As with all wars, it's the innocents who pay the highest price. It often amazes me just how easily people can turn to a belief that an entire culture deserves to be eradicated down to the children, because they will grow up to become the same perceived evil as the adults.
Sadly these kinds of massacres are all too common throughout history and throughout the world. It seems we'll always have a never ending cycle of struggling to forgive each other for the past atrocities of our ancestors.
yes, there are always a distinct patterns that occurs that culminates into such violence.
I'll have to find the passage in the book, (I think) Barbarossa, but there was a stage of the battle between the Russians & Germans, fighting in Poland, where both armies were having a soft truce, each washing their clothes on either side of a River in Poland.
Whereas, 2 different Polish "resistances" were killing each other, and the big boys left them to fight it out while they did their laundry.
Once the ball of violence gets rolling it gets out of hand pretty quickly.