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Reserve Police Battalion 101 executed 1500 Jewish civilians in the woods outside of Jozefow, Poland in July 1942.<ref>Browning, 225.</ref>It was not until the night before the shootings were to begin that Major Trapp reluctantly conveyed the orders to his policemen. A veteran of the Great War and recipient of the Iron Cross First Class, Trapp was nonetheless not considered to be an appropriate SS candidate. Customarily, SS men were career oriented, professional soldiers who accepted authority without question and held an unwavering belief in Hitler's ideology and the wisdom of their führer. Participating in the First World War provided Trapp with experience in killing: however, the lives he took during military operations were those of enemy soldiers. Jozefow was an event for which an ordinary soldier could not prepare.

Trapp’s voice cracked with emotion while giving the order to round up and kill Jewish women and children and he even went so far as to offer his men the opportunity to excuse themselves from the imminent slaughter. By doing this, Trapp tacitly asserted his opposition to the killings, thereby deflecting the responsibility to his superiors and cleverly disallowing his men of deflecting the burden onto him. Those who did not excuse themselves due to haste and pressure (all but a dozen men) no longer had the ability to assert they were forced into killing as Trapp did indeed give them a choice. However, at the end of the day when his policemen were numbing themselves with alcohol in their barracks, Trapp walked amongst his men and in an attempt at consolation placed “responsibility on higher authorities.”<ref>Browning, 67.</ref>He was witnessed crying throughout the day. While his men were in the woods committing murder, Trapp was seen weeping “‘bitterly.’”<ref>Browning, 58.</ref>Tears and excuses were not the normative traits of willing murderers. Browning emphasizes that German society during the Nazi period was filled with individuals fundamentally akin to any other society.