The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 (60 page)

In Auschwitz the gassing of the Jews began with small groups. In mid-February 1942, some 400 older Jews from the Upper Silesian labor camps of “Organization Schmelt,” deemed unfit for work, arrived from Beuthen.
⁹⁷

On this occasion, as during the previous killing of Soviet prisoners in the Zyklon B experiments, the reconverted morgue of the main camp (Auschwitz I) crematorium was turned into a gas chamber. The proximity of the camp administration building complicated matters: The personnel had to be evacuated when the Jews marched by and a truck engine was run to cover the death cries of the victims.
⁹⁸
Shortly thereafter the head of the construction division of the WVHA, Hans Kammler, visited the camp and ordered a series of rapid improvements. A new crematorium with five incinerators, previously ordered for Auschwitz I, was transferred to Auschwitz II–Birkenau—and set in the northwest corner of the new camp, next to an abandoned Polish cottage. This cottage, “Bunker I,” soon housed two gas chambers. On March 20 it became operational; its first victims were another group of elderly “Schmelt Jews.”
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VI

In the occupied territories of the Soviet Union, the “second sweep” of the killing units was launched on an even larger scale than the first, at the end of 1941; it lasted throughout 1942.
¹⁰⁰
In some areas, such as the Reichskommissariat Ukraine (RKU), according to a report from the Wehrmacht Armaments Inspectorate, mass executions had never stopped and were going on without interruption apart from brief organizational slowdowns, from mid-1941 to mid-1942.

The Wehrmacht report indicated that barely a few weeks after the end of the military operations, the systematic execution of the Jewish population had started. The units involved belonged mainly to the Order Police: they were assisted by Ukrainian auxiliaries and “often, unfortunately, by the voluntary participation of members of the Wehrmacht.” The report described the massacres as “horrible”; they included indiscriminately men, women, old people and children of all ages. The scope of the mass murders was yet unequaled on occupied Soviet territory. According to the report, approximately 150,000 to 200,000 Jews of the Reichskommissariat were exterminated (it would ultimately be around 360,000). Only in the last phase of the operation a tiny “useful” segment of the population (specialized artisans) was not killed. Previously economic considerations had not been taken into account.
¹⁰¹

At the outset, as we saw, the intensity of the massacres differed from one area to another; at the end, of course, in late 1942 and early 1943, the outcome would be the same: almost complete extermination. During the “first sweep,” as
Einsatzkommandos
, police battalions, and Ukrainian auxiliaries were moving along with the Werhmacht, the killings in the western part of the Ukraine—Generalbezirk Volhyn-Podolia (General district Volhynia-Podolia)—encompassed approximately 20 percent of the Jewish population. In Rovno, however, the capital of the Reichskommissariat, some 18,000 people—that is, 80 percent of the Jewish inhabitants, were murdered.
¹⁰²

From September 1941 to May 1942, the Security Police (
Einsatzgruppe C
and
Einsatzkommando 5
), headquartered in Kiev, organized its hold on the RKU. The HSSPF in the Ukraine, SS General Prützmann and his civilian counterpart,
Reichskomissar
Koch, cooperated without any difficulty, as both came from Königsberg. Koch delegated all “Jewish matters” to Prützmann, who in turn passed them on to the chief of the Security Police. But, as emphasized by historian Dieter Pohl, “the civilian authorities and the Security Police reached harmonious cooperation in the mass murder: The initiatives came from both sides.”
¹⁰³

Given the immense territories they had under their control and the variety of languages or dialects of the local populations, the Germans relied from the outset on the help of local militias that, over the months, became regular auxiliary forces, the
Schutzmannschaften.
The Order Police units and the Gendarmerie were German; the
Schutzmannschaften
soon widely outnumbered them and participated in all activities, including the killings of Jews in some major operations such as the extermination of part of the Jewish population of Minsk in the late fall of 1941. There the Lithuanian
Schutzmannschaften
distinguished themselves.
¹⁰⁴

The auxiliary units included Ukrainians, Poles, Lithuanians, and Belorussians. A Polish underground report about the liquidation of the Brest Litovsk ghetto in late 1942 is telling: “The liquidation of the Jews has been continuing since 15 October. During the first three days about 12,000 people were shot. The place of execution is Bronna Góra. At present the rest of those in hiding are being liquidated. The liquidation was being organized by a mobile squad of SD and local police. At present, the ‘finishing off ’ is being done by the local police, in which Poles represent a large percentage. They are often more zealous than the Germans. Some Jewish possessions go to furnish German homes and offices, some are sold at auction. Despite the fact that during the liquidation large quantities of weapons were found, the Jews behaved passively.”
¹⁰⁵

Once Hitler decided to move his forward headquarters to Vinnytsa (in the Ukraine), the Jews of the area had to disappear. Thus, in the first days of 1942, 227 Jews who lived in the immediate neighborhood of the planned headquarters were delivered by “Organization Todt” to the “Secret Military Police” and shot on January 10. A second batch of approximately 8,000 Jews who lived in nearby Chmelnik were shot around the same time. Then came the turn of the Jews of Vinnytsa. Here the operation was delayed by a few weeks, but in mid-April the Secret Military Police reported that the 4,800 Jews of the town had been executed (
umgelegt
). Finally approximately 1,000 Jewish artisans who worked for the Germans in the same area were murdered in July, on orders of the local commander of the Security Police.
¹⁰⁶

The two
Reichskommissare
, Lohse and Koch, enthusiastically supported mass murder operations. Koch in particular requested that in the Ukraine
all
Jews be annihilated in order to reduce local food consumption and fill the growing food demands from the Reich. As a result the district commissars, at their meeting in August 1942, agreed with the head of the Security Police, Karl Pütz, that all the Jews of Reichskommissariat Ukraine, with the exception of 500 specialized craftsmen, would be exterminated: This was defined as the “hundred percent solution.”
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In the Baltic countries—in Lohse’s domain—particularly in Lithuania, Jäger could always be relied on as far as mass murder was concerned. On February 6, 1942, Stahlecker asked him to urgently report the total number of executions of his
Einsatzkommando 3
, according to the following categories: Jews, communists, partisans, mentally ill, others; furthermore, Jäger had to indicate the number of women and children. According to the report, sent three days later, by February 1, 1942,
Einsatzkommando 3
had executed 136,421 Jews, 1,064 communists, 56 partisans, 653 mentally ill, 78 others. Total: 138,272 (of whom 55,556 were women and 34,464 were children).
¹⁰⁸

At times Jäger went too far. Thus, on May 18, 1942, following an army complaint about the liquidation of 630 Jewish craftsmen in Minsk, contrary to prior agreements, Gestapo chief Müller had to remind him of several orders issued by Himmler: “Jews and Jewesses capable of working, between ages 16 and 32, should be exempt from special measures, for the time being.”
¹⁰⁹

On several occasions the extermination campaign led to difficulties between one of Rosenberg’s appointees, the
Generalkommissar
for Weissruthenien (Belorussia),
Gauleiter
Wilhelm Kube, and the SD. At the end of 1941, Kube had been shocked to discover that
Mischlinge
and decorated war veterans had been included among the deportees from the Reich to Minsk. But, it is at the beginning of 1942 that the General Kommissar launched his main assault against the SS and their local commander, chief of the Security Police, Dr. Eduard Strauch. Kube did not object to the extermination of the Jews as such but rather to the methods used in the process: gold teeth and bridges were pulled out of the mouths of victims awaiting their death; many Jews, merely wounded in the executions, were buried alive, and the like. This, in Kube’s terms, was “
boden-lose Schweinerei
” [utterly disgusting] and Strauch was the chief culprit, denounced to Lohse, to Rosenberg, possibly to Hitler.

Kube’s complaints drew a sharp response from Heydrich on March 21. As for Strauch, he started compiling a hefty file of accusations against the
Generalkommissar
whose leadership he considered worse than nil, whose entourage was corrupt and dissolute and who, on various occasions, had shown friendliness to Jews.
¹¹⁰
Neither Kube nor Strauch was recalled, and, as we shall see, the confrontation was to culminate in 1943. In the meantime, however, Strauch had approximately half of the remaining Minsk ghetto population of 19,000 Jews massacred in late July 1942.
¹¹¹

At times technical difficulties hampered the killings. On June 15, 1942, for example, the commander of the Security Police and the SD in the Ostland urgently requested an additional gas van, as the three vans operating in Belorussia did not suffice to deal with all the Jews arriving at an accelerated rate. Furthermore, he demanded twenty new gas hoses [carrying the carbon monoxide from the engines back into the vans], as those in use were no longer airtight.
¹¹²
In fact the functioning of the vans occasioned a series of complaints that, in turn, led to a spirited response from “Referat IID3” of the RSHA, on June 5, 1942.

The author of the lengthy report reminded his critics that three of the vans [in Chelmno] “had processed 97,000 since December 1941, without any visible defects.” Nonetheless he suggested a series of six major technical improvements to deal more efficiently with the “number of pieces” (
Stückzahl
) usually loaded in each van.
¹¹³
Regarding the “97,000,” the expert had probably deemed it safer to avoid any further identification. In the second section of the report he referred to “pieces” and in the sixth section, he changed the identification once more: “It has been noted from experience that upon the shutting of the back door [of the van] the load [
Ladung
] presses against the door [when the lights are turned off]. This stems from the fact that once darkness sets in, the load pushes itself towards light.”
¹¹⁴

Apparently the single van sent from Berlin to Belgrade to kill the 8,000 Jewish women and children of the Sajmište concentration camp gave no reason for any complaints. After the Wehrmacht had shot most of the men as hostages in the “antipartisan” warfare during the summer and fall of 1941, the women and children were moved to a makeshift camp—a few dilapidated buildings—near Belgrade until their fate was decided. It remains unclear who in the German administration in Belgrade, whether SS Gruppenführer Harald Turner, head of the civilian administration, or SS Standartenführer Emanuel Schäfer, the chief of the security police in Belgrade, asked the RSHA to send the van.
¹¹⁵
Whatever the case may be, the van reached Belgrade at the end of February 1942. In early March the killings started, and by May 9, 1942, the Jewish women and children of Sajmište, as well as the patients and staff of the Jewish hospital in Belgrade and Jewish prisoners from a nearby camp had all been asphyxiated. On June 9 Schäfer informed the head of the carpool at the RSHA: “Subject: Special Saurer type van. The drivers…Götz and Meier finished their special assignment. They are returning with the van. Because of damage to the rear part of the van…I ordered its transportation by train.”
¹¹⁶

In August 1942 Turner reported: “Serbia is the only country in Europe where the Jewish problem has been solved.”
¹¹⁷

Killings could not be extended at will, however, to other groups than the designated Jews even when a high-ranking party official deemed them necessary. Thus, on May 1, 1942, in a message to Himmler, Greiser expressed his confidence that within two to three months the “special treatment” of some 100,000 Jews in Chelmno would be completed. He asked for the authorization to murder some 35,000 Poles suffering from open tuberculosis.
¹¹⁸
The authorization was granted at first but then canceled by Hitler; the Nazi leader wished to avoid any rumors about the resumption of euthanasia.

Calls for Jewish armed resistance, such as Kovner’s manifesto in Vilna, arose from the ranks of politically motivated Jewish youth movements, and the first Jews to fight the Germans as “partisans,” in the East or in the West, usually belonged to non-Jewish underground political-military organizations. In western Belorussia, however, a uniquely Jewish unit, without any political allegiance except for its aim of saving Jews sprung up in early 1942: the already briefly mentioned Bielski brothers’ group. The Bielskis were villagers who had lived for more than six decades in Stankiewicze, between Lida and Novogrodek, two midsize Belorussian towns.
¹¹⁹
Like their peasant neighbors they were poor, notwithstanding the mill and the land they owned. The only Jews in their village, they fully belonged to it in most ways. They knew the people and the environment, particularly the nearby forests. The younger generation included four brothers: Tuvia, Asael, Zus, and Arczik.

In December 1941 the Germans murdered 4,000 inhabitants of the Novogrodek ghetto, among them the Bielski parents, Tuvia’s first wife, and Zus’s wife. In two successive groups, the one led by Asael, the second by Tuvia, the brothers moved to the forests, in March and then in May 1942. Soon all deferred to Tuvia’s leadership: An even larger number of family members and other Jews fleeing the surrounding ghettos joined the “Otriad” (a partisan detachment); weapons were acquired and food was secured. By the end of the German occupation, the Bielski brothers had assembled some 1,500 Jews in their forest camp, notwithstanding almost insuperable odds.
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