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

part in mass executions of Jewish men in the first days and weeks after the

outbreak of war. 30 Einsatzkommando 1a shot 1,150 Jewish men in Daugavpils (Dünaburg) at the beginning of July 1941; the men had first been captured by

Latvian auxiliaries after ‘they had been supported at the rear by the operations of

the Einsatzkommando’. 31 After the pogrom in Riga, Einsatzkommando 2 reported the killing of more than 2,000 more Jews by the middle of July, partly ‘by Latvian

auxiliary police, partly by our own forces’. 32 What this refers to is the infamous commando led by the Latvian Victor Arajas; it played an important role in these

shootings, which mostly took place in the Bikernieki Forest. 33 At the end of June and in July the same commando, a company of Police Battalion 13, together with

Latvian auxiliaries and members of the army and navy shot what were believed to

be several thousand Jews in Liepāja (Libau). 34 In Jelgava (Mitau) a sub-unit of Einsatzkommando 2 shot some 160 Jews, including women and children, apparently in the first half of July. 35

The Mass Murder of Jewish Men

197

Einsatzkommando 3 had been organizing mass shootings of Jewish men

since early July in the city of Kaunas (Kovno). 36 The leader of this commando, Karl Jäger, reported on 1 December 1941 that the executions that had

taken place in Fort VII of the fortress of Kaunas since 4 July had been carried

out ‘by the Lithuanian partisans but on my orders and arranged by me’; 37

according to Jäger’s own list, 2,530 Jewish men and 47 women fell victim to

these shootings. From 7 July onwards, Jäger went on to report, a group of

men in his commando had also begun to carry out mass executions ‘in

cooperation with the Lithuanian partisans’ outside the city of Kaunas, which

claimed a total of more than 1,400 people, mostly Jewish men, in the month

of July.

Einsatzgruppe A was additionally supported by a commando that was made

up of members of the SD and the Gestapo and had been put together in the

city of Tilsit near the German border, thus receiving the name Einsatzkom-

mando Tilsit. In the towns of Gargždai (Garsden), Kretinga (Krottingen), and

(Palanga) Polangen (in the area immediately over the border with Lithuania),

on 24, 25, and 27 June, this unit executed respectively 201, 214, and 111

civilians, mostly Jewish men, by way of ‘reprisal’ for alleged attacks by

civilians on units from the advancing Wehrmacht. 38 In the days that followed, Einsatzkommando Tilsit carried out further ‘cleansing operations’ in the

border zone, including operations on 2 July in Taurage (Tauroggen), on 3

July in Jurbarkas (Georgenburg) and Augustowo, as well as in Marijampole

and Wladislawo, 39 during which an incident report, dated 18 July, claims 3,302

people were shot. 40

More executions by the commando are documented for the whole of July, in

many towns and villages, overwhelmingly of Jewish men. 41 The fact that in reports on later shootings carried out in the border zone the data for some towns only

includes the numbers of women, older men, and children, and not men of military

age, is an indication that the first wave of shootings had already claimed all the

Jewish men in that age-group. 42

These executions were fully in alignment with the intentions of the SS

leadership. A telex from the Gestapo office in Tilsit dated 1 July makes it clear

that Himmler and Heydrich had visited the border zone at the end of June, had

been informed about the ‘measures taken’ and had ‘fully approved’ them. 43 A few days later Heydrich expressly confirmed in a written order that the executions carried out by the Einsatzkommando Tilsit were in accordance with his

instructions: in Order No. 6 he informed the Einsatzgruppe chiefs that he had

‘authorized the eastern commanders of the SPSD (Security Police and SD) and

the state police offices to undertake cleansing operations in the newly occupied

areas opposite their border zones in order to relieve pressure on the Einsatz-

gruppen and Einsatzkommandos, and above all to ensure their freedom of

movement’. 44

198

Mass Executions in Occupied Soviet Zones, 1941

Einsatzgruppe B

All four of the commandos under Einsatzgruppe B can be shown to have

undertaken mass executions of Jewish men during the month of July. 45

Sonderkommando 7 was responsible for what an incident report calls ‘the

complete liquidation of male Jewry’ in Vilejka by the end of June or early July

1941. 46 The same commando was responsible for shooting 332 Jews in Vitebsk at the end of July or early in August, 47 and for a subsequent ‘operation’ in Grodek (Gorodok) in which 150–200 Jewish men were shot. 48 Mass shootings of Jewish men by Sonderkommando 7 are documented in Borisov (in July) and in the area

around Orsha/Mogilev (late July or early August). 49

At the beginning of July Einsatzkommando 8 initiated in Bialystok alone two

‘operations’ in which German courts established that at least 800 and 100 Jewish

men were shot dead; thereafter there were two executions in Baranowicze each

with at least 100 victims. The commando was involved in mass shootings in Minsk

at the end of July and in August during which more than 1,000 Jews were killed. 50

A sub-unit of Einsatzkommando 8 was sent to Slonim in the middle of July where,

according to an incident report of 24 July, 51 ‘in cooperation with the Order Police a major operation was conducted against Jews and other Communist elements in

which c.2,000 persons were arrested for Communist subversion and looting; 1,075

of them were liquidated on the same day’. 52 The leader of Einsatzkommando 8, Otto Bradfisch, testified in respect of this operation that he had already ascertained during the march to Minsk that there was no express order ‘to annihilate

the Jewish population of a town or area solely on the grounds of their racial

identity’, but that orders from Einsatzgruppe B were in practice interpreted so

broadly that ‘every Jew was to be seen as a danger to combat troops and therefore

liquidated’. 53 The Commander of Einsatzgruppe B, Artur Nebe, believed in interpreting the orders ‘sent from above as if in some places and districts all Jews were

to be exterminated irrespective of age or sex’. 54

A statement made in 1966 by Higher SS