Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews by Peter Longerich (booksvooks TXT) 📕

can be read as an indication that at the end of July or early in August even Einsatzgruppe A was not

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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

controversy between Stahlecker and Lohse of summer 1941 demonstrates that

Extension of Shootings to Whole Jewish Population

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the murder of the Jews in the occupied Eastern areas cannot be understood as the

implementation of a single order issued by the National Socialist hierarchy. It was

a process that went through a series of different phases and in which the mid-level

protagonists possessed considerable room for manoeuvre.

When Reichskommissar Lohse sent the draft for his planned ‘Provisional

Guidelines for the Treatment of Jews in the Reich Commissariat’ to the Reich

Ministry for the East on 13 August he had added an introduction to the text, which

was otherwise unaltered. This addition was a safeguard against accusations that he

was infringing upon areas for which the Security Police was responsible: ‘With

reference to the definitive solution to the Jewish question in the area of Reich

Commissariat Eastland, the instructions given in my speech on 27 July 1941 in

Kaunas will apply. 121 Where further measures have been taken in carrying out these oral instructions of mine, especially those taken by the Security Police, they

are not covered by the following guidelines. These provisional guidelines are only

intended to ensure minimum measures to be taken by Commissars General or

Area Commissars if, and only if, further measures with respect to a definitive

solution to the Jewish question are not possible.’ On 18 August Lohse sent a signed

copy of these guidelines to the Commissars General. 122

Continuation of the Mass Executions in the Autumn of 1941

As Einsatzkommando 3 continued its series of murders in Lithuania in the flat

land in September 1941, it was single-handedly responsible for the deaths of some

25,000 Jews. After one swathe of country after another had thereby been rendered

‘free of Jews’, 123 the commando turned to the step-by-step murder of the people who had been corralled in the ghettos set up in the main cities. These murder

operations were primarily directed at those who were assessed as incapable of

work; the surviving specialist workforce and their dependents were repeatedly

scrutinized for their ‘capacity for work’ and gradually murdered in ‘operation’

after ‘operation’.

In the autumn of 1941 a new phase of Jewish persecution began in Lithuania and

the other areas of the Reich Commissariat, the second wave of murders that aimed

ultimately at the systematic annihilation of all the Jews (with the exception of a

limited and continually reduced number of those able to work). The Germans no

longer assumed, as they had in August, that the ‘Final Solution’ to the Jewish

question would be postponed until after the war, and in consequence they did not

focus on medium-term solutions such as housing Jewish men and women separ-

ately. Instead, in autumn 1941 the total destruction of the Jews was, from the

perspective of those responsible, a goal that could be achieved according to plan

within a very short time.

In Kaunas, where a ghetto had been set up in the middle of August, more than

1,608 men, women, and children (‘ill or suspected of being infectious’) were

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Mass Executions in Occupied Soviet