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

and Police Commander for Russia

Centre, Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, indicates that Nebe’s attitude is attribut-

able to an instruction from Himmler. According to Bach, Himmler had told Nebe

as early as his visit to Bialystok (8 July) that ‘every Jew must in principle be

regarded as a partisan’, 55 and three days later the commander of Police Regiment Centre, whose headquarters were in Bialystok, gave the order for the ‘immediate

summary shooting of all male Jews aged between 17 and 45 convicted of looting’. 56

These orders therefore opened the way for the annihilation of all those members

of the Jewish population who were fit for military service without further condi-

tions.

A report by Einsatzgruppe B from July 1941 contains information about the

activities of Einsatzkommando 9 in Vilnius:57 ‘The Einsatzkommando in Vilnius The Mass Murder of Jewish Men

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has liquidated 321 Jews there in the period up to 8 July. The Lithuanian order

police, who were placed under the command of the Einsatzkommando after the

disbandment of the Lithuanian political police, were ordered to take part in the

liquidation of the Jews. For this purpose 150 Lithuanian officials were assigned to

capture the Jews and get them to concentration camps where they were subjected

to special treatment on the same day. This work has now begun and more than

500 Jews and other saboteurs are now being liquidated daily.’ The total number of

Jews killed in Vilnius by Einsatzkommando 9 and Lithuanians during July—

mostly men—was at least 4,000–5,000, 58 but is thought to be as many as 10,000.59

It is also demonstrable that Himmler intervened directly in the case of Einsatz-

kommando 9 in order to increase the number of executions. In a report from early

July on the activities of a sub-unit of Einsatzkommando 9 that had been sent to the

towns of Grodno and Lida the leader of Einsatzgruppe B notes, ‘in Grodno and

Lida only 96 Jews were liquidated in the first few days. I have given the order for

this to be greatly intensified’. 60 The background to this order was the fact that on a visit to Grodno on 30 June Himmler and Heydrich criticized deficiencies in the

work of the commando; in a general task order issued on 1 July Heydrich

demanded ‘greater flexibility in the tactical disposition of the Einsatzkommandos’

and deplored the fact that four days after the occupation there were still no

members of the Security Police and SD in Grodno. 61 On 9 July Himmler and Heydrich visited Grodno once more, 62 and were evidently reassured that the order for Einsatzgruppe B to intensify liquidations had by then been implemented.

According to the incident report: ‘The activity of all commandos has developed

satisfactorily. Above all, the liquidations have got going properly and now take

place in large numbers daily. The implementation of the necessary [!] liquidations

is guaranteed under all circumstances.’ This passage makes very clear how only a

few weeks after the start of the Russian campaign there was a perception that

certain liquidation targets had to be systematically attained.

Einsatzgruppe C

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

undertaken mass executions of Jewish men during the month of July. 63 Even before then, on 30 June in Dobromil, on the orders of the Higher SS and Police

Commander Russia South, Friedrich Jeckeln, and the leader of Einsatzgruppe C,

Otto Rasch, Einsatzkommando 6 shot at least 80 Jewish men as a ‘reprisal’ for

alleged attacks by departing Soviet troops. 64

Einsatzkommandos 5 and 6 both participated in the massacre of the Lvov Jews,

which was again mainly organized by Jeckeln and the officers of Einsatzgruppe C. 65

The reason given for this massacre in the incident reports was that it was a

‘reprisal’ for murders of Ukrainian nationalists that had been committed in the

city prisons by Soviets immediately before their departure. The reports record:

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Mass Executions in Occupied Soviet Zones, 1941

‘approximately 7,000 Jews were rounded up and shot by the Security Police as a

reprisal for [these] inhuman atrocities. . . . Those seized were mostly Jews between

20 and 40; craftsmen and those in specialist trades were exempted where appro-

priate.’66 After taking part in the Lvov massacre, Einsatzkommando 5 undertook

‘operations’ in Berdichev and surrounding districts, 67 including Chmielnik, where 299 people, mostly Jews, were shot in a ‘reprisal’ operation. 68

After its deployment in Lvov, Einsatzkommando 6 spent the second half of

July in Vinnitsa in the Ukraine, where it carried out further executions, notably

one with 146 victims and another that claimed the lives of 600 Jews. 69

According to its own reports, at the end of June 1941 Sonderkommando 4a had

shot more than 300 people in executions carried out in Sokal—people who had

first been classified as ‘Communists’ and then as ‘Jewish Communists’. 70 At the beginning of July, again according to its own reports, the commando shot a total

of 2,000 Jews in Lutsk ‘as a counter-measure for the murder of Ukrainians’. 71 It then moved on to Zhitomir, where it carried out three ‘operations’ in July, in

which more than 600 Jewish men were murdered, and another on 7 August, when

402 Jews were shot. 72 In the second half of July, Sonderkommando 4b shot at least 100 people in Vinnitsa as part of the so-called ‘intelligence operation’. 73 The report on this operation makes clear how arbitrarily the Einsatzkommandos went about

their attacks on the ‘Jewish-Bolshevist leadership cadre’. After ‘trawling the city

for leading Jewish figures produced a less than satisfactory result’, the report says,

the commando leader ‘sent for the city’s principal Rabbi and directed him to

identify the whole of the Jewish intelligentsia within 24 hours, because this

information was needed for registration purposes. When the first batch proved

to be numerically insufficient, those members of the Jewish intelligentsia who had

presented themselves were sent away with the instruction that they should identify

more of their kind themselves and present themselves along with these people the

following day. This measure was then used a third time with the result that we

were able to seize and liquidate virtually all the Jewish intelligentsia.’74

The first summary report on the activities of Einsatzgruppe C in ‘the Polish and

Russian parts of White Ruthenia [Belarus]’ from early July 1941 contains an

important indication that the staff of the Einsatzgruppe understood the execution

orders to