Officers in the Boston area took part in a training to study the role of police during the Holocaust.
In a training session Monday, officers in the Boston area studied lessons to be learned from the Holocaust and the role law enforcement played.
The training, created in partnership with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, examines how police were used to legitimize and enforce Nazi policies.
The program, called "What You Do Matters," provides information about how Adolf Hitler rose to power and how his regime exploited people's fears.
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Todd Larson and Timothy Tomczak, both former law enforcement officers, led the training.
They explained how an arson attack on the parliamentary building in Berlin, the Reichstag, in 1933 prompted a decree that suspended various constitutional protections. Tomczak described it as being akin to suspending the 1st and 4th Amendments of the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution, effectively taking the reins off of law enforcement and expanding the authority of the German Reich.
The leaders listed a number of laws that followed targeting Jewish people, including a law that revoked the citizenship of naturalized Jews and other groups of people and another that limited the number of Jewish students to prevent overcrowding.
"The Nazi party ran on a crime-free platform. They wanted to remove crime from society," said Larson during his presentation.
"Almost everything done was lawful," said Tomczak.
Their presentation included images of a Berlin police officer on patrol with a member of the SS, an officer escorting a Nazi official collecting racial data and police officers directing groups of people who were being deported.
Whether they were directly involved in the activities, or standing alongside the perpetrators, the trainers suggested the presence of their uniform could have been perceived as adding legitimacy, describing it as a representation of restoration of public order. The discussion was interactive prompting local officers to share their reflections on the subject.
"It was very emotional to see the damage that was done back in the 30s and 40s, and it makes you think of law enforcement today, why we are in the position that we are in and what we're doing to help others," said Mike McCartney, a Suffolk University police officer. "It's really gratifying to see everyone coming together, working together as a group to prevent something like what happened before in the future."
"If it was driving prisoners to wherever, or standing guard, they still played a role, and obviously, it was through intimidation," said McCartney. "As a supervisor, I'm going to question what's being told to me, and I would expect my officers to question me if they don't believe something is right."
"I think it was really helpful to the officers to see that and see what failure to provide proper ethics and the results that can happen when they don't do the right thing," said Chief Jim Connolly of the Suffolk University Police Department.
Connolly partnered with the Holocaust Legacy Foundation to bring the training to Boston.
"As we say, history repeats itself, so we really need to examine the past in order to connect to the present to make sure that we have a better future," said Jody Kipnis, co-founder, CEO and president of the Holocaust Legacy Foundation. "They were doing what they thought would be great for their country, and these were not monsters, these were very educated people that were doing these things. It's really hard to think about what humans are capable of doing to other humans."
She said she hopes to continue offering the training and expand to other fields, such as medical professionals, politicians and teachers.
