Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews (49 page)

‘reorder’ the Eastern areas even before the war had ended. To this end, only two

days after the outbreak of war he told his head of planning, Konrad Meyer, to

present a draft of an extended version of the ‘Overall Eastern Plan’ (Generalplan

Ost) within three weeks and ensure that it covered the areas that were to be

conquered.
52
This draft was completed by 15 July before Himmler had to accept the division of responsibility in the East with Rosenberg, Goering, and the Reichskommissars after the decisions taken by Hitler on 16 and 17 of that month. But

Himmler continued to work on the basis that the responsibility he had been given

in October 1939 for ‘the strengthening of the German nation’ was valid in the

occupied zones, too.

On 11 July Himmler had told the ‘Ethnic Germans’ Office’, which answered to

him, to gather details of ‘ethnic Germans’ in the occupied Soviet Union, an activity

that was to run hand in hand with the work of the Einsatzgruppen.
53
On 17 July, the same day that he was formally charged with ‘securing through police measures’ these areas, he ordered the SS and Police Commander in the district of

Lublin, Odilo Globocnik, to establish a network of police and SS bases in the newly

occupied areas centred on Lublin. In other words, under the banner of ‘Police/SS’

Himmler was already beginning to take concrete settlement measures.

On 16 August Himmler informed SS Colonel Guntram Pflaum, the manager of

the ‘Lebensborn’ organization (the ‘Fount of Life’), which dealt with those illegit-

imate babies conceived by SS men with ‘good’ and ‘unmixed’ blood, that his future

operational territory would include ‘the whole of the occupied European areas of

the USSR’,
54
even though at this point Hitler had not made any firm decisions on the ‘Germanization’ of former Soviet areas.
55
In August, the main office of the From Anti-Semitic Terror to Genocide

217

Reich Commissariat for the Strengthening of the German Nation opened a branch

office in Riga.
56
And at the beginning of September Himmler finally triumphed over Rosenberg
57
and Hitler announced that the competences of the Reichskommissar for the Strengthening of the German Nation would now be extended to the

occupied Eastern areas.
58

Himmler’s stubborn attempts to use his policing responsibilities as the basis for

an ethnic ‘reordering’ of the Eastern areas were not limited to settlement and

Germanization measures. The mission that Hitler had given Himmler in October

1939 had not only encompassed the ‘formation of new German settlement areas

via relocation’ but, as a necessary prerequisite for the planned ‘ethnic consolida-

tion’, also entailed ‘excluding the noxious influence of . . . sections of the popula-

tion alien to the Volk’. Himmler had attempted to put this section of his remit into

practice in Poland by initiating mass deportations, but, when measured against his

ambitious overall plan, had more or less failed. The conclusion that Himmler

must have drawn from his experiences here was not to wait until the end of the

war for the ‘ethnic consolidation’ but to start the ‘exclusion’ of ‘sections of the

population alien to the Volk’ before then by making whole areas ‘free of Jews’.

Removing the Jews almost altogether was the first step on the way to a huge

programme of deportation, resettlement, and extermination—one need only

think of the figure of 30 million that the population of the Soviet Union was to

be reduced by, according to the plans for Barbarossa. The Jews were seen by the

Nazi leadership as the pillars of the Communist regime, and thus the one to be

tackled first; by tackling the Jews (rather than those sections of the population

classed as Slavic) Himmler was able to put his policies of ethnic annihilation into

practice as part of his mission to ‘secure [the occupied areas] through police

measures’. He could be certain that any campaign of annihilation targeted directly

at the Jews would receive the assent of the Nazi leadership, since it merely

anticipated what had been planned in any case for the period after the war was

over. Himmler could cite at least three orders from the Führer in support of his

programme: his mission for the strengthening of the German nation, the ‘special

orders from the Führer for the area under political administration’ that he men-

tioned in his instructions of 21 May, and the mission received from Hitler on 17 July.

It was also evident, as will be explained in Chapter 14, that the general radicalization

of German Judenpolitik in August and September 1941, when the regime concen-

trated its propaganda efforts against an international ‘Jewish conspiracy’, started to

mark German Jews with the yellow star and prepared deportation from the Reich,

had a further radicalizing effect on the mass killings in the East. Himmler must have

perceived anti-Jewish measures as a confirmation of his brutal approach.

What has previously been described as an inconsistent transition over the

period between July and September/October 1941 from policies of selective ter-

rorization of the Jews towards policies of ethnic annihilation can therefore be

equated with the systematic implementation of the first stage of Himmler’s ‘living

218

Mass Executions in Occupied Soviet Zones, 1941

space conception’. He was acting in this matter as an exponent of the most radical

forces within National Socialism, who wished to implement qualitatively new

policies in the occupied areas even whilst the war itself was continuing.

It is against these general observations that the deployment of the SS Brigades in

July 1941 and the expansion of the killing in the following months should be seen.

According to the initial invasion plans, the SS Brigades were to be deployed no

earlier than ten days after the start of the attack.
59
However, after the war had started, the command staff troops were immediately thrown into a gap in the

front, on Hitler’s orders, and assigned to an army corps of the Wehrmacht

evidently for the purpose of securing territory.
60
When this task had been declared complete after a few days, the command staff units began preparing for their

future tasks by carrying out simulations and combat exercises.
61

On 10 July Himmler decided that all SS squads deployed in the areas under

Higher SS and Police Commanders would not only be economically responsible to

them, as before, but also tactically: ‘it has to be stressed to the Wehrmacht that in

the Rear Area the Higher SS and Police Commander will make decisions on all

matters that are the responsibility of the Reichsführer SS. . . . This also applies to

the SD.’
62
On the same day, during his visit to Bialystok, Himmler discussed with Bach-Zelewski the planned deployment of the SS Cavalry Squads.
63
On 19 and 22

July, immediately after Hitler had given Himmler responsibility for ‘securing the

newly occupied Eastern areas through police measures’ and had enhanced the

position of the Higher SS and Police Commanders, the two SS Cavalry Regiments

that had been merged into a single SS Cavalry Brigade at the beginning of August

were subordinated to Bach-Zelewski, while the 1st Brigade was placed under the

command of Jeckeln, the Higher SS and Police Commander for Russia South.
64

On 21 July Himmler met the chief of the Army Rear Area South, Karl von Roques,

presumably in order to discuss the deployment of the 1st SS Brigade under Jeckeln

in von Roques’s area of authority.
65

A few days later, after a long journey through Lithuania and Latvia, the officer

in the command staff responsible for intelligence matters, Hauptsturmführer

Rudolf May, who had come from the Home SD,
66
composed a report that contains an important reference to the fact that the attitude to the ‘Jewish

question’ prevalent amongst the Security Police and Wehrmacht forces there

was open to much more radical measures: ‘Lithuanians and Latvians are taking

the law into their own hands against the large number of Jews in the Baltic states.

Their measures are tolerated by the offices of the Wehrmacht and the Security

Police there. Whether the Jewish problem can be solved once and for all only by

shooting male Jews in large numbers is doubted by those involved.’
67
A few days later still, two
68
of the three SS Brigades under the command staff were to demonstrate how Himmler and his command staff envisaged ‘solving the Jewish

problem once and for all’.

chapter 13

ENFORCING THE ANNIHILATION POLICY:

EXTENDING THE SHOOTINGS TO THE

WHOLE JEWISH POPULATION

Himmler’s decision to subordinate two of the three SS Brigades under his com-

mand staff to Higher SS and Police Commanders Jeckeln and Bach-Zelewski and

deploy them directly for the execution of Jews in the occupied Eastern areas meant

that the murder of the Jewish civilian population acquired a new dimension after

the end of July 1941. All police and SS units were now extending the range of those

shot to include women and children. This escalation was again inconsistent and

did not occur in parallel in all areas, but was introduced gradually. Nonetheless, in

all cases it followed a fundamental underlying pattern.

Higher SS and Police Commander Russia

Centre and Einsatzgruppe B

In the area behind the mid-section of the front the SS Cavalry Brigade was

responsible for bringing the murder campaign to a completely new level.
1
This brigade, composed of two former cavalry regiments, carried out an initial ‘cleansing operation’ in the Pripet Marshes between 29 July and 12 August under the

220

Mass Executions in Occupied Soviet Zones, 1941

leadership of Higher SS and Police Commander Russia Centre, Erich von dem

Bach-Zelewski. For this operation the brigade received special ‘guidelines for

combing marsh areas using mounted units’ that had been signed by Himmler

himself: ‘If the population as a whole is hostile, sub-standard in racial and human

terms, or even, as is very often the case in marsh areas, made up of criminals who

have settled there, then all those who are suspected of supporting partisans are to

be shot, women and children are to be transported, cattle and provisions confis-

cated and secured. The villages are then to be burned to the ground.
’2

Shortly afterwards, on a visit to Baranowicze on 30 July at which he briefed

Bach-Zelewski, Himmler toughened that order still further. He now ordered the

shooting of all Jewish men and in addition demanded that violent measures were

to be taken against women. He deliberately avoided making explicit a requirement

to shoot women, as is indicated by a radio message from the 2nd Cavalry

Regiment on 1 August: ‘Explicit order from the Reichsführer SS. All Jews must

be shot. Drive Jewish women into the marshes.’
3
There was a similarly brutal order given by the commander of the mounted unit of the 1st Cavalry Regiment on 1

August to his men, albeit one that was not wholly clear with regard to the

treatment of women: ‘No male Jews are to be left alive, no families left over in

the towns and villages.’
4

Further developments show that Himmler’s order was understood in various

different ways. The 1st Cavalry Regiment assumed that it had been ordered to

murder all Jews without distinction and, from 3 August onwards, the SS Cavalry

(and in particular members of the mounted unit) therefore shot thousands of Jews

in Chomsk, Motol, Telechany, Svyataya Volya, Hancewicze, and other places—

men, women, and children. The net in these ‘operations’ was usually cast so wide

that they were effectively aiming at the total annihilation of the Jewish inhabitants of

each place.
5
On 11 August the mounted unit reported that it had shot 6,504 people, although the full total can be estimated at about 11,000 victims.
6

Between 5 and 11 August the mounted unit of the 2nd SS Cavalry Regiment also

shot thousands of Jewish civilians, 6,526 people according to the regiment’s own

reports, but in total probably nearer 14,000.
7
The murder of at least 4,500 (in fact probably 6,500) in Pinsk was the ‘high point’ of this ‘operation’.
8
The victims in Pinsk were almost all Jewish men, as they were in all the other massacres carried

out by the 2nd Regiment. The Regiment reported that ‘Jewish looters’ had been

shot, some urgently needed craftsmen excepted; the report goes on to say that

‘driving the women and children into the marshes was not as successful as it ought

to have been because the marshes were not deep enough for them to sink all the

way in’.
9
The final report made by the Brigade on 18 September 1941, covering both phases of their ‘cleansing operation’, lists altogether ‘14,178 looters shot, 1,001

partisans shot and 699 Red Army supporters shot’.
10
In fact the total number of Jews murdered in August by the Brigade will have exceeded 25,000.
11

Extension of Shootings to Whole Jewish Population

221

In the following weeks the Cavalry Brigade pursued their ‘cleansing operation’

almost uninterruptedly and shot thousands more Jews, chiefly under the pretext

of combating ‘partisans’. From the beginning of September on members of the

2nd Regiment also shot women and children.
12
The mass murder of Jewish civilians that the Cavalry Brigade began so terribly in the first half of August,

and which claimed the lives of thousands of women and children, had a radical-

izing effect on all the units that were under the command of the Higher SS and

Police Commander Russia Centre, Bach-Zelewski. It is true that the total of those

murdered by Einsatzgruppe B in those weeks was lower than in July, but the

decisive shift was that shooting women and children was now the norm across the

whole Einsatzgruppe.
13

In the first half of August members of Einsatzkommando 9 in Vileyka shot at

least 320 Jews in various ‘operations’, including women and children;
14
a few weeks previously Sonderkommando 7a had already ‘liquidated all the male Jews’

in that area.
15
The leader of Einsatzkommando 9, Alfred Filbert, indicated whilst being interrogated that the command to shoot women and children had been

given to him by Nebe, the leader of Einsatzgruppe B, at the beginning of August.
16

After the murders in the area around Vileyka, Einsatzkommando 9 marched to

Vitebsk in August and murdered thousands more people in a series of ‘operations’

carried out from then until October.
17

According to his testimony after the war,
18
the leader of Einsatzkommando 8, Otto Bradfisch, also heard from Nebe in the first half of August that ‘there is an

order from the Führer in place according to which all the Jews, women and

children included, are to be destroyed’. Bradfisch further testified that a short

while later, when Himmler was in Minsk on 15 August
19
viewing a shooting by Bradfisch’s commando, he also told him that ‘there is an order from the Führer in

place for the shooting of all Jews. This order must be followed, however difficult

that may be for us.’
20

The indiscriminate shooting of women and children can be proved to have been

the practice of Einsatzkommando 8 from August onwards, but in an intensified

form in September and October. One section of Einsatzkommando 8 stationed in

Bobruisk carried out at least seven shootings and in a single one of the ‘operations’

that must have taken place in the first half of September at least 400 men, women,

and children were killed.
21
Another section of Einsatzkommando 8 (this one stationed in Borisov) murdered all 700 inhabitants of the Sembin ghetto in

August,
22
and thereafter, probably in the first half of September, a further

‘major operation’ was carried out in Lahoisk in which, according to an incident

report of 23 September, 920 Jews were killed with the support of a commando of

the SS Division ‘Das Reich’.
23
This ‘operation’ also involved the murder of all the Jewish women and children in the town since it was thenceforth described as ‘free

of Jews’. At about the same time, this commando murdered another 640 Jews in

Nevel and 1,025 in Yanovichi, and in both cases the reason given was the need to

222

Mass Executions in Occupied Soviet Zones, 1941

prevent the spread of contagious diseases.
24
Further massacres, each with several hundred victims, were carried out by the same commando in various places before

the end of September.
25

According to incident reports,
26
at around the end of September the section of Einsatzkommando 8 stationed in Borisov and parts of the commando that had

remained behind in Minsk together shot ‘1,401 Jews in a major operation in

Smolowicze [Smolevichi]’, men, women, and children. The relevant report goes

on to say, ‘now that this cleansing operation has been carried out there are no Jews

remaining in the north, south, or west of Borisov’. Police Battalion 322 shot a total

of 257 Jews on 28 August in Antopol—this was part of a major ‘special operation’

in which the Higher SS and Police Commander Russia Centre reported 1,170 Jews

murdered in the areas around Antopol and Bereza-Kartuska.
27

On 1 September Police Battalion 322 had shot ‘914 Jews, including 64 women’ in

Minsk after a discussion between Bach-Zelewski and Daluege on 29 August.
28
The reason given in the battalion’s war diary for shooting so large a number of Jewish

women was that they were ‘picked up during a raid for not wearing the Star of

David’.
29
This execution was in fact part of a series of raids and shootings that claimed approximately 5,000 victims in the Minsk ghetto between 14 August and 1

September.
30

On 25 September Battalion 322 performed the ‘lock-down’ and search of a

village as part of a ‘demonstration exercise’ for representatives of the Wehrmacht

(including divisional and regimental commanders), the police, and the SD. The

unit’s war diary reports that during this ‘exercise’ it had not been possible to arrest

any partisans but that ‘a check performed on the population showed the presence