Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 2: Nazi Policy (4). Local Exterminations: Chelmno, Serbia and Reich Jews in RK Ostland.

Local Exterminations: Chelmno, Serbia and Reich Jews in RK Ostland

The central decision-making process described above took place against a backdrop in which local officials were pressing for permission to kill Jews who had been deported into their regions. When consent to kill these Jews was granted, it made the subsequent Europe-wide ‘decision’ all the more certain, because a precedent had already been set for killing Jews who had been deported into spaces that were unable or unwilling to permanently accommodate them.

Pressures to kill Jews locally had already been anticipated in the centre, and the centre’s acknowledgment indicates the degree of common thinking that existed between central and local players. On September 2, 1941, Höppner (a close associate of the senior Warthegau figures Greiser and Koppe) wrote to Eichmann that it was “essential ... that total clarity prevails about what finally shall happen to those undesirable ethnic elements deported from the greater German resettlement area.  Is it the goal to ensure them a certain level of life in the long run, or shall they be totally eradicated?”[140] Höppner was aware that deportation could mean death and was therefore seeking clarification. The ensuing months would answer his query.

Decision-making to gas Jews at Chelmno was preceded by arguments over overcrowding in the Lodz ghetto that resulted from deportation. On October 4, 1941, Uebelhoer forwarded a protest to Himmler, written by Hans Biebow, that “were the ghetto a pure decimation ghetto, then one could contemplate a pure concentration of Jews.” Himmler’s response was that the author “did not appear to be an old national socialist”[141], and on October 15, a further 20,000 Jews and 5,000 gypsies were sent to Lodz, thereby making the “decimation ghetto”[142] a greater reality. Gassing was agreed between Greiser, Koppe and Himmler as a solution to this problem because it resulted in decimation by quicker means.[143] The centre [Himmler] was thus responding to local initiative and protest, a pattern that was repeated in the Ostland and Serbia. Moreover, this did not require Hitler’s personal intervention because Hitler had already told Greiser that he could use his own discretion in choosing how he dealt with the Jewish problem.[144]

The gassing of Jews at Chelmno was preceded in 1940 by the use of gas vans employing bottled CO in the Warthegau and at Soldau, East Prussia, run by Otto Rasch.[145] The main unit using gas vans in the Warthegau was SK Lange, which was assigned to HSSPF Koppe for “special tasks”. In the spring of 1940, Koppe loaned the unit to Rediess, the HSSPF for East Prussia, to gas mental patients in Soldau:

[The] so-called Sonderkommando Lange, assigned to me for special tasks, was detached to Soldau in East Prussia from 21 May to 8 June, 1940, as per agreement with the Reich Main Security Office [RSHA]. During this period, it successfully evacuated 1,558 mental patients from the Soldau transit camp.[146]

Koppe referred to Soldau as a ‘transit camp’ because, in that period, it was also used to forcibly resettle Jews from western Polish towns such as Plock into the General Government.[147] However, the use of the obvious euphemism ‘evacuated’ to mean killed suggests that Soldau may have set a precedent for referring to death camps as transit camps, which was later applied to Sobibor.[148] A letter from Rediess to Wolff on November 7, 1941, revealed that 250-300 “insane persons (Poles) from the area of Zichenau” were added to this operation.[149]  This letter also had a marginal note, handwritten by Brack, stating that Lange had received an advance payment from Rasch. A later letter in this correspondence had a handwritten note on top, “Tel. with Obf. Brack.”[150]

In August 1941, after Himmler's visit to a shooting site, Bach-Zelewski had asked Koppe to send Lange to meet him in Minsk.[151] In October 1941, Koppe forwarded a request to Himmler from Army High Command that Lange, five subordinates and the gas van be sent to Novgorod to kill 100 Russians suffering from dysentery because the army needed the hospital for its own quarters.[152] In late November, Jews from the Bornhagen labour camp were gassed.[153] The initiative to gas the Warthegau Jews at Chelmno came from close co-operation between Koppe and his Gauletier, Arthur Greiser. The latter wrote to Himmler on October 28, 1941, referring to "the agreement reached between us."[154] On May 1, 1942, he wrote again and referred to the initial gassing request:

It will be possible to conclude the action of special treatment of about 100,000 Jews in the area of my Gau, authorized by yourself with the agreement of the head of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, SS-Obergruppenführer Heydrich, within the next 2-3 months.[155]

Greiser’s figure of 100,000 is close to that given in a letter by Willy Just to Walter Rauff[156] on June 5, 1942, suggesting improvements to the vans. Just noted that since “December 1941, ninety-seven thousand have been processed, using three vans, without any defects showing up in the vehicles.”[157] In one of his interviews with Sassen, recorded when he was a free man in Argentina, Eichmann stated that “Later in that same winter [1941] Müller sent me to watch Jews being gassed in the Litzmannstadt area of central Poland.”[158]

The gassings in the Warthegau have three important implications for Nazi decision-making that are simply not comprehended by Mattogno. Firstly, the gassings did not require an order; Greiser clearly refers instead to the gassings being “authorized by yourself with the agreement of the head of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, SS-Obergruppenführer Heydrich.” Secondly, permission to gas 100,000 Jews locally could be given without that action requiring a general policy having already been decided to exterminate all Europe’s Jews. Thirdly, the progression from such local killings to a Europe-wide killing program did not involve a massive moral and political leap: the moral boundary had already been crossed long before the full program was authorized and implemented. Fourthly, the technical means to gas these Jews had been evolved, in co-operation with the KTI, in response to practical local problems in Serbia, the Ostland and the Warthegau, and such evolution did not require a master plan but simply a shared problem-solving bureaucracy that operated from the assumption that Jewish lives were expendable.

Extermination in Serbia escalated from shooting reprisals in the autumn of 1941 to the use of gas vans in the spring of 1942, the latter coinciding with the use of gas vans at Chelmno and at Maly Trostinets. In mid-August, 1941, Harald Turner, the chief of military administration in Serbia requested (via Benzler) that all Jews be deported down the Danube to Rumania or the General Government. This request was declined, but a month later, Turner persuaded Benzler to make an appeal to Rademacher, requesting deportation of the Jews to Poland or the USSR. Rademacher recorded the reply that he received in a handwritten note that was subsequently presented in evidence at the Eichmann trial:

In the opinion of Sturmbannführer Eichmann, RSHA IVD4, there is no possibility to take them to Russia or to the Generalgouvernement. Even Jews from Germany cannot be accommodated there. Eichmann proposes to kill them by shooting.[159]

In the meantime, the Wehrmacht, under the command of Böhme, began to shoot Jews under the pretext of the need to fill 1:100 reprisal quotas. Such reprisals were not, however, for crimes committed by Jews but were instead inflicted on Jews in lieu of Serb partisans who had not been captured in sufficient numbers to meet the quotas. Turner admitted that this was morally wrong in a private letter dated October 17, 1941, sent to Hildebrandt:

In the last 8 days, I have had 2,000 Jews and 200 Gypsies shot dead, following the quota of 1:100 for brutally murdered German soldiers, and a further 2,200, also nearly all Jews, will be shot in the next 8 days. That is not pleasant work! But it must be done, in order to make it clear to people what it means to attack a German soldier, while at the same time, the Jewish question solves itself most quickly in this way. Actually, it is wrong, if taken literally, that for murdered Germans, for whom the ratio of 1:100 should come at the expense of the Serbs, 100 Jews will now be shot, but they are the ones we happened to have in the camp...[160]

On October 26, Turner ordered that “Jews and Gypsies” were “a danger to public order and safety” and that all male Jews and Gypsies would therefore be put “at the disposal of the troops as hostages.”[161] The background to Turner's order was a meeting on October 20 in Belgrade between Turner, Rademacher, Suhr and Fuchs, in which it was decided that male Jews would be held as hostages and gradually killed to meet reprisal quotas against Serb (non-Jew) partisans, whilst evacuation of women & children 'to the East' was agreed for a future unspecified date. However, this evacuation did not take the form of expulsion, but instead took the form of gas vans the following spring, which Turner falsely claimed credit for in his letter to Wolff:

Already some months ago, I shot dead all the Jews I could get my hands on in this area, concentrated all the Jewish women and children in a camp and with the help of the SD got my hands on a "delousing van," that in about 14 days to 4 weeks will have brought about the definitive clearing out of the camp, which in any event since the arrival of Meyssner and the turning over of this camp to him, was continued by him. Then the time is come in which the Jewish officers to be found in prisoner of war camps under the Geneva Convention find out against our will about their no longer existing kinfolk and that could easily lead to complications.[162]

Turner admitted that ‘Entlausungswagen’ was a euphemism for gas van by placing the term in inverted commas.[163] The gas van had been ordered direct from Berlin by the head of the Security Police in Belgrade, Emanuel Schäfer, who admitted this in his West German postwar trial testimony at both his trial in Cologne[164] and Pradel's trial in Hannover. After the gassings, Schäfer reported back to Berlin noting that the two drivers of the "special Saurer truck", Götz and Meyer, "had carried out their special task."[165] Army records cited in the Schäfer trial judgment show that the victims were women and children.[166] Serbia therefore illustrates how a reprisal mentality that had racial targets could escalate into a policy of gassing racial groups.

Decision-making in the Ostland was initiated, as shown above, by Hitler’s decision in September 1941 that Reich Jews were to be deported as a reprisal measure, meaning that their lives were in severe peril. There is compelling evidence that the deaths of some German Jews deported to RK Ostland were decided before the formal Hitler decision to kill all Europe’s Jews was communicated to the German hierarchy in December.[167] The decision was made whilst Lohse was visiting Berlin for two weeks commencing in on October 25. It can be inferred from the fact that, on October 27, Lange told Lohse that “essential work” on the camps had not yet commenced and that other arrangements could be made if the camps were not ready (other arrangements being code for shooting or for the gassing device in Wetzel’s draft of October 25).[168] This can be inferred from the fact that Lange’s letter of November 8, which announced the deportations of 25,000 Jews each to Riga and Minsk, revealed that five transports may be sent to Kaunas. Lange and Lohse would have known that Kaunas had a killing site (Fort IX) but no camps for holding the Jews. The resultant killings were recorded in the Jäger Report:

25.11.41 Kauen-F.IX 1,159 Jews, 1,600 Jewesses, 175 Jewish children (resettlers from Berlin, Munich and Frankfurt am Main) 2,93429.11.41 Kauen-F.IX 693 Jews, 1,155 Jewesses, 152 Jewish children (resettlers from Vienna and Breslau) 2,000.[169]

Operational Situation Report USSR No. 151 linked these killings to an Aktion carried out by Jeckeln in Riga on November 30:

The first three transports that were to come to Riga were sent to Kaunas. The Riga camp that is to admit about 25,000 Jews is being built and will be completed very soon.In the meantime, the Higher SS Police in Riga, SS-Obergruppenführer Jeckeln started a [mass] shooting action on Sunday, November 30, 1941. He removed about 4,000 Jews from the Riga ghetto and from an evacuation transport of Jews from Germany. The action was originally intended to be carried out with the forces of the Higher SS and Police Chief; however, after a few hours, 20 men of EK 2 who were sent there for security purposes were also employed in the shooting.[170]

The killings were organized at local level in a meeting between Peter Kleist and Jäger on November 22. Kleist’s notebook provides confirmation of the meeting and some of the killings. The entry for December 1 states that Lohse was present at the previous day’s massacre of German and Latvian Jews in Riga. Lohse voluntarily admitted that he had been present at the massacre when interrogated by West German authorities on April 19, 1950. The Riga massacre was also noted by Bernhard Lösener on December 19, 1941.[171] Himmler had belatedly attempted to avert this massacre by issuing a “keine Liquidierung” order, possibly because executions had only been authorized explicitly for Kaunas, or because local protests against prior killings had prompted Berlin to urge a pause.[172] In either case, the wording “keine Liquidierung” clearly expresses an exception being made that acknowledges that liquidations were taking place elsewhere.

We can infer three reasons why Lohse insisted that the Reich Jews be killed. Firstly, the reception camps in Riga that had been promised for these Jews were not ready. Secondly, Lohse and his colleagues believed the camps should have been set up further east. Thirdly, Army Group Centre was likely to oppose the deportations, and this is precisely what transpired in the case of the 25,000 scheduled to be deported to Minsk. On November 20, at the instigation of von Greiffenberg, the Wehrmachtbefehlshaber Ostland (Walter Braemer) complained that “The influx of German Jews, far superior in intelligence to the bulk of the Belorussian population constitutes a severe danger for the pacification of White Ruthenia, the Jewish population of which is made up of Bolsheviks capable of any hostile, anti-German stance.”[173]

As a result of these protests, deportations from the old Reich to Minsk ceased on November 28, and only 7,000 of the 25,000 Jews were transported. This incident demonstrates, in miniature, why the Wehrmacht would never have consented to the resettlement of Jews in the USSR.

Minsk’s leading administrator, Kube, sent a letter to Lohse on December 16, 1941, noting that the Reich Jews would die of cold in Minsk, and requesting that Lohse order their killing by a more humane method.[174] Kube made a further veiled request on February 6, 1942, when he noted that "because the ground in White Russia is frozen down to a depth of two meters, other possibilities were also not available".[175]  This echoed the note, cited above, made by Hofmann a week earlier, stating that “the ground is too frozen to dig pits which would then be available as mass graves for the Jews” but that “in the spring large-scale executions would be initiated again.”[176]

In April and May 1942, Hofmann’s prediction was fulfilled: extermination was resumed both of Soviet Jews and of deported Jews in the Ostland. From May 6 to October 5, 1942, seventeen transports departed from the Reich to GK White Ruthenia, carrying a minimum of 16,395 Jews. From August 15 to October 26, 1942, seven transports went from the Reich to the Baltic region, carrying a minimum of 6,601 Jews.[177] These transports would mostly have been routed across the Germany-Lithuania border, as this route had been documented for the Düsseldorf-Riga transport of December 12, 1941, by Salitter:

At 12.10 hours the train left Konitz. The journey then continued via Dirschau, Marienburg, Elbing to Koenigsberg Pr. At 1.50 hours it went onto Tilsit. At 5.15 hours the frontier –station of Laugszargen and 15 minutes later, the Lithuanian station of Tauroggen were reached.[178]

The political situation in Minsk had been tense. Planning as of March 1942 was a subject of hostility between Kube and Strauch. On July 25, 1943, Strauch wrote a report to von dem Bach that described this period, complaining that “the Gauleiter used his knowledge to save his Jews.”[179] However, Kube’s intervention was not motivated by a desire to permanently save these doomed Jews, but by a wish to give them a more ‘humane’ or ‘dignified’ death. Kube’s resistance may have been one of the factors that led Heydrich to visit Minsk in April 1942.[180] The visit was followed soon after by the beginning of deportations from Austria, Germany and the Protectorate to GK White Ruthenia, to the killing site at Maly Trostinets. These consisted of at least seventeen transports departing between May and October 1942.[181] A further transport was diverted to Baranovichi and liquidated on July 31, 1942.[182]

Heydrich’s visit also coincided with a new wave of killings in other parts of the GK. Thus Kube reported on July 31, 1942 that “we have liquidated about 55,000 Jews in Byelorussia in the past 10 weeks,” including the “Jews incapable of work, who were sent to Minsk in November of last year by order of the Führer, mainly from Vienna, Bruenn, Bremen and Berlin.”[183]  The Aktion was described even more explicitly in an Activity Report on August 3, 1942: “Between July 25 and 27, new trenches were dug. During the Grossaktion on July 28 in the Russian section, 6,000 Jews are taken to the pit. On July 29, 3,000 German Jews are brought to the pit.”[184] On May 17, 1942, the same author had written that “On May 11 a transport of Jews (1,000 head) from Vienna arrived in Minsk and were moved immediately from the station to the trench” and that “For this reason the platoon was deployed right by the pit.”[185] In court testimony given in Koblenz on October 30, 1962, defendant Karl Dalheimer admitted that in 1942 he had stood at the edge of an open grave in Minsk and shot Reich Jews in the back of the neck.[186] The killing of many of these deported Jews was done in gas vans. This was made clear in a telex of June 15, 1942:

A transport of Jews, which is to be subjected to special treatment, arrives weekly at the office of the commandant of the Security Police and Security Service of White Ruthenia.The three S-vans there are not sufficient for that purpose. I request assignment of another S-van (five tons). At the same time, I request the shipment of twenty gas hoses for the three S-vans on hand (two Diamond, one Saurer), because the ones on hand are already leaky.[187]

August Becker, a gas van specialist who liaised in the Ostland, testified on March 26, 1960, to having witnessed killings in Minsk:

In Riga I learned from Standartenführer Potzelt, Deputy Commander of the Security Police and SD in Riga, that the Einsatzkommando operating in Minsk needed some additional gas-vans as it could not manage with the three existing vans it had. At the same time I also learned from Potzelt that there was a Jewish-extermination camp in Minsk. I flew to Minsk by helicopter, correction, in a Fieseler Storch [light aircraft] belonging to the Einsatzgruppe. Travelling with me was Hauptsturmführer Rühl, the head of the extermination camp at Minsk, with whom I had discussed business in Riga. During the journey Rühl proposed to me that I provide additional vans since they could not keep up with the exterminations. As I was not responsible for the ordering of gas-vans I suggested Rühl approach Rauff's office. When I saw what was going on in Minsk — that people of both sexes were being exterminated in their masses, that was it — I could not take any more and three days later, it must have been September 1942, I travelled back by lorry via Warsaw to Berlin. I had intended to report to Rauff at his office in Berlin. However, he was not there. Instead I was received by his deputy, Pradel, who had meantime been promoted to Major. ... In a private conversation lasting about an hour I described to Pradel the working method of the gas-vans and voiced criticism about the fact that the offenders had not been gassed but had been suffocated because the operators had set the engine incorrectly. I told him that people had vomited and defecated. Pradel listened to me without saying a word. At the end of our interview he simply told me to write a detailed report on the matter. Finally he told me to go to the cashier's office to settle up the expenses I had incurred during my trip.[188]

A driver of one such gas van, Josef Wendl, testified in Austria in October 1970 that he was loaned by EK 8 in Mogilev (where he had gassed prisoners) to KdS Minsk, and gassed a trainload of Austrian Jews at Maly Trostinets on September 14, 1942:

I heard also that Jews from the Reich were coming and would be gassed...Resistance would have been useless, so I didn't offer any. I loaded these people in and drove to the pit. I had seen that the van was nearly full, that about fifty people were inside...The van ran on idle while gassing. It really should have been run with the choke, so that the gas mixture would be richer, and the people inside would die more quickly. But the choke didn't work in my van. I then drove back...[and] received orders to bring all the luggage to Trostinets. On the day I was on assignment there, 600 people were gassed.[189]

In addition to gassing, the Germans continued to shoot thousands of Jews. Strauch had referred to ‘resettlement’, ‘evacuation’ and ‘pits’ in his Einsatzbefehl of February 5, 1943, for the extermination of Jews in Slutsk:

On 8 and 9 February 1943 there will be a resettlement in the town Slutsk by the local command…The evacuation of the Jews to the resettlement place happens by means of 6 trucks, each to be accompanied by 4 Latvians…At each pit a group of 10 leaders and men will work, to be relieved every 2 hours. Times 8-10 o'clock, 10-12 o'clock, 12-14 o'clock, 14-16 o'clock…

The document continued with a reference to the giving out of cartridges.[190]

In summary, therefore, localized killing in Chelmno, Serbia and Minsk had helped bring gassing technology to the center of the Final Solution through the use of gas vans. The demands of local officials to eradicate Jews had brought fresh momentum to the quest for killing solutions which then fed into the radicalization of the Europe-wide Final Solution using gassing technologies.

Mattogno’s response to this mass of evidence is to ignore most of it whilst systematically distorting the rest. For example, he quotes Kube’s letter to Lohse of February 6, 1942[191], but omits the key passage stating that “because the ground in White Russia is frozen down to a depth of two meters, other possibilities were also not available.”[192]

Thomas Kues, meanwhile, makes a risible attempt to deny the reality of policy in Serbia[193]. Kues claims that “Due to the significant involvement of Jews in the very active Serbian partisan movement, a large number of Serbian Jews were killed as hostages”, but this is clearly refuted by Turner’s admission to Hildebrandt that “it is wrong, if taken literally, that for murdered Germans, for whom the ratio of 1:100 should come at the expense of the Serbs, 100 Jews will now be shot, but they are the ones we happened to have in the camp ...” Kues then claims that “a large number of Serbian Jews were shot, not primarily because of their ethnicity, but because of reasons of military security, and this as a last resort”, but this is also false because Turner had written that “the Jewish question solves itself most quickly in this way” as partially explaining motive. Kues contradicts himself by claiming that the Jews were shot “as a last resort” but then claiming that Jewish women and children were “deported east”, thus failing to explain why the men could not also have been deported. Moreover, Kues’ admission that a request by Ribbentrop to Himmler on October 2, 1941, to deport the Jews was rejected contradicts Mattogno’s thesis in Sobibor that a resettlement policy was agreed in September.

Most ludicrously of all, Kues insists that Rademacher’s report of October 25, 1941, specifying the evacuation of women and children disproves Turner’s letter of April 11, 1942, thereby ignoring the subsequent radicalization of policy after that date and the fact that Rademacher received a letter from Wurm dated October 23, 1941, that “many of the Jewish vermin will be exterminated through special measures.” This indicates that the women and children would have died in the East after deportation, and that the policy change after October was simply to send the gas van to Serbia instead. The methodological absurdity of using a document from October 1941 to refute a policy that specifically applied to April 1942 exposes Kues’ mendacity. Moreover, Kues’ quotation from Rademacher’s report omits the crucial preceding phrase, “As soon as the technical possibility exists within the scope of the total solution of the Jewish question”, which hints at the experiments with killing methods that were noted by Wurm and Wetzel three and five days later.

---

[140] Höppner an Eichmann, 2.9.41, AIPN CA 362/102, pp.45-62; Cf. Götz Aly, “Endlösung”. Völkerverschiebung und der Mord an den europäischen Juden, Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1995, pp. 334-39; Christopher R. Browning, Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, p.37.

[141] Ventzki an Uebelhoer, 24.9.41, NARA T/175/54/2568671-94; Himmler an Uebelhoer, 10.10.41, NARA T/175/54/2568662-63; cf. Browning, Origins, p.331.

[142] The term “decimation ghetto” was repeated by Ribbe on 9.10.41 to justify the ghetto’s inability to loan Jewish labour to other projects. Browning, Origins, p.392, citing Ribbe Aktennotizen of meetings on 9.10.41 and 16.10.41, YVA, JM 800.

[143] For further context, see Michael Alberti, Die Verfolgung und Vernichtung der Juden im Reichsgau Wartheland 1939-1945. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006; Peter Klein, Die‘Gettoverwaltung Litzmannstadt’ 1940-1944: Eine Dienststelle im Spannungsfeld von Kommunalbürokratie und staatlicher Verfolgungspolitik. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2009; Gordon Horwitz, Ghettostadt: Lodz and the making of a Nazi city. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008; Montague, Chelmno and the Holocaust.

[144] Ian Kershaw, ‘Improvised Genocide? The Emergence of the ‘Final Solution’ in the ‘Warthegau’,’ Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6^th Series, 2, 1992, p.72, citing Greiser an Himmler, 21.11.42, BDC, PA Greiser.

[145] Rasch testimony to SS investigation of Soldau, 16.6.43, NO-1073; cf. Peter Witte and Stephen Tyas, ‘A New Document on the Deportation and Murder of Jews during ‘Einsatz Reinhard’ 1942’, HGS 15/3, 2001, p. 486 n.61.

[146] Koppe an HSSPF Nordost, 18.10.1940, BA NS19/2576, p.3ff., also NO-2908.

[147] Browning, Remembering Survival, pp.53-56.

[148] Himmler an Pohl, 5.7.43, NO-482.

[149] Rediess an Wolf, 7.11.1940, NO-2909.

[150] Koppe an Wolff, 22.2.1941, NO-2911.

[151] Dienstkalender, p.195 n.15, citing British wireless intercepts.

[152] PRO, HW 16/32, 4.10.41.

[153] The graves were exhumed after the war and the leader of the action, Ferdinand Goehler, was given a life sentence by a court in Stuttgart. Browning, Origins, 2004, p.542 n.144, citing JuNSV, Bd. VII, Nr. 231b, pp.217-33, Urteil LG Stuttgart 3 Ks 31/49.

[154] Catherine Epstein, Model Nazi: Arthur Greiser and the Occupation of Western Poland, Oxford, 2010, p.185, citing Greiser am Himmler 28.10.41 BAB, NS19/2655, 49.

[155] Greiser an Himmler, 1.5.42, BA NS19/1585, p.1-R, also NO-246.

[156] Just an Rauff, 5.6.42, BA R 58/871, cited in Eugen Kogon, Hermann Langbein and Adalbert Rückerl (eds), Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen durch Giftgas. Eine Dokumentation. Frankfurt, 1986, pp.333-37.

[157] Five other gas van documents involving Rauff are cited in Mathias Beer, ‘Die Entwicklung der Gaswagen beim Mord an den Juden,’ Vierteljahreshefte fuer Zeitgeschichte, 37/3, pp.403-417. These are: Rauff an der KTI [Kriminaltechnisches Institut], 26.3.1942. Copy in ZSL, Folder: Verschiedenes Nr.227; Schäfer an Rauff, 9.6.1942, 501-PS; Truehe an Rauff, 15.6.1942, 501-PS; Becker an Rauff, 16.5.1942, 501-PS; letter by Firma Gaubschat [Company/manufacturer] to the Referat [sub-department] IID 3a of the RSHA [Rauff], 14.5.1942, ZSL, USA Dok. Film I, Bl.28. Beer cites Rauff’s admission, given as a free man in Santiago in 1972, that "I think, it is impossible that Pradel undertook the development of the gas- vans on his own. He must have had an order either by me or someone with a higher position.” The deposition is on-line; English translation by Roberto Muehlenkamp: http://nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/people/r/rauff.walter/Rauff-deposition-translation (StA Hamburg, Az. 147 Js 31/67; ZSL, Az.II 415 AR-Z 1310/63-E32, Bl.545). Rauff had no fear of extradition because West Germany’s extradition request was denied by the Chilean Supreme Court in 1963.

[158] ‘Eichmann Tells His Own Damning Story’, Life 49/22, 28.11.60, p.102. 

[159] Telegram from Benzler to Foreign Ministry concerning the expulsion of Jews in areas of Serbia, 12.9.41, T/874.

[160] Turner to Hildebrandt, 17.10.41, NO-5810. On the murder of Serbian Jews see Walter Manoschek, ‘Serbien ist judenfrei’. Militärische Besatzungspolitik und Judenvernichtung in Serbien 1941/2. Munich, 1993; English-language summary as 'The Extermination of the Jews in Serbia', in Ulrich Herbert (ed), National Socialist Extermination Policies. Contemporary German Perspectives and Controversies. London, 2000, pp.163-187, here p.177; for a pen-portrait of Harald Turner see Christopher R. Browning, ‘Harald Turner und die Militärverwaltung in Serbien 1941-1942’, Dieter Rebentisch and Karl Teppe (eds), Verwaltung contra Menschenführung im Staat Hitlers. Studien zum politisch-administrativen System, Göttingen, 1986, pp.351-373; for an essay on Turner, Biebow and Rademacher, see Browning, Path, pp.126-41.

[161] Turner’s order to all district and field commands, 26.10.41, NOKW-802.

[162] Turner an Wolff, 11.4.42, NARA- BDC SS-OA Harald Turner; also online at http://www.holocaust-history.org/19420411-turner-wolff/ .

[163] Carlo Mattogno, Raul Hilberg e i «centri di sterminio» nazionalsocialisti’, AAARGH, 2008, p.79, cites this document but follows Weckert’s example by ignoring the meaning of the inverted commas and taking the term Entlausungswagen literally. Mattogno does not explain why a delousing van would be required to ‘clear out a camp’ nor does he confront the last sentence concerning ‘no longer existing kinfolk’.

[164] JuNSV Bd. XI, Nr. 362; cf. Browning, Path, Cambridge, 1992, p.137.

[165] Schäfer an Pradel, RSHA II D 3, 9.6.42, 501-PS.

[166] JuNSV Bd. XI, Nr. 362, Gründe, p.5: Online: http://www1.jur.uva.nl/junsv/Excerpts/362005.htm .

[167] Andrej Angrick and Peter Witte, The "final solution" in Riga: exploitation and annihilation, 1941-1944. Oxford: Berghahn, 2009.

[168] Browning, Origins, 2004, p.333, citing RK Ostland Vermerk, initialled by Wetzel, 27.10.41 YVA, JM 3435 (YIVO Berlin Collection Occ E3-30).

[169] Jäger report of EK 3, 1.12.41, RGVA 500-1-25.

[170] EM 151, 5.1.42.

[171] Gerlach, ‘Wannsee Conference’, pp.768-69, citing Kleist, personal notebook, entries for 22.11.41 and 1.12.41, Staatsanwaltschaft Hamburg 147 Js 29/67, vol. 65, fol. 12460, interrogation of Hinrich Lohse, 19.4.50., Staatsanwaltschaft Hannover 2 Js 499/61, Sonderheft 4, fols. 82ff, and Bernhard Lösener, 'Als Rassereferent im Reichsministerium des Innern', VfZ, 9/3, 1961.

[172] Dienstkalender, p.278 (30.11.41).

[173] Hilberg, Destruction, Vol. 2, 2003, p.366, citing Wehrmachtbefehlshaber Ostland/Ic an Reichskommissar Ostland, 20.11.41, Occ E 3-34.

[174] Kube an Lohse, 16.12.41, facsimile in Max Weinrich, Hitler’s Professors, New York, 1946, p.153ff. 

[175] Browning, Origins, p.394, citing Kube an Lohse, 6.2.42, YVA, JM 3455.

[176] Protokoll über den Hergang der Hauptabteilungsleiter- und Abteilungsleiterbesprechung am 29.1.42, NARB 370-1-53, p.165.

[177] Alfred Gottwaldt und Diana Schulle, Die Judendeportationen aus dem Deutschen Reich 1941–1942. Eine kommentierte Chronologie, Wiesbaden, 2005, p.230ff. Their minimums per destination are 7,900 Minsk, 6,506 Maly Trostinec, 993 Koidanov and 996 Baranovichi; 4500 to Riga and 2051 to Raasiku.

[178] Report by Hauptmann Salitter of the Security Police on the transport of Jews from Duesseldorf to Riga;

Duesseldorf, 11.12.41, T/303.

[179] Strauch an von dem Bach, 25.7.43, BA NS19/1770, pp.15-27, also NO-2662, NO-4315 and NO-4317.

[180] JuNSV Bd. XIX, Nr. 552, p.192, Urteil gegen Heuser, LG Koblenz, Ks 9/62, 21.5.1963; cf. Longerich, Holocaust, p.323.

[181] See the file of Haupteisenbahndirection Mitte, NARB 378-1-784; cf. Longerich, Holocaust, p.322; Gerlach, ‘Wannsee Conference’, p.804, citing Transport Lists of the Vienna Transports, highlighted in JuNSV Bd. XIX, Nr. 552; cf. also Gottwaldt and Schulle, Judendeportationen,  p.237ff.

[182] KdS Minsk an HBD Mitte, 31.7.42, gez. Heuser, NARB 378-1-784, pp.inser; cf. Yehuda Bauer, ‘Jewish Baranowicze in the Holocaust’, Yad Vashem Studies, 31, 2003, pp. 95-152; JuNSV Bd. XIX, Nr. 552.

[183] Kube an Lohse, 28.7.42, PS-3428.

[184] Tätigkeitsbericht Arlt, 3.8.42, published in Unsere Ehre heisst Treue. Kriegstagebuch des Kommandostabes Reichsführer SS. Tätigkeitsberichte der 1 und 2. SS-Infanterie-Brigade, der 1. SS-Kavallerie-Brigade und von Sonderkommandos der SS. Vienna, 1984, p.242; cf. Hans Safrian, Eichmann’s Men, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010, p.127; Petra Rentrop, Tatorte der ‘Endlösung’. Das Ghetto Minsk und die Vernichtungsstätte von Maly Trostinez. Berlin: Metropol, 2011

[185] Tätigkeitsbericht Arlt, 17.5.42 in Unsere Ehre heisst Treue, p.236; cf. Safrian, Eichmann’s Men, p.126.

[186] JuNSV Bd. XIX, Lfd Nr. 552; ‘Ex-Nazi Tells Ghastly Tale’, St. Petersburg Times, 31.10.62.

[187] FS BdS Ostland an RSHA II 3 D A, 15.6.42, gez Trühe, 501-PS, IMT XXVI, p.108.

[188] Klee, The Good Old Days, pp.70-71.

[189] Patricia Heberer, 'Justice in Austrian Courts?', p.237, citing testimony of Josef W., Strafsache gegen Josef W., Bd. IX, ON 117, p.16.

[190] Kommandeur der Sicherheitspolizei Weißruthenien, Einsatzbefehl v. 5.2.43, RGVA 500-1-769, pp.113-16; JuNSV Bd. XIX, Nr. 552, pp.198-200; cf. Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, p.734.

[191] M&G, Treblinka, p.198.

[192] Browning, Origins, p.394, citing Kube an Lohse, 6.2.42, YVA, JM 3455.

[193] Kues, ‘Evidence for the Presence of “Gassed” Jews in the Occupied Eastern Territories, Part 1’, Inconvenient History, 2/2.