Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews (51 page)

In the following weeks the Battalion repeated this pattern in other Ukrainian

villages. It murdered Jewish men and women in Slavuta (according to the declar-

ation of Higher SS and Police Commander for Russia South this came to 522

people),
73
in Sudylkov (471 dead) and in Berdichev (where there were 1,000

victims).
74
When Besser’s successor, Rosenbauer, was being briefed on his tasks as Battalion Commander by the Higher SS and Police Commander for Russia

South, Jeckeln, according to his own testimony he was given very clear instruc-

tions: ‘Jeckeln said that there was an order from Reichsführer SS Himmler that

would be the basis for solving the Jewish question. The Ukrainians would become

a slave population working only for us. We had no interest, however, in letting the

Jews multiply, so the Jewish population had to be exterminated.
’75

Police Battalion 314, which was likewise part of Police Regiment South, was also

shooting women and children as early as July. This can be documented for the first

time in the case of a company of the Battalion on 22 July in a town near Kovel: the

Extension of Shootings to Whole Jewish Population

227

private diary of a member of the Battalion states that on that day 217 people,

among them entire families, had been shot.
76

In December 1941 the Higher SS and Police Commander for Russia South

organized the murder of the Jews of Kharkov—Jeckeln’s successor, Prützmann,

was represented by Korsemann who had been chosen to become Higher SS and

Police Commander for the Caucasus. Sonderkommando 4a and Police Battalion

314 shot between 12,000 and 15,000 Jews.
77
Further massacres followed in Stalino (on 9 January), Kramatorsk (on 26 January), Artemovsk (also in January), and

Zaporozhe (in March 1942).
78

Einsatzgruppe D

The way Einsatzgruppe D acted continued to be determined by the Judenpolitik of

Germany’s Romanian allies. From the end of July on, Romanian troops were

expelling tens of thousands of Jews from the reconquered areas of Bessarabia and

the Bukovina over the Dniester and into Soviet territory under German occupa-

tion. Einsatzgruppe D had been assigned to drive the Jews back again. In this

context it also began to include women and children in the shootings.
79
The fact that the Jews expelled from Hungary had been murdered on a hitherto unprecedented scale by Jeckeln at the end of August in Kamenetsk-Podolsk, leaving some

23,600 dead, will also have had repercussions for the manner in which Einsatz-

gruppe D acted.

The shooting of women and children in the area of Einsatzgruppe D is documen-

ted for the first time for the period at the end of August. On or around 29 August, in

the region of Yampol, Einsatzkommando 12 shot several hundred women and

children from a convoy of more than 11,000 people, which the commando was

driving over the Dniester bridge into Romanian-occupied territory.
80

Shortly thereafter, at least three, but probably all four of the commandos of

Einsatzgruppe D began the systematic murder of the entire Jewish population of a

number of villages. The decisive order for the transition to this new stage of mass

murder came at the end of August or the beginning of September from Otto

Ohlendorf. Gustav Nosske, who was leader of Einsatzkommando 12, stated on this

point in 1969 that around the beginning of September, Ohlendorf, together with

Rasch, the Leader of Einsatzgruppe C, visited him and revealed ‘that there is now

an order from the Führer according to which all Jews are to be killed indiscrim-

inately’. Until that point, he said, murders of Jews had been carried out ‘only in the

context of a general order for the security and pacification of the area behind the

lines’.
81

A report of Einsatzgruppe D for September 1941 reflects this new modus

operandi. It states that ‘the majority of our forces have been employed for the

purposes of political pacification in places that showed evidence of incipient

Jewish and communist terrorist groups, especially in the area of Ananyev and

228

Mass Executions in Occupied Soviet Zones, 1941

Dubăsari. In this area pacification was carried out extremely thoroughly.’
82
The German ‘pacification operations’
83
were predicated on the way the Romanian occupying powers were operating: they had begun using camps and ghettos to

imprison the 150,000 to 200,000 Jews who had remained in Transnistria and the

approximately 135,000 Jews who had been systematically deported from Bess-

arabia and the Bukovina into this area. Moreover, Jeckeln’s massacre of 23,600

Jews deported from Hungary in Kamenetsk-Podolsk took place relatively close to

Einsatzgruppe D’s area of operation and will have had a radicalizing effect on its

attitude.

In fact, by ‘extremely thorough’ pacification Einsatzgruppe D meant the mur-

der of the entire population of both villages. On 28 August in Ananyev, Sonder-

kommando 10b ‘shot about 300 Jewish men and women’,
84
or in other words all the Jews who had arrived in the town.
85
It then split into smaller sub-units that carried out murders in other places.
86
A sub-unit of Einsatzkommando 12 that had halted in Dubăsari at the end of August or early September killed small groups of

Jews there virtually every day.
87
In mid-September on the other hand, the sub-unit first murdered all of the approximately 1,500 Jewish inhabitants of the town and

then a few days later a further 1,000 Jews from the nearby areas. Drexel, the sub-

unit leader, testified on this point that he had received orders from a member of

the staff of Ohlendorf’s group ‘to shoot the Jews living in Dubăsari’.
88

Sonderkommando 10a carried out an execution in Berezovka, also probably in

September, in which 200 Jewish men, women, and children were killed. The

presence at this ‘operation’ of the commander of Einsatzgruppe D, Ohlendorf, is

documented.
89
The deputy leader of the commando, Otto-Ernst Prast, stated under interrogation in 1965 that shortly before these executions his unit, which

was already in Berezovka, had been told of an ‘order from the Führer’ for the

comprehensive shooting of all Jews. A second lieutenant from the same unit

testified that Ohlendorf and Seetzen, the leader of Sonderkommando 10a, had

announced in Berezovka that ‘from now on the Jewish question is going to be

solved and that means liquidation’.
90

In September 1941 the main body of Einsatzgruppe D crossed the River Bug and

thus left the Romanian zone of influence, the area called ‘Transnistria’ between the

Dniester and the Bug. At the end of September, Sonderkommando 11a, together

with a sub-unit of the Einsatzkommando 12 and probably with support from

Sonderkommando 11b, shot all the inhabitants of the ghetto in Nikolayev, where

the headquarters of the staff of Einsatzgruppe D was now located. This involved

some 5,000 women, men, and children.
91
At around the same time, probably a few days later, the entire Jewish population of Kherson was murdered by Sonderkommando 11a.
92

The mass executions of Ananyev, Dubăsari, Nikolayev, and Kherson that took

place between the end of August and the end of September marked the transition

to the undifferentiated murder of the Jewish civilian population in the area under

Extension of Shootings to Whole Jewish Population

229

Einsatzgruppe D. In this instance, too, Himmler personally inspected the mass

murders: for the period from 30 September until 6 October, we have evidence that

Himmler carried out an inspection tour in the Ukraine in which he also visited

Nikolayev and Kherson, so that it is clear that he was present in both places either

during or directly after the mass executions.
93

In the conclusion to its incident report for 26 September Einsatzgruppe D

reported: ‘Commando’s sphere of operations made free of Jews: from 19 August

to 15 October, 8,890 Jews and Communists executed. Total number: 13,315. Cur-

rently the Jewish question in Nikolayev and Kherson is being solved. About 5,000

Jews were dealt with.
’94
About a week later, the report states: ‘the commandos have continued to clear the area of Jews and Communist elements. In particular,

the cities of Nikolayev and Kherson have been freed of Jews and functionaries still

present were dealt with accordingly.’
95

At this point, October 1941, Sonderkommando 11b was still in the Romanian

zone of occupation west of the Bug to take part in the conquest of Odessa that was

eventually achieved on 16 October. When a Soviet commando that had remained

behind in the city blew up the headquarters set up by the Romanian army a week

later, the Romanians reacted by carrying out a massacre of the Jews of Odessa that

probably claimed 40,000 victims. The Sonderkommando played its part in this

massacre by carrying out the mass execution of hostages.
96

Einsatzgruppe D continued its mass murders in the months that followed. In

the first half of October it reported that ‘the areas newly occupied by the

commandos have been rendered free of Jews’.
97
In the Einsatzgruppe’s October report it claimed: ‘the solution of the Jewish question has been energetically

undertaken by the Security Police Einsatzgruppen and the SD, in particular in

the area east of the Dnieper. The areas newly occupied by the commandos have

been made free of Jews. In the process 4,891 Jews were liquidated. In other places

the Jews have been marked out and registered. This made it possible to put labour

gangs of up to 1,000 strong at the disposal of the Wehrmacht offices.’
98

Various massacres by Sonderkommando 10a can also be documented in detail.

This unit shot the whole of the Jewish population of the city of Melitopol in mid-

October; a few days later, on 18 and 19, it murdered all 8,000 Jewish inhabitants of

Mariupol and a week after that the Jewish population of Taganrog, some 1,800

people.
99
In December Sonderkommando 11b murdered the Jewish population of Karasubasar, Alushta, and Eupatoria.
100
In November and December Sonderkommando 10b murdered the Jewish inhabitants of Skadovsk, Feodosia, Kertsh,

and Dzhankoy.
101

In November, Ohlendorf moved his staff to Simferopol in the Crimea. On

9 December it and Sonderkommando 11b murdered the 1,500 Krymchaks living in

the city (these were a Muslim group that the SS categorized as ‘Jewish’), and

between 11 and 15 December, assisted by members of two police reserve battalions,

they murdered the entire Jewish population of the city.
102

230

Mass Executions in Occupied Soviet Zones, 1941

However, it was not only the SS and Police units that had been dispatched from

the Reich into the Soviet Union that had begun the systematic murder of the

major part of the Jewish population across a wide area in the autumn of 1941.

Romanians and ethnic Germans in the Romanian area of influence, Transnistria,

also pursued the same goals. Between December 1941 and February 1942 the

Romanians murdered at least 70,000 Jews in ghettos as part of the bloody

‘clearance’ of the county of Golta.
103
A militia composed of ethnic Germans also played a considerable role in the murders in Transnistria: it was guided in its

activities by a Sonderkommando of the SS Ethnic Germans’ Office that had been

sent to Transnistria to protect ethnic Germans. The Germans in Transnistria

murdered more than 28,000 Jews in the winter of 1941–2 alone.
104

The Reich Commissariat Eastland (Einsatzgruppe A)

Transition to Shooting Women and Children

Einsatzkommando 3 and Einsatzkommando Tilsit both began to shoot women

and children at the end of July and the beginning of August. For Einsatzkom-

mando 2 this seems to have taken place during the month of August.

The comprehensive report of the leader of Einsatzkommando 3, Jäger, shows

that from the very beginning women were also being shot in the executions

carried out by this Einsatzkommando in Lithuania, although in far fewer numbers

than men.
105
At this point the shooting of women was regarded as justified when there was even a vague suspicion that they were involved in Communist activity or

connected with the partisans. A fundamental change can be observed, however, as

in the case of other commandos, in the month of August. According to the Jäger

report, ‘in cooperation with Lithuanian partisans’, Einsatzkommando 3 shot 213

Jewish men and 66 Jewish women in Rassainiai on 5 August. A few days later,

between 9 August and 16 August, it shot ‘294 Jewish women, 4 Jewish children’ in

the same place. It is also noteworthy that for 15 and 16 August the shooting of a

total of ‘3,200 Jewish men, Jewish women, and Jewish children’ in Rokiskis is

reported. Not only is this number far higher than for previous executions, but also

the summary form of the report (without the distinction hitherto made between

women, men, and children) indicates a new procedure. It thus seems likely that

between 5 August and 16 August at the latest, the commando charged with