Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews (52 page)

carrying out these murders received a new order: now it was on principle no

longer necessary to discriminate between men and women and the murder of

children was permitted.

In the following days, too, the number of women shot by Einsatzkommando 3

sometimes reached the same level as the number of men, in some cases even

significantly higher. The large number of children murdered points to the

Extension of Shootings to Whole Jewish Population

231

likelihood that the transition had now taken place to the indiscriminate shooting

of Jews of any age and both sexes. Accounts in the Jäger report include, among

other items, ‘Panevėžys, 23 August: 1,312 Jewish men, 4,602 Jewish women,

1,609 Jewish children; Zarasai, 26 August: 767 Jewish men, 1,113 Jewish women,

687 Jewish children; Utena and Molėtai, 29 August 1941: 582 Jewish men, 1,731

Jewish women, 1,469 Jewish children; Mariampolė, 1 September 1941: 1,763

Jewish men, 1,812 Jewish women, 1,404 Jewish children.’ On 2 September,

Einsatzkommando 3 also reported the shooting of women and children from

Vilna: ‘Apart from 864 Jewish men, 2,019 women and 817 children were shot.
’106

In Daugavpils in Latvia, a sub-unit of Einsatzkommando 3 shot more than 9,000

Jews, among them a large number of women and children in several ‘operations’

between 13 July and 21 August, with the support of Latvian forces.
107

Einsatzkommando 2, which was stationed in Latvia, had liquidated almost

18,000 Jews by September or had had them shot by Latvian auxiliaries.
108
The high number of victims points to the possibility that this commando had also

begun shooting women and children.

By the end of July and the beginning of August, Einsatzkommando Tilsit,

which was operating in the border areas, had begun systematically extending

the shootings beyond the group of men of military age. Members of the

commandos returned to places that had already been ravaged but where

surviving Jewish family members had been imprisoned by the Lithuanian

‘order patrol’. Thus, with the support of Lithuanians, at least 100 to 200 Jews

(women, old men, and children) were shot in Jurbarkas (Georgenburg) and

Virbalis at the end of July and the beginning of August; in Gargždai

(Garsden) in August and September at least 100 women, children, and elderly

men were shot. The District Court of Ulm that was later charged with

examining these activities found more such executions had taken place

continuing into September.
109

In contrast to Einsatzgruppen B and C this huge increase in the number of

murder victims in the area under Einsatzgruppe A was not attributable to the

deployment of a brigade of the Waffen-SS. Higher SS and Police Commander

Hans-Adolf Prützmann evidently did not deploy the 2nd SS Brigade that had

been put at his disposal for a short time in September for the shooting of

Jews. He had sufficient indigenous auxiliary units available, in addition to the

Einsatzgruppen, who were more than prepared to undertake these murders.

In the same period in which the murders were extended to include women

and children and the numbers of those killed rose in leaps and bounds a

remarkable controversy sprang up between the civilian authority that had

just taken over and Einsatzgruppe A. It concerned the future of ‘anti-Jewish

policy’ and because of the deeply entrenched positions that were taken it

merits further attention here.

232

Mass Executions in Occupied Soviet Zones, 1941

The August 1941 Controversy in the Reich Commissariat

Ostland about Future ‘Guidelines for the Treatment of Jews’

On 2 August 1941 the Reichskommissar for the Ostland (the Baltic States and

White Russia), Hinrich Lohse, sent the administration of the Higher SS and Police

Commander for Riga a draft of provisional guidelines for the treatment of Jews in

his area of responsibility that he planned to issue a few days later. This draft

corresponded in substance to the oral instructions Lohse had already issued to his

staff in the speech he made on taking over the post on 27 July in Kaunas.
110

Amongst other things, it made provision for the seizure of the Jews within the

Reich Commissariat, for marking them out with the Star of David, for implement-

ing bans on their exercising any profession, for bans on their use of certain

facilities, and for regulations concerning registration and handing over accumu-

lated Jewish wealth. The ‘flat land’, that is, the countryside, was to be ‘cleansed of

Jews’, ghettos were to be formed, and forced labour gangs were to be set up.
111

Higher SS and Police Commander Prützmann, the leader of Einsatzgruppe A

and the head of the Security Police, Stahlecker, both responded to these sugges-

tions with great alarm,
112
since from their perspective they represented a challenge to their division of responsibilities and were not in accordance with the situation

as they saw it.

Stahlecker drew up a paper on Lohse’s draft in which he explained his position

thus: ‘The measures proposed in the draft for dealing with the Jewish problem

do not conform with the orders given by Einsatzgruppe A of the Security Police

and the SD for the treatment of Jews in the Eastland. Nor have the new

possibilities that exist in the Eastland for clearing up the Jewish problem been

taken into account. The Reichskommissar is evidently seeking a temporary

solution to the Jewish problem in the Eastland that corresponds to the situation

that has been established in the General Government. On the one hand, he fails

to take account of the changes in the situation brought about by the effects of the

Eastern campaign, and on the other, he avoids confronting the radical possibil-

ities for dealing with the Jewish problem, which have emerged for the first time

in the Eastland.’
113
One difference between the Eastland and the General Government, he said, was the need there to use the Jews as part of the labour force.

‘These necessities have not been manifest in the area under the Reichskommis-

sar for the Eastland with the exception of the question of skilled craftsmen in a

very few towns and are hardly likely to present themselves in the future. . . .

Perspectives derived from the need to use the Jews for labour will simply not be

relevant for the most part in the Eastland.’ And in addition, the Jews in the

Eastland, in contrast to the General Government, are ‘mostly supporters of

Bolshevism’ and would contribute in no small measure to creating agitation.

Extension of Shootings to Whole Jewish Population

233

After making further criticisms of the measures proposed in the provisional

guidelines, Stahlecker explained how he saw the solution to the ‘Jewish problem’

in the Reich Commissariat Eastland. If it was ‘already’ necessary to proceed with

‘resettlement from the flat lands into the cities’, Stahlecker claimed, this had to be

implemented ‘across the board and in the following manner’: ‘Across the broad

areas of the Eastland certain districts will be set aside for Jewish reservations as

required. . . . In the Jewish reservations male and female Jews will be housed

separately. Boys will remain with their mothers until they reach puberty. The

Jews can immediately be set to perform gainful work within the Jewish reserva-

tions. . . . If there is a workforce available over and above this, the Jews can be

deployed in chain-gangs for road-building even outside the reservations. If the

cleansing of Europe of all the Jews has not by then become official policy other

possibilities for work can be created at a later date by setting up technical and

industrial enterprises within the Jewish reservations. Housing and food will only

be approved in the Jewish reservations to the extent that it is absolutely necessary

to maintain their ability to work.’
114
All Jews who were needed outside the sealed

‘reservation’ would have to be housed in closed camps. All Jews would also have to

be visibly identified as such.

At the end of his response Stahlecker summarized the ‘advantages’ of his

approach: ‘an almost 100 per cent immediate cleansing of the whole of the

Eastland of Jews, preventing Jews from multiplying, possibilities for the most

ruthless exploitation of Jewish labour, a significant easing of the later transporta-

tion of Jews into a Jewish reservation outside Europe’. Finally, he suggested that

‘before a fundamental set of instructions is published, we need to discuss all these

questions in detail face to face, especially as the draft directly affects fundamental

orders to the Security Police received from higher up which cannot be discussed in

writing’.
115

How is this document to be assessed? There is an obvious contradiction

between the mass executions that were taking place at the same time in Lithuania

and the ‘solution’ suggested here. At first sight a conjecture proposed by Christopher

Browning looks plausible, namely that this is a ‘cover story’ put together for

the civilian administration by the Einsatzgruppe in order to disguise the decision

to murder all the Jews in the ‘Eastland’ that had already been taken.
116
Two days before writing this document on 6 August 1941, but after making an

application to the Reich Security Head Office on 21 July for the approval of a

concentration camp in Riga under the auspices of the Security Police, Stahlecker

had received permission to set up a detainee camp as an ‘extended police

prison’.
117
The plan for a large camp in the Riga area was pursued by the Security Police over the coming months despite the fact that the shootings were being

extended. These constant efforts, and the fact that in Riga (as in Minsk) prepar-

ations for setting up a ghetto had already been begun in July,
118
can be read as an indication that at the end of July or early in August even Einsatzgruppe A was not

234

Mass Executions in Occupied Soviet Zones, 1941

assuming that they would be able to murder the entire Jewish population of Latvia in a

series of mass executions, despite the fact that liquidations had at that point just been extended to women and children. Instead they were focusing on an intermediate

solution for the survivors of the first wave of murders, having been informed at first

hand of the latest status of the ‘Jewish question’ by Himmler’s visit to Riga on 30

July.
119

The explanations given to Lohse by Stahlecker are in accordance with the

‘guidelines’ issued by the Reich Security Head Office in the summer of 1941 (the

exact date is not certain).
120
These instructions assumed that ‘the Jewish question would be solved for the whole of Europe by the end of the war at the latest’.

‘Preparatory part-measures’ that were to be carried out included ‘moving [the

Jews] to ghettos and separating the sexes’ and in particular the ‘complete and

unrelenting utilization of Jewish labour’. ‘Reprisal measures’ against local populations

were to be tolerated, but in contrast mass executions by Einsatzkommandos under

the Reich Security Head Office were not mentioned in the guidelines—they were

regulated by orders transmitted only orally.

The contradiction between the reality of mass executions and the image created

by the ‘guidelines’ issued by the Reich Security Head Office and the explanations

given by Stahlecker at the beginning of August can be explained if one assumes

that in the latter two documents what is being described is only the fate planned

for the Jews of the Baltic states who had not fallen victim to the first wave of mass

executions and who were initially intended to live under the German occupation

administration until the end of the war and the ultimate decision on the ‘Final

Solution’. The Einsatzgruppe staff reacted with such alarm to Lohse’s initiative not

because they feared that Lohse wanted to hold back the mass murder of the Jews

in the Baltic states that was taking place literally before his very eyes—the Reichs-

kommissar did not intend this, and could not have achieved it—but quite simply

because they thought it raised issues about who would be responsible for the

treatment of the surviving Jews. The debate between the Einsatzgruppen and the

Security Police on the one hand and the civilian administration on the other is

therefore comprehensible only if one remembers that those involved all assumed

that by the time Lohse’s planned ‘guidelines’ were implemented the majority of

the Jews in the Baltic states would already have been murdered.

The extension of the shootings in Einsatzgruppe A’s area to women and

children cannot therefore be seen as proof that a decision had already been

taken to murder all the Jews in the area under the control of the Einsatzgruppe.

Given the vast number of those already murdered in August, the Einsatzgruppe

would easily have been in a position to carry out such a far-reaching programme

of murders within a few months, but in fact it did not seem to wish to pursue such

a line. The final decision to annihilate each and every one of the Jews living in the

Baltic states had, in the view of those concerned, not yet been taken. The