Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews (77 page)

woods. These murders were carried out in particular by Einsatzkommandos 8 and

9, supported by the Order Police and Wehrmacht units. Thus in February alone,

according to a report, Wehrmacht troops killed 2,200 ‘Jews (Bolsheviks)’. The

sequence of actions was generally agreed with the leaders of the army rear area

and the local garrisons.
182

In the rear area of Army Group South, that is eastern Ukraine, there was a

similar picture. Here too the mass murders continued throughout the winter of

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Extermination of the European Jew, 1942–1945

1941/2, in Charkov, for example, where on 16 December the liquidation of

12,000–15,000 Jews began, in Stalino (now Donetsk) on 9 January, or in Zaporozhe

at the end of March. Early in the spring the majority of the Jews living in this

territory had been shot. The murders were substantially carried out by Sonder-

kommandos 4 and 5 of Einsatzgruppe C, again supported by the Order Police.

In the Ukraine, too, the mass executions were generally carried out in agreement

with the local Wehrmacht authorities, and in this territory too Wehrmacht units,

particularly the Secret Field Police, engaged independently in the shooting of

Jews.
183
Little is known about the murder of Jews in the rear area of Army Group North, Russian territory south of Leningrad. Here, the Security Police were present

in relatively low numbers (sub-units of Commandos 1a and 1b).
184

To the west, in the General Commissariat of White Ruthenia, abutting the

military administrative area Centre, the murder actions proceeded in a different

manner. Here the murder campaigns almost came to a standstill around the turn

of 1941/2. This had variously to do with the frozen ground that made it impossible

to dig pits to bury the victims—an explanation that is plainly not sound, as the

continuation of the shootings in the military administrative area during the winter

shows: either the ground was blown up, or already existing pits were used.

A second reason repeatedly given for the decline in shooting actions appears

more plausible; the civil administration did not want to lose the specialist workers,

who were urgently needed.

In spite of these difficulties, the KdS (Commander of the Security Police) for

Minsk stressed at a meeting of the administrative heads of the General Commis-

sariat of White Ruthenia on 23 January 1942 that the goal of the ‘complete

liquidation’ of the Jews was still being pursued. He thus promised, in the following

spring, to ‘relaunch the large-scale executions’.
185
At this point the KdS of White Ruthenia believed there was a realistic prospect of ‘liquidating’ the ‘Jewish question’ within his area of responsibility within two months.
186

For the months of January and February there are only—somewhat dubious—

references to two actions in Minsk in which up to 3,000 people may have been

shot.
187
In March there were mass executions above all in the area of Vileyka, namely in Vileyka itself, in Ilya, Krasne, Rakov, and Radoschkowicze (Radoszyce),

and also—outside this area—in Lida, Baranowicze, and Slutzk as well as in Kopyl.

In this way more than 8,000 people were murdered in March.
188

In the large ghettos that had been set up after the murder of the majority of the

Jewish population in the General Commissariats of Lithuania and Latvia, the

situation remained relatively quiet in 1942. There were few large massacres. This

did not apply, however, to the area around Riga. Between February and April 1942,

in the Riga ghetto and the Jungfernhof camp, some 5,000 people were selected in a

number of actions as ‘unfit for work’ and transported out in motor vehicles—

supposedly to a new camp near Dünamünde, actually to the Bikernieki Forest,

where they were shot.
189

Extermination on a European Scale, 1942

347

At a meeting of the General Commissars held by Reichskommissar Ostland

(Baltic states) on 26 March, a certain perplexity was expressed about the future

course of the anti-Jewish policy. There was general agreement that ‘the Jewish

question must be resolved clearly and urgently’. However, the following sentence

in the minutes suggests that in the meantime mass executions were no longer seen

as the solution: ‘It is felt to be regrettable that the method employed hitherto,

however much it might represent a political liability for us, has for the time being

been abandoned.’ However, Generalkommissar Kube’s following suggestion

that the liquidation should be effected ‘in accordance with correct procedures

[korrekter]’ shows that they did not generally wish to abandon this means. It

was agreed that the solution did not lie in ceasing to distribute food to the Jews, as

was happening at the time.
190

In April the occupying forces in the area of Vileyka carried out two further

mass executions in Dohyno with 800 and 1,200 victims respectively, another in

Krzywicze (Krzeszowice) (400 fatalities), and on 1 April 1,200 Jews were mur-

dered in Kopyl,
191
as well as various murders in Minsk with at least 500

fatalities.
192
The KdS Minsk reported that his department had killed 1,894 Jews in April alone.
193
In spite of these mass murders, however, in April 1942 the number of massacres and murder victims in White Ruthenia declined in

comparison with the previous months.

In May 1942, however, the murders resumed systematically and on a large scale;

plainly the intensified murderous activities coincided with a visit by Heydrich to

Minsk, which appears to have occurred in April.
194
While, on 11 May, the KdS Minsk demanded that the Gendarmerie throughout the whole of the General Commissariat

supply summary statistical data about the Jewish communities, under the heading

‘Selection of Jewish specialist workers’, the murder of the great majority of the Jews

still living there, organized according to a plan by the Security Police and the civil

administration, had already begun on 8 May. Over the following five days more than

16,000 Jews were shot in all the ghettos in the area.
195

This action was the starting point for the extension of the murder actions to all

areas of the occupied territory of White Russia. In the district of Glebokie an EK

9 unit and other agencies murdered at least 12,000 Jews between 29 May and

20 June.
196
From May onwards, the branch of the SD in Vileyka, which took part in numerous mass murders even outside its area of responsibility, intensified the

programme of mass murders that had resumed in March, and had murdered

more than 5,000 people there by the end of September.
197
At the beginning of 1943

only 3,000 Jewish artisans were still living in the area of Vileyka.
198

In the district of Slutzk, where two actions had been carried out in Slutzk and

Kopyl as early as the end of March, further massacres took place between May and

August.
199
In Slonim the ghetto was liquidated on 29 June, and 7,000 people were murdered. In the weeks that followed there were also further massacres in the area

of Slonim with thousands of fatalities. In September the district commissar,

348

Extermination of the European Jew, 1942–1945

Gerhard Erren, stated that of 25,000 Jews originally living in his area only around

500 remained.
200
In the district of Novogrodek, at least 2,900 Jews were shot in various places between April and June, and more than 8,000 in early August in

Novogrodek and other localities.
201
In the district of Hansewitschi (Hancewicze) almost 2,000 people were shot in Lenin on 14 August.
202

In the district of Baranowicze—after a first major ‘action’ in Mir in March or

April—mass executions were carried out in July and August in the towns of

Kletzk, Lachowicze, Gorodeya, Moltschad, in Mir again, and in various other

places, killing at least 7,000 people. Further executions occurred in September

and October in Baranowicze, Gorodicze, Polonka, and Stolpce. According to the

district commissar, in 1942 a total of 23,000 people were murdered in this

region.
203
In Minsk, between 28 and 31 July about 10,000 people were killed, apart from White Russian Jews also 3,500 ghetto inhabitants who had been

transported from Central Europe.
204
In the last few weeks of the year further mass murders took place in the district of Glebokie, leading to over 7,000

victims, in Baranawicze, Dvorzec, Slonim (where the last surviving 500 Jews

were murdered), and in Novogrodek.
205

At the end of July, Commissar General Wilhelm Kube drew up an initial record

of the massacres, when he reported to Reichskommissar Hinrich Lohse, ‘in the last

10 weeks we have liquidated about 55,000 Jews’.
206
The ‘we’ makes clear the extent to which the civil administration had also shouldered the task of the mass

murders.

Between December 1941 and mid-May 1942, unlike the murders that con-

tinued uninterrupted in the military administrative area of Army Group

South, which abutted the Commissariat on the east, only relatively few mas-

sacres are documented within the sphere of the Ukraine Reich Commissariat

and most of those may be attributed to local initiatives. One exception to this

was the area of Vinnitsa in the General District of Zhitomir, where it was

planned to locate Hitler’s field headquarters. All the Jews were gradually

murdered in a designated high-security area. By 10 January, 227 Jews from

Strishavka had been shot, and on 10 April, according to the report of the Reich

Security Service, which was responsible for cordoning off the new headquar-

ters, ‘4,800 Jews were killed in Vinnitsa’. In July the remaining 1,000 unskilled

workers were murdered.
207
The massacre of the Jews of Chmelnik, 120 km from Vinnitsa, to which we may assume that 8,000 people fell victim, may be

connected to this development.
208

In February and March 1942, the last surviving Jews in the General Commis-

sariat of Nikolayev were murdered. The Commissar General reported on 1 April

that there were ‘no Jews or half-Jews left’ in the district.
209
In April 1942, in the District Commissariat of Dunayevzny (General Commissariat of Volhynien-Podolien), according to a Soviet Commission report, 2,000 Jews are alleged to

have been driven into a phosphorus mine that was then blown up. According to

Extermination on a European Scale, 1942

349

these documents, mass shootings are also supposed to have taken place there in

the spring of 1942.
210

In the other areas of the Reich Commissariat Ukraine, however, the focus

of Judenpolitik, as pursued by the civil administration between December and

April, was on the formation of ghettos. At a meeting of the Reich East Ministry on

10 March 1942 the temporary continuing engagement of Jewish artisans and

skilled workers was confirmed.
211

However, as in the General Commissariat of White Ruthenia, the Reich

Commissariat of the Ukraine began a new wave of murders which led in the

summer to the total extermination of the Jewish population in the Reich

Commissariat. This wave of murders began around 20 May in the General

Commissariat of Wolhynien-Podolien (Volhynia-Podolia), where massacres

occurred in, among other places, Dubno (27 May, with at least 4,000 fatalities)

Korec (21 May).
212
On 27 May, in the General Commissariat of Zhitomir, there were simultaneous massacres in several places in the district of Gaissin, namely

in Teplick (769 victims), Ternovka (2,300), and Sobolevka (several hundred

victims). The local garrison of Gaissin, the local police, the Vinnitsa branch of

the KdS, and Hungarian soldiers were all involved in these massacres.
213
In Monastyrishch, also in the General Commissariat of Zhitomir, some 3,000 Jews

were shot towards the end of May.
214

At the beginning of June, in the General Commissariat of Volhynia-Podolia

there followed massacres in Kovel (Kowel) with some 5,000 victims,
215
as well as, immediately afterwards, in Luck.
216
The murders were also extended to the General Commissariats of Kiev and Nikolayev. However, information for these

two regions is sparse.

We have the following information for the General Commissariat of Kiev: in

June 1942 1,500 Jewish residents of Zvenigorodka (Swenigorodka) were mur-

dered.
217
There are also reports from Schuma Batl. 117 about ‘a major “Jewish action” in Shpola (Schpola)’, also in the District Commissariat of Zvenigorodka,

which lasted from 13 until 17 May 1942. This was evidently the liquidation of the

ghetto.
218

In the General Commissariat of Nikolyev (Nikolajew), in the village of Stalindorf

(district of Kherson), the elderly Jewish men and women who had survived the first

wave of murders were killed.
219
In Ingulec in the General Commissariat of Dnepropetrovsk, according to a Soviet Commission report, on the night of

10 June some 1,800 people, mostly Jews, were shot.
220

As in White Ruthenia the murders were intensified again in July. On 13 and

14 July, the KdS of Rovno, who was responsible for Volhynia-Podolia, along