01:12.39)
to be killed or whatever. And so like, you're basically, are you then taking away that bit of their humanity by saying, you shouldn't feel bad about this. Don't worry about it, which is like, is that winning? Is that helpful?

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:01:13.182)
Hmm.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:01:20.766)
Hmm.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:01:25.15)
Yeah, exactly. No, it's really a conversation like beyond, I think, I mean, of course there are people where it's mixed with PTSD, where you need like intensive care from medical professionals. But I think the moral transformation that happens for some people is kind of like something that has to also happen beyond the clinic in some sense. Like it can be...

I think one of the things they're finding out now in the clinical research is that it's actually to reconnect with the society around you, so do something good for where you are. Because there isn't any way you can change what you did. So it's actually the moral repair that you have, you can take on your shoulders now, will have to be in your environment here. And that's actually something that they find that really helps people to, in some sense, move your focus out.

from this inner like turmoil and be like, okay, okay, I have to, what can I be now for someone? So, yeah.

Waitman (01:02:27.43)
Well, and again, it's action, right? So it's like, you've actually done something concrete in a different direction, right? Just like you did something concrete in a negative direction if you were responsible for some kind of violence. But I think it's a really fascinating thing to think about. And another way that I've seen this happen recently is with the current sort of Israel -Palestine

And one of the things that came out of that, that I've commented on is this, there was a number of people, some historians, politicians who said that sort of Hamas is worse than the Nazis. Right? This was the sort of argument. And the evidence for this was everything I read about in the book. Right? It was while the Nazis were sick when they did stuff, the Nazis had to drink.

to deal with the effects of what they're doing. And Hamas, according to these arguments, doesn't, right? And therefore, you know, Hamas is worse, which I think raises all kinds of different problems because, you know, we don't, and again, I'm certainly not supporting what happened on October 7th or any of this. I'm not really getting into the politics of it except to say that, you know, who knows what the perpetrators, the Hamas perpetrators of atrocities were thinking, feeling at the time. We don't know that yet.

You know, maybe they have those reactions, maybe they didn't. But from my perspective, what I'm more focused on is this idea that in some ways, in the attempt to demonize one group or win the sort of win the political rhetorical argument, you're actually rehabilitating the Nazis by saying, well, deep down inside, they all felt bad about this. And again, coming back to your work, the answer is actually...

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:04:14.878)
and

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:04:22.27)
Hmm.

Waitman (01:04:25.318)
A, that's not even just because these events happen doesn't mean that that actually symbolizes that they are that they do feel bad about it. And even the drinking, because a lot of people said, you know, over the drinking, they'd had to drink to deal with what they were doing. And I had recently had a guest, Ed Westerman, on here. Yeah. Yeah, well, there you go. I had him on here. Ed came on and we talked about this. And one of the amazing things that he talked about is.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:04:43.358)
that's the book I want to recommend!

Waitman (01:04:54.662)
that actually the kinds of drinking don't fall into what we might sort of stereotypically say like, I've done something bad. I'm going to go sit in a corner and drink myself into oblivion because I feel so bad about it. It was like fun party, hooray drinking, which is, which again is suggesting a different relationship, even subconscious to what you're doing, right?

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:05:21.886)
Yeah, I think this is, I think Westerman's work is just phenomenal for that. It came out just when I was finishing my manuscript, but I heard him luckily speak on it. I think, I know, some half a year before or something, so I managed to just cite him quickly. But I think this is exactly, I think Browning's work is fantastic, but I think it does have that bias of imagining that the police battalion had to go home and drink.

to sort of like be able to do it. And I think, of course, that could definitely be the case for some people. Like, again, we have to recognize that there's diversity in like different personalities here, right? Which is all of them do in micro studies. But it's so important to not ignore this huge amount of evidence we have of how it was basically like a party committing these crimes. There was music playing, there was...

I mean, we have so much evidence and I think Edward's work is then just obscenely dating that to a degree where I think all of us can then more firmly say, well, this is really important to consider. And also to consider, I wrote a piece early actually in the project to consider that this is like a very human thing to do in some sense, which I think unfortunately is easy to...

to sort of like understand in some weird way, like how this, I mean, partying, I'm from a country like Denmark where partying and drinking is like a huge part of our culture. So this sort of like alternative universe that became a reality in these different wards or battalions is not so far away from like behavior, similar behavior that we see, but also sometimes result in really atrocious actions towards both.

women and men or I mean you know crimes against so.

Waitman (01:07:14.598)
I was going to say that's another area that your book and then this concept really sort of strikes home as well, because I think what you've really put your finger on, and I think one of the things that's super important to take away from this conversation is this idea that so much of how we explain this historical phenomenon, meaning we know this is a thing that happened, but the way that we explain it is so much based on what we want to be true.

about human nature. I explain it as, he's having a moral questioning moment, maybe just because I really wish that, I hope that he's having a moral questioning moment because I hope that we're the kinds of people, even the worst of us that have moral questioning moments. Whereas what you ask us to do, and I think it's really important and really smart is to think about what about a world in which he's not having a moral questioning moment? And, you know.

This is something else entirely. And it goes, it also goes with, I think, directly to what you're talking about in the sense of the things that we see in the Holocaust and other genocides, which are acts that we have a difficult time imagining ourselves doing or imagining being okay, right? And one of them is killing. But one of them is sexual violence as well, which I think also has this kind of, you know,

it becomes an okay thing to do and people feel partying about it. I mean, it's a party atmosphere in some of these scenarios, right? And we'd like to think that deep down people can't get used to feeling that way, but...

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:09:02.686)
Hmm.

Waitman (01:09:02.886)
you know, ultimately we do. And obviously, yes, you know, sexual violence in most instances or a lot of instances is about the power over the victim and less about the sex. But even in some of these scenarios, you can see them making it seem, or at least in their minds, to be a relationship, right? In the same way that these drinking festivals are parties, right? You know, like there's examples from my first book,

where a German soldier is basically, he basically has a Jewish woman that he forces to have sex with him all the time in kind of an instrumental way. Like she lives in his apartment, this kind of thing. But he calls her his girlfriend, right? Clearly not his girlfriend. But, you know, in his mind, right, he's made her into this figure of a girlfriend, potentially so that he doesn't feel as bad about.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:09:51.806)
Hmm.

Waitman (01:10:01.51)
know what he knows he's doing. I don't know if that makes sense in the context of this of this disgust thing, but it is about, I think it's really interesting is as scholars what you're asking us to do is to reflect upon how the ways in which we wish the world were or wish people were impact our own work. I think that's really important.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:10:17.374)
Mm.

Yeah, yeah. I think that's also one of the things you asked me as well before we were writing together, is how does this impact the way we do historical research, any kind of research on these genocides or other wars and conflict. I think we have to be aware that we are also human beings sitting there with specifics or human -neuric resources, moral codes, ideas that we think. And it's impossible not to bring that to the table when you sit and witness, for example,

these episodes and I think there's just some sort of like, I mean, just to sort of like make sure that you calculate that in somehow in the way you form your own interpretation of the material. I think that there's sometimes I think there can be this hopeful thinking, so like sneaking its way in, I think. And I think in some ways what it does is that it's, it's, it's,

can create this blind spot for also atrocious behavior that you see just around the corner in your neighborhood, as you say, sexual violence or all sorts of exploitation. So it's more to open up the arena to say, well, this isn't completely alien to us. It's happening now, and it could happen then. And it's not necessarily something people have to.

habituated into doing, there are people also out where this was like an avenue that they from the beginning were okay with. And that's also why I think it's important to say, especially to those critics that you have, you're talking about who was portraying this idea of like these remorseful Nazi soldiers who was crying. And I mean, first of all, it's a minority phenomena. Like I even feel I when I was researching, I almost felt like bad for like,

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:12:15.614)
put them out there in the spotlight because it's kind of like, it's a lot of people where this is not the case at all, right? And I think this is where Goldhagen is completely right and Browning consents to that as well. I mean, there's nothing that goes away from his. So I think that's one thing about it. And even if they were feeling conflicted about it, I mean, that doesn't matter. Like they pursued with their actions and there was so much pride and so much triumphant behavior.

Waitman (01:12:41.126)
Yeah, I mean, one of the things that.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:12:44.734)
that it's just absurd to think of them as a military organization that they weren't completely clear and transparent about, and endorsing also, like, crazy sexual torture and all sorts of like, it was more, yeah, yeah, so it's just a...

Waitman (01:13:08.39)
Well, I mean, one of the things that comes through is also, which is that, you know, these moments of moral disgust that you're talking about, however we ultimately explain them, are really taking place at what we might call the sharp end of the spear, the moment that's actually the visceral, physical, corporeal moment when you are killing someone, right?

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:13:33.662)
Hmm.

Waitman (01:13:36.518)
But that does not in any way encompass all of the ways in which the Holocaust takes place or the ways in which people contribute to the Holocaust. And so when I was writing the book about the German army, there were guys who were in the killing squad, German soldiers, and they were like, I can't do this for whatever reason. Let's just not worry about why they said that. But they were like, I am incapable of doing this anymore. Remove me from the situation.

And they would get removed from the situation, just like in Browning's book. But then they were totally happy to be guarding the Jews or marching the Jews from the town square to the killing site or whatever else. Right. So, so, you know, we, regardless of what they might say after the fact, many years later, whatever discomfort they had didn't extend to the entire, the entire operation or the entire mission of murdering Jews. It was.

I don't want to be involved in this part at the pointy end of the spear because that's where I feel the disgust. But nobody is saying that, you know, I had to guard the Jews in the town square and it made me sick, you know, and I cried, which is really interesting, right? When you think about it, like the only place that you see these kinds of explicit reactions and that's not to take away the fact that your son could be moral, but regardless, the only place that you see them is at this most extreme moment where someone really has to like,

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:14:47.454)
Yeah.

Waitman (01:15:03.398)
physically engage with the act of killing. Otherwise, no one's talking about, and one of the things that Browning does really well in some of his other work is thinking about how can we take, what truths can we take from perpetrator testimony, right? In a situation where they are mostly, particularly in judicial testimony, where they're mostly trying to obfuscate. And I do have a point here.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:15:21.534)
Hmm.

Waitman (01:15:32.454)
And one of the things he says is if they don't lie, when you would expect them to lie, right? So you would imagine that, you know, someone under testimony from the police would say all these things. You know, it made me sick to guard the Jews in the village. I hated that. It was terrible. But they don't say it. The only places that you see it, even in these, in these testimonies, religious testimonies, is at the sharp end of the spear where I was literally asked to kill it. I couldn't do it.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:15:37.726)
Hmm.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:15:49.598)
Mm.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:15:57.118)
Hmm.

Yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah, I think and I think the good news is also that we do have these like recordings, the ones that Harald Welser and what's his name, his colleague Sonke Nien, I forget, they found a recorded German soldiers in British captivity who also talks about this phenomena which kind of like, yeah, but again, like it's not like necessarily like a

Waitman (01:16:18.79)
Yeah.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:16:30.686)
It can be like this transition period, but it can also be a story that's really fascinating for some of them to hear about, so that it also circulates for them. And still, like not necessarily with like a moral morale at that moment in time. Yeah.

Waitman (01:16:48.998)
Well, and what's interesting also is that, is that, you know, we've been talking about these sort of is autonomic, the right word, the sort of, you know, involuntary reactions. Like we can't control, you know, if we put our hand in dog poo, we're going to feel disgusted. We can't help. We can't, we can't help that. And that's what we've been talking about, you know, which because, because in the historical record, right, these are the clearest.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:17:01.95)
Mmm.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:17:08.478)
Yeah.

Waitman (01:17:18.79)
examples of some kind of emotional or mental reaction to what's going on, right? Because they're actions, right? I threw up, I felt this way. It doesn't, which means that in the historical record, the thoughts, like conscious thoughts about what we're doing are much, much more difficult to find, right? Because, because...

even because then we don't even have these few sort of physical markers. Right. And so we don't know whether people were in their mind being like, I don't really think I should be doing this, but I'm not having a response to it. Right. And then it becomes even less likely that we can parse out what they're thinking. And so again, it's this question of sort of an iceberg of of emotions and thoughts and feelings towards being a perpetrator. We only we only have access to like a small.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:17:58.014)
Mm. Mm.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:18:15.87)
Yeah. And I think actually even from a more psychological perspective, I would go even further and say, well, the person themselves probably don't even know why they vomited always, but they can try to understand it. It's a signal the body's sending to them, but it's what it really means in terms of what I should be doing morally or socially is something that's up to you. That is why we can hold each other responsible. It is in the end, at the end of the day.

Waitman (01:18:15.942)
a small portion of it.

Waitman (01:18:26.138)
Yeah.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:18:44.19)
what you choose to do based on that, how you interpret what that means for you, that is where we need to, as a society, looking on them, measure them.

Waitman (01:18:48.23)
Yes.

Waitman (01:18:58.886)
And of course, we're also then, you know, we're suffering from the needs of autobiographical memory anyway, which is that, you know, our lives are a narrative with a beginning, middle, and an end. And, you know, we have to put things in an order that makes sense for us, even if that's not an order that reflects reality. You know, it's like when you ask somebody, you know, why did you become a medical doctor?

and they look back to when they were five and the rescue squad came to their street and saved somebody. Were they really thinking when they were five that they wanted to be a doctor or is that them looking back and saying, that's the moment when I want to be, when they'd be a doctor. And so it's the same thing. We complicate all the things we've already talked about in terms of trying to interpret these reactions with the autobiographical memory piece, which is make it make sense. And so if we're looking at, if we're taking the Holocaust example,

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:19:37.854)
Yeah, exactly.

Waitman (01:19:54.47)
and you're talking to someone after the fact, you know, for them to make it make sense in a society in which the Holocaust is no longer an acceptable thing to do, then their interpretation of the reaction will be moral, moral disagreement. Whereas as you point out at the time, they may have had no idea what it meant and it may not have meant that at all. But, you know, we have to, we have to make things all fit into a narrative in our memory that makes our life.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:20:16.286)
Hmm.

Waitman (01:20:23.91)
trajectory makes sense. Just like the example in your book, and people need to get the book to read more about it, but Dita talks about a prison guard in Texas who was involved in the, he was basically the prison guard for executions. And, you know, eventually, shortly before he reached retirement age, he just had it and he couldn't do it anymore. He couldn't handle it. And, and,

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:20:25.214)
Be safe.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:20:34.686)
Yes.

Waitman (01:20:52.742)
And she talks in more detail about this in the book, but you know, what she also shows is that, you know, he goes through stages in how he interprets the disgust reactions that made it impossible for him to continue his job. You know, and these interpretations change over time as well. And they don't map perfectly onto the chronology of events because, you know, he begins to have these reactions, but he keeps doing what he's doing.

doesn't quit, you know, and then there's a one moment when he does and he does too much. And so I think I think that's interesting as well. I mean, one of the things that's that's, you know, amazing about about what you suggested to us is the complexity of. Of how we understand. Understand these events, but I think it's also it's a necessary collective or corrective. To to this idea that.

you know, our gut feelings are always right. And if we have a gut feeling or gut reaction that it's telling us it's a warning sign, you know, to, to watch out for it. I mean, it doesn't make life any easier. It makes life more difficult because then it's like, do I ignore this or not? But I think it's really useful.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:22:04.862)
No, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it puts a lot of responsibility on each of our shoulders, right? It is up to us to sustain institutions that will hold people accountable. It's not just like, it's really you have to see all of this that we make arrangements to make sure people are held accountable. And so at the end of the day, yeah, I think.

It is really important to us to understand that we create the boundaries for what we consider right and wrong. And that's not something we can take for granted. I think, especially these days where people start distrusting the framework of the United Nations and prosecution and the international scale and stuff like that. It is up to us to, if we want to keep this system, it's very young. If you think about the history of humankind, it's only so fragile. And my husband...

Waitman (01:22:41.19)
Yes.

Waitman (01:23:00.198)
And also this idea of, I'm sorry, of disgust being a constructed response. You know, I think that that's also really important in the modern context. I mean, like, you know, sort of in the anti, the homophobic world, I mean, that's a great example of all of this, where people talk about, you know, drag story hour, and they're like, I get physically sick. This is disgusting.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:23:00.926)
And yeah, I mean, it's just so.

Waitman (01:23:26.854)
You know, it's like, it's like that's, that's a response that the society has created, but one that is not some deep truth about people in drag or trans people. Right. And so again, one of the things that you, that your work, I think has a particular meaning in is that again, just because, you know, we look at something and it disgusts us again, that is not necessarily a commentary on the innate value of that thing.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:23:37.214)
Yeah, exactly.

Waitman (01:23:56.55)
It can also just be, I've been contextualized in my life at almost a deep, unconscious, nervous system level to be disgusted by this, but that we need to be careful about doing that and not do that because it has this unconscious, faster than light sort of response on people, which is not good.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:24:08.414)
Yeah, absolutely.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:24:24.062)
Exactly. This is, I think, is one of the... I'm sure it's just... Now you're not in the US anymore, but of course we have the same waves now of transphobia, homophobia here, where it's... I think it's really important to understand how you react physically to people, that it's not like a truth... The truth of the moral order, it isn't out there somewhere objectively in the world. And that makes it... And that's not a relativistic argument. That makes it much more important.

to make sure that this is, you know, it's up to us. Like, no one's gonna come save you. Like, you create the moral, political, legal order that you think is important to protect, you know, minority groups and vulnerable groups. And so it's just, and if you let that slide, that's really...

Waitman (01:24:53.222)
Yes.

Waitman (01:25:15.91)
And also that you have to deal with it. I mean, like you have to, as a, as a mature adult, because as I suggested earlier, you know, the feeling that you get when you see a gay person or minority or whatever may feel analogous to what you would feel if we saw a tiger coming at you, because that's what you're, that's the only way that our bodies have to express fear or whatever. But again, that's not a ground truth because.

a minority or a gay person is not a tiger. They're not a threat. And so part of, I think the value of this is being self -aware enough that if you have that feeling through say that's something that's been conditioned in me, but it's not telling me, I don't need to shift into fight or flight mode or be upset or have any negative feelings about this because it's not real. Right?

Whereas the tiger situation is real and that's a helpful, but again, it gets back to this challenge of, of now, you know, we've sort of, we sort of post -structuralized, you know, discussed feelings where like now it's like, well, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't necessarily connote any truth to us.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:26:28.496)
Yeah, but it is, of course, like, it is very real, like, and I think it's very real, like, political problems we're facing. So you can still break it down to like challenges. But I think the important thing is to not think of these emotions as so like, destiny, you know, like, it's not, it's not just once. I mean, it's I think, there's so many good examples of where people change, you know, like where you you resist, you know, whatever the impulse drags you towards and

Waitman (01:26:32.39)
Yes.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:26:56.99)
And this is really, I think, the wonderful feature of human nature as well, that you are able to work against whatever moral framework you were born into. You don't have to stay the same. You can also learn something new about and change your mind, and also then eventually. But the important lesson here is, especially with implicit biases and unconscious biases, that it won't just be like a...

cognitive exercise, it will take a long time because the body has been conditioned into a specific pattern. So this isn't just like a one trick sort of thing. It will really take hard work, which of course is why you need institutions and stuff like that. Yeah.

Waitman (01:27:41.798)
Well, that's good that we kind of ended on a positive note, which is not always the case on this podcast. But before I let you go, thank you so much for your time. But can you, again, as we always do, can you suggest one book on the Holocaust that you think is particularly useful or important?

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:27:45.47)
Yeah.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:27:58.91)
Yeah, so that was, I already revealed that, right? It's the drunk on genocide, but Edward Westermann, and the subtitle is Alcohol and Mass Murder in Nazi Germany. And it basically is giving that story that you already told about how it wasn't just so that the Nazi soldiers had to drink to forget and be okay with what they did. The drinking was also happening during executions or acts of torture.

And also it was a triumphant drinking a lot of the times after with this, which is, I think is really important to wrap your head around and couple with all the other evidence we have now of the albums showing them having a great old time. And for a lot of Holocaust historians, this isn't new, but of course I think he managed to really write it so nice and accessible for a lot of us who's not historians. So we can also be updated with this really important piece of evidence.

Waitman (01:28:53.894)
Well, yes. And, you know, as we talked about on the episode with him, you know, one of the really, I think, important things again, is this idea of forcing us to think about a world in which partying in a sort of normal alcohol partying mode is, is okay in a completely abnormal and sort of dysfunctional, what we would think is an abnormal dysfunctional environment. Yep. So that's, that's, that's us for today.

As always, thanks everybody for listening. Please, if you have a moment, do give us a rating, put a comment down, tell us what you like. That helps us and it also helps me. And Dita, thank you so much for coming on. This was amazing.

Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (01:29:41.854)
Well, thank you so much. I'm really thankful for this opportunity and it was great to talk to you about all this. I think we really covered a ton of ground.

Waitman (01:29:49.99)
Absolutely.