I think that it is well known that within the camps there were other prisoners used to control other prisoners. What we talking about in reposted Second World War was Hitler and nazis and antisemitics - not Germans or Christians or atheists. But rather a political movement which was based on an ideology of a perfect race and Jews, aged, disabled, homosexuals and gypsies were big part of that. Different members of the community participated actively, sone were passive and done collaborated partly out of fear or to ingratiate themselves
when you talking about the behaviour during the early days of communist Russia you are also talking about a political movement and one in which its leader - Lenin - was perfectly comfortable with the idea of violence to install the system he wanted and to establish his power. His writing makes chilling reading.
what all corrupt, violent and oppressive leaders do is find people to do their bidding. And there are always people - of any background - prepared to do that - because there are bad, bad people out there. Their names matter but their religion or ethnic background is not unless you like to distinguish people on that basis. I prefer to distinguish them in the basis of their values, personality and level of decency.
I’ll post additional comment and specifically about the revolution and its aftermath in another post
