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

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

with other units, murdered all the 5,000 Jews still living in the city. On 27 and

28 July, 5,673 Jews from Olyka and the surrounding areas, the entire Jewish

population, were shot. In Berdichev in the General Commissariat of Zhitomir

the members of the KdS outstation murdered the last Jews living there, at least

350

Extermination of the European Jew, 1942–1945

300, on 15/16 July 1942.221 The escalation of the murders since July corresponded to developments in the General Government. On 19 July, Himmler had ordered

the extermination of the Jewish population there by the end of the year, and

after 22 July the deportations began from the Warsaw ghetto—5,000 people per

day—to Treblinka extermination camp.

From the end of August 1942 the murders in the Ukraine became even more

widespread and systematized; the goal was now the complete extermination of the

Jewish population.

At the meeting of the district commissars in Luck, held between 28 and

31 August, the representatives of the civil administration agreed with the KdS

that, during the coming five weeks, they would kill all the Jews in