Victor Klemperer's Diary I Will Bear Witness

A particularly interesting story from one of the men of reserve police battalion 101 came from the mouth of Franz Kastenbaum. He had been a member of a firing squad that had taken Jews into the woods and shot them at the base of the neck from point-blank range. Kastenbaum was able to make it through three people. Then, on the fourth, he claims to have felt nauseous and to have run away. He then corrects himself and says that he missed his fourth victim intentionally. After this, he escapes to the woods where he sat against a tree until the shooting was over.

It's hard to judge whether Kastenbaum "intentionally" missed his fourth victim or just did so because he had been feeling so nauseous, but either way his missing illustrates an immediate impact of performing this massacre in Jozefow. In the time of his first three killings he had probably come to recognize something in the Jews he was killing that reminded him of his own life. Just like the officer that chose to quit after he met Jews from Germany, Kastenbaum probably found some way to relate to the people he was killing and this made him feel uneasy about this situation. Perhaps the fourth man that he was supposed to shoot resembled a family member of his too closely. Something like this created empathy within Kastenbaum and inspired him to quit taking part in the massacre.

It is also evident that this man suffered from a great deal of guilt. For his testimony, Kastenbaum had originally stated that he didn't remember anything about the killing of Jews. Yet, he returns in a wreck to rectify his testimony and claim that he was one of the men who carried out this shooting. He also backtracks in the middle of this second testimony. He first says that he missed his fourth victim because he was too nauseous. Then, he backtracks and says that he missed intentionally. This seems to be his way of diffusing some of the guilt of the act he carried out in Jozefow. On that day, he was probably feeling similar feelings of guilt. I think this is why he chooses to escape into the woods to be alone. He is contemplating what he has just done and is having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that he has murdered innocent people.