Widmann Checkmated By His Own Bishop

When Richard Widmann laid down the rules for his Inconvenient History journal earlier this year, he stated that "All content should be properly cited". However, one of his contributors, Chip Smith, makes this admission:

I have a review of Nicholson Baker's Human Smoke over at Richard Widmann's new online journal, Inconvenient History. It's too impressionistic for the forum, but then I warned Richard that I wasn't much of an academic writer. I am a longtime fan of Baker's writing, though, and I think HS is an important book that has gotten a terrible rap.

This editorial negligence might explain why Widmann published this piece of crap by Joseph Bishop, which is replete with unsourced and wildly inaccurate assertions concerning the shootings in the USSR.

Extermination Planning and Forced Labour Needs

In the Occupied Eastern Territories, the Wehrmacht, SS and civil administration had complex relationships of co-operation and tension. They co-operated in killing actions, but also had conflicts concerning how much Jewish labour would be retained at each stage of the genocide. Below are two contemporary quotes from senior German figures in the Belorussia region that provide insights into those processes.

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The first extract comes from the KdS Minsk, Strauch, who has already been discussed in these blogs. On 8th-10th April, 1943, Strauch attended a gebietskommissars council meeting in Minsk in which he made this statement:

When the civil administration arrived it already found economic enterprises operated by the Wehrmacht aided by Jews. At a time when the Bielorussians wanted to murder the Jews, the Wehrmacht cultivated them. In that way Jews reached key positions and it is difficult today to remove them completely, for then the enterprises are liable to be destroyed, something we cannot allow ourselves. I am of the opinion that we can confidently say that of the 150,000, 130,000 have already disappeared. 22,000 are still alive in the area of the Gebietskommissariat [source: YV TR-10/808, cited by Cholawsky, p.64].

Strauch suggested that half (11,000) could be removed without causing undue difficulties:

I therefore want to request of you that, at least, the Jew disappear from any place where he is superfluous. We cannot agree to Jewish women polishing shoes...We will cut the number down to half without causing economic difficulties.

Strauch was thus frustrated by the fact that Jews could not be removed completely yet he still felt confident enough to request a 50% reduction in a population that had already been reduced from 150,000 to 22,000.

This willingness to overcome forced labour constraints was also shared by some civil leaders, who were under pressure to reduce the pressures on the food supply. There was a delicate balance between viewing Jews as essential workers and seeing them as useless eaters; and the administrators who were wedded most fanatically to Nazi antisemitic dogma were inclined to finally arrive at the latter perspective. This is most clearly apparent in the report written by the Gebeitskommissar for Slonim, Gerhard Erren, on 25th January 1942, which stated that:

[…] Upon my arrival here there were about 25,000 Jews in the Slonim area, 16,000 in the actual town itself, making up over two-thirds of the total population of the town. It was not possible to set up a ghetto as neither barbed wire nor guard manpower was available. I thus immediately began preparations for a large-scale action. First of all property was expropriated and all the German official buildings, including the Wehrmacht quarters, were equipped with the furniture and equipment that had been made available…the Jews were then registered accurately according to number, age and profession and all craftsmen and workers with qualifications were singled out and given passes and separate accommodation to distinguish them from the other Jews. The action carried out by the SD on 13 November rid me of unnecessary mouths to feed. The some 7,000 Jews now present in the town of Slonim have all been allocated jobs. They are working willingly because of the constant fear of death. Early next year they will be rigorously checked and sorted for a further reduction […]

[…] The best of the skilled workers among the Jews will be made to pass their skills on to intelligent apprentices in my craft colleges, so that Jews will finally be dispensable in the skilled craft and trade sector and can be eliminated.

Erren not only saw the need for Jewish labour as temporary, he took pro-active steps to ensure that non-Jews would be trained in the crafts currently occupied by Jews "so that Jews will finally be dispensable in the skilled craft and trade sector and can be eliminated."

In the case of Slonim, therefore, the timing of genocidal acts was very carefully planned, and could be implemented without resistance because the civil administration and SS were in accord. In the case of Minsk, by contrast, the SS (Strauch) had to negotiate with the civil administration (Kube), and the Wehrmacht, which was the main employer of Jewry in the region, and thus the pace of killing was slower.

Brest Sources - Part 2: Perpetrator Testimonies

Many of the perpetrators of the genocide in the Brest region were never brought to justice, but there are several essential perpetrator testimonies by and about the killing actions that converge with the demographic and documentary evidence and bystander and victim statements.

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The first major Aktion in Brest, in July 1941, was described by 23 members of police battalion 307 whose testimonies are preserved in ZStL, 204 AR-Z 82/61. These are discussed by Browning, pp.121-123. One such testimony, of Heinrich M., can be viewed here.

Testimonies concerning the ghetto liquidation of 1942 can be found in two secondary sources. Firstly, Westermann describes the judicial investigation concerning a member of the Eleventh Company of Third Battalion/Regiment 15 (formerly P.B. 310), whom Westermann gives the pseudonym Hermann Schmidt:

The actions and statements of one of the Eleventh Company 's platoon sergeants, Hermann Schmidt [pseudonym], provide additional evidence for determining the influence of ideology and the effect of war on the unit's members. Schmidt was born on November 21, 1911, in Walsum am Rhein. He entered the SA and the NSDAP in 1933. He was one of the police recruits from Schneidemiihl who joined the battalion (PB 310) in September 1940. In testimony to the federal prosecutor's office in 1961, Fritz Lange [pseudonym] (Schmidt's former brother-in-law) recounted statements made by Schmidt while on leave from his unit during the war. After having had some drinks, Schmidt told Lange that he had participated in the execution of Jews in Poland.

Lange expressed disbelief, which then resulted in Schmidt's exclamation that "the Jews were not people but a danger to the German Volk."' Lange stated that Schmidt had told him of how mothers often pleaded for their children's lives. According to Lange, Schmidt described how he had first shot the chlld of one such mother so that she would see her child die. Schmidt told Lange, "We know no mercy." Lange was not the only person who provided testimony on Schmidt's activities in the East. After initially refusing to provide a statement, Schmidt's former wife subsequently agreed to speak with the prosecutor's office. She stated that her husband had told her of his "forced" participation in the execution of Jews. At one point during the war, she also overheard her husband saying that "earlier [before the war] he couldn't harm a fly, but now he could shoot a Jew in the head while eating a sandwich. The former Frau Schmidt rationalized the actions of her husband as the product of the stresses of war. She stated, "My husband was okay earlier, I mean before the war, only after the war did I recognize he had become sadistic."'It is difficult to believe that the man who had boasted of his reputation as the "Terror of Lemberg" was an unwilling tool of racial policy. Schmidt's conversion to an instrument of genocide whether "forced" or the result of the rigors of war was nonetheless complete.

The second author, Andrea Simon, cites two testimonies by members of the Schutzmannschaft. The first is by the leader of the Schutzmannschaft, Semenyuk, who admits that his company carried out the killing of "about 300" Jews in Volchin (the real figure was 497, according to the source I cited in this blog) but claims that he was absent due to being drunk and the action was overseen by his deputy, Kesarov. He states that the Germans killed 130 civilians in Lishitsi, whilst one of his deputies, Felix Zhukovski, killed about 120 people in various random killings, including sick people who had to be taken off transports, who were "killed...right on the road". He also confirms that the Jews who were forced to work on the Chernavchich highway were killed.

Semenyuk is equally frank about those he killed himself - "I killed six people in Motikali and one in Sukharevichi" - but his most explicit testimony of all concerns the Jews he killed in Brest in November 1942, who had escaped the main Aktion in October:

In November 1942, when the Jews started to run away from the ghetto in Brest, I was ordered to capture them, especially women and children. Once we executed 47 Jews, of whom I personally killed eight. Before shooting them, we took away their clothing and put them into graves in rows. Each one was shot in the back of the head (Simon, p.179)

The second Schutzmannshaft perpetrator Simon cites is Joseph Pavlovich Schidlovsky, who described his participation two mass killings of the Jews of Bereza, a town in the Brest region, during which 4,000 Jews were rounded-up and sent to Bronnaia Gora and a further 3,000 sent to be killed in Smolyarka. Schidlovsky travelled to Bronnaia Gora with the victims, but did not travel to Smolyarka. The SD commander for these killings, according to the witness, was Pichmann, who also oversaw the killing of 1,450 Jews in Divin and 269 in Gorodets.

Brest Sources - Part 1: Demographics

The effects of German policies upon the population of Brest can be seen in this table, which is drawn from several sources. Garrard & Garrard and Andrea Simon utilized archives held in the city of Brest, whilst the Bundesarchiv collection on Brest (in BAB R 94/6) was consulted by Browning. What do these figures tell us and how do we reconcile them with other sources?

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Under Soviet occupation, from September 1939 to June 1941, Brest (Polish name: Brzesc n.Bugiem) received refugees from western Poland (there were 7,916 Jewish refugees in Brest oblast as of February 1940, according to Nick's source cited here) but also lost 6,709 people who were deported to the Soviet interior (source: Gurjanov). In July 1941, the Germans documented the 'execution' of 4,435 people, of which c.4,000 were Jews, in EM 32. Browning argued that a further 4,403 people were killed by the zbV Brest in the Summer of 1941, but Browning may have overlooked the fact that these killings were carried out across the whole region in which the unit operated, not just Brest city.

The population reductions of 1942 are documented in the Brest archives. Andrea Simon examined the statistical report of the Brest town council dated 5 June 1942, showing 16,973 Jews, whilst Garrard & Garrard reproduced the ledger for 15th and 16th October, 1942, which they described as follows:

This document is one of the most horrifying discovered at Brest, for it represents the complicity in mass murder of men who sat behind their desks throughout the entire process. Across the top of each page are the names of ethnic groups in Brest. The clerk has been ordered to keep a running total for each group: he records how many had 'arrived' and how many had 'departed' for each day. The total population is given in the righthand column. As of 15 October 1942 the total population is 41,091. Of this total, 16,934 are designated in the column for Jews (Zydowsk.). But then the clerk learns that this total is wrong. He has made a mistake in writing 16,934. In fact, all the Jews in the ghetto have now 'departed'. The clerk corrects his mistake; he strikes through 16,934 and writes in '0'. He then subtracts this figure of 16,934 from 41,091 and writes in the correct number of people alive in Brest now - 24,157. It is unlikely that the clerk did not know what had happened to these thousands of people, even if he was not sure exactly when and where they had been executed. Thus, with a single stroke of a pen, 16,934 people are erased.

Furthermore, Garrard & Garrard found that the reduction of 16.934 in the ghetto liquidation corresponded to the volume of transports from Brest to the killing site:

According to documents in the Brest archives, from late June to November 1942 a total of seven trains transported Jews to be executed at Bronnaya gora. Three of these trains are said to have carried people from Brest—two trains consisting of 40 and 13 cars in July, and a third consisting of 28 cars in October. How many Jews from the Brest ghetto were transported in the three trains? If we say that close to 200 people were crushed into each car, then we arrive at a total of 8,000 people in the first train, 2,600 in the second, and 5,600 in the third. There is no way of knowing how many people had already died of starvation and sickness before July 1942, or were shot in and near Brest before October 1942. But the total number transported by this estimate (16,200) does approximate the figure given in the Brest Town Administration's 'Accounting and Control Book of Population Movement'...

Moreover, these figures were corroborated by Polish railway worker, Roman Stanislavovich Novis, the former station master at Bronnaya Gora, in testimony given to the Soviets on September 12th, 1944 (Cited in Andrea Simon, pp. 189-191). Novis counted a total of 186 railroad cars arriving at Bronnaya Gora from various locations, and claimed that his German successor as station master, Heil, had told him that 48,000 people were shot there.

Finally, these demographics are supported by the Brest Ghetto Passport Archive, which was a list of

Jews of 14 years of age and above living in the Brest Ghetto were required to obtain and sign for identity papers, which included their names, ages, and the names and dates of birth of their parents. A photo of each person was taken and all those receiving these internal passports were required to sign for them.

The list contains 12,258 names. When the omitted children are added to this total, we have a baseline figure for the number of Brest Jews murdered in the second half of 1942.

More Mass Graves in the Polesie

Further to Nick's earlier blog, I present below a number of extracts from Soviet Extraordinary Commission reports that were collated and translated from the Brest archives by Louis Pozez and published by Andrea Simon in her genealogical investigation, Bashert. These describe mass graves exhumations at four locations: Bronnaia Gora, Smolyarka, Malorita and Volchin.

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Simon met Pozez [who subsequently helped finance the processing of the Brest Ghetto Passport Archive] in 1997 when she went on a mission to Brest, organised by Pozez, which included a visit to her ancestral home in Volchin (various spellings; 21 miles south-east of Brest). On page 91, she introduces summaries of translations of mass graves documents sent to her by Pozez:

Louis Pozez sends me one section from the report, entitled "Act" and dated October 5, 1944. It's from the Brest Regional Assistance Committee, attached to the Extraordinary State Commission.

The report discusses three major locations. Firstly:

In Brona Gora, 117 kilometers from Brest, five pit graves were found, camouflaged with young, newly planted trees. Some of the graves were as long as 63 meters and as wide as 6.5 meters. Three of the graves were opened. At the depth of 2.5 meters, human bones and ashes were found; at 3.5 meters deep, there was a second layer of ashes and bones, inside of which were locks of hair, and handkerchief and some hair pins. Under the layer of ash was dark, red-brown liquid.

Near the pits the Committee found six areas for burning bodies. Around these areas, the Committee located many fragments of small human bones, including a child's shoulder bone, and other items, such as watches and coins.

We therefore have confirmation that the Soviets found human bones as well as ashes. Simon discusses the next two sites on p.268n.:

In the second area of mass graves, near Smolyarka, the committee found three pit graves. This section estimates that 3,000 "peaceful Soviet citizens" from Brest and nearby villages were killed in this area. The forensic evidence indicated that most of the victims were shot from a short distance. The third area, a kilometer northwest of the settlement of Malorita, contained nine mass graves. The committee opened two and determined that most of the victims were shot; some were buried alive. The number of "peaceful Soviet citizens" killed here was also estimated at 3,000. Besides these burial sites, the committee uncovered graves in the Brest prison yard, the Brest fortress, and in other locations in Brest.

Smolyarka was also the site of exhumations of four mass graves in 2006. A memorial is being erected.

The final Soviet site report of 1944, for Volchin, was sent to Simon by Yad Vashem via Simon's associates, Dov Bar and Shmuel Englender, and is titled Document Number 8:

On September 22, 1942, a group of nine Germans, with the help of 20 [local] police, organised a mass killing by shooting of Volchin's Jews and some of Chernavchich's Jews. [They were brought to the Volchin ghetto.] The total killed by shooting on that day was 497 people.

When we opened the big pit, we found many bodies. Most were naked and were thrown on top of each other. Bodies of men, women, children and babies.

To corroborate this evidence, the general prosecutor in Visoke interviewed witnesses on September 28, 1944, who confirmed that:

1. The policemen had been brought from the village of Motikali, where the population was reputed to be antisemitic.

2. The Jews had been deceived into believing that they were being relocated to the Visoke ghetto.

3. A road-building project was in progress at Chernavchich, from which unfit Jews had been sent. The road workers were killed upon completion of the project.

4. 500 escapees from the Brest ghetto were later killed in Motikali.

The murders were also corroborated by the leader of the Schutzmannschaft, Semenyuk, in his Soviet interrogation, and by witnesses who gave taped interviews in Volchin in 1993 and 1997, cited in detail by Simon.

Volhynia-Podolia, 1942 - Extermination Decisions

In March 1942, Karl Pütz became the KdS in Rivne, with authority over the Sipo and SD throughout Volhynia-Podolia. He replaced Hermann Ling, who then became involved in recruiting labour to send to Vinnytsia for the DG IV road project. Pütz remained KdS until October 1943, by which time the Germans had exterminated all the Jews they could lay their hands on in the region. A review of documents written by and/or mentioning Pütz and his domain can therefore help us to reconstruct the decision-making process in the region.

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The origins of the role of the KdS in Ukraine are explained in this earlier blog. The KdS was subordinate to the HSSPF Russia South, Prützmann, who in turn reported directly to Himmler. However, the KdS had a high degree of personal authority and also worked closely with the civil administration, which had legal oversight over Jewish affairs in such matters as food policy, which became crucial in deciding the timing of killing Aktions. The HSSPF, it should be noted, had control over labour programs, most notably the DG IV road-building project that ran through Ukraine, from west to east, starting in Lvov. This would also create internal tensions, as discussed below.

Pütz's first appearance in Holocaust historiography is in the Nuremberg affadavit of Hermann Friedrich Graebe (2992-PS) concerning the mass executions at Rowno [Rivne] on 13 July, 1942 and at Dubno on 5 October, 1942. On the Rivne Aktion, Graebe claimed:

SS Major [SS-Sturmbannfuehrer] Puetz stated to me that no pogrom (Aktion) whatever was planned. Moreover such a pogrom would be stupid because the firms and the Reichsbahn would lose valuable workers.

However, Graebe continued:

An hour later I received a summons to appear before the Area Commissioner of Rowno. His deputy, Stableiter and Cadet Officer [Ordensjunker] Beck, subjected me to the same questioning as I had undergone at the SD. My explanation that I had sent the Jews home for urgent delousing appeared plausible to him. He then told me -- making me promise to keep it a secret -- that a pogrom would in fact take place on the evening of Monday 13 July 1942. After lengthy negotiation I managed to persuade him to give me permission to take my Jewish workers to Sdolbunow but only after the pogrom had been carried out. During the night it would be up to me to protect the house in the Ghetto against the entry of Ukrainian militia and SS. As confirmation of the discussion he gave me a document, which stated that the Jewish employees of Messrs. Jung were not affected by the pogrom [Original attached.]

For our purposes, Graebe is significant because he shows the close collusion of the SS and civil administration in the Aktion. Pütz had apparently taken Graebe's objections to the planned killings of his workers to the Area Commissioner, Georg Marschall, who had eventually granted an exemption, albeit temporary.

The following month, on August 28-31, Pütz and the civil administration held a meeting in Luzk during which the instruction to complete the liquidations of ghettos in Volhynia-Podolia "within the next five weeks" was given. There were two key background events, outlined below, that led to this meeting. Firstly, as noted above, the DG IV program was recruiting labour in the area to send to Vinnytsia, and there was a need to redraw political boundaries to determine whether DG IV would be allowed to interfere with the liquidations. Secondly, as Gerlach argues, Koch's administration was coming under massive pressure to supply far more food to the Reich, and this led to the conclusion that even previously essential workers were consuming food needed elsewhere so had to be killed.

On August 17, Hermann Ling sent the following telex [cited by Angrick, p.105]:

Through personal consultation with the SD outpost in Kamianets-Podilsky and the responsible county commissioners, [I] have secured 500 Jews from Kamianets-Podilsky, 600 Jews from Dunaivtsi, 800 Jews from Bar, 400 Jews from Iarmolyntsi for DG IV's purposes. The inspector for DG IV in Vinnytsia, SS Senior Colonel [Theobald] Thier, assumes transport and employment. I was forced to realize, however, that without my intervention these Jews would have been executed; for example, executions in Dunaivtsi County and Bar had already been prepared. I ask that [you] work toward seeing to it that in the future the counties bordering DG IV all Jews still fit for work are turned over to DG IV and no longer executed.

This telex indicates that the civil administration and SS in some counties was already killing fit Jewish workers, presumably to meet food demands coming down from Koch, or because there were no longer any perceived constraints on their ideological mission to kill Jews locally. It also shows, however, that even the SS, which was in charge of DG IV, had other interests that required forced labour, and which therefore created tensions within the SS concerning the killing of that labour. Such tensions were also identified by Browning in the case of Brest:

Informed of the impending "overall resettlement of the Jews" (generelle Umsiedlung der Juden), the SS and Polizeistandortführer in Brest-Litovsk, Friedrich Wilhelm Rohde, pleaded: "Insofar as the Jewish question is solved in Brest, I foresee severe economic damage resulting from the lack of labor." He was supported by the local commissioner (Gebietskommissar) Franz Burat: "Although the total resettlement of the Jews from the Kreisgebiet is desirable from the political standpoint, from the standpoint of labor mobilization, I must plead unconditionally for leaving the most needed artisans and manpower."

The role of Pütz, as KdS, may be inferred as being to quell such local questionings of policy and to achieve support for total extermination, either through building consensus or by imposing an order. On August 28-31 there was a meeting at Luzk headed by Koch's representative Paul Dargel and attended by Pütz, which ordered a "100% solution" to the Jewish Question in the region, to be implemented within five weeks, with just a two-month stay of execution for 'specialists' after each Aktion. This clearly, either by coincidence or design, killed off any attempts to retain or recruit Jewish labour. It may also have been anticipated already locally, as Ling had perceived in Dunaivtsi County and Bar.

However, as Gerlach claims in this collection, the event was also the result of much higher level meetings between Hitler, Himmler and Koch concerning the total extermination of working Jews. For example, Gerlach (p.226) cites the fact that:

Gerald Fleming has already established that Hitler, not Himmler, gave the order for their elimination to Erich Koch in July 1942 [whilst on] 9 July, Himmler took over the operation to "secure the harvest" in Reichskommissariat Ukraine.

The final appearance of Karl Pütz in the chronology concerns the implementation of SK 1005; the digging up and burning of mass graves evidence by the SS to destroy the physical evidence. Pohl, p.54, shows that on August 3, 1943, Pütz issued a circular to the Gendarmerie in Volhynia-Podolia asking for lists of mass graves. "Some 200 sites were apparently reported."

In conclusion, therefore, this account of Pütz's term in office offers a window into how the SS and civil administration worked together in Volhynia-Podolia (and, by extension, the RKU); how needs for forced labour were expressed but then suppressed; and how the KdS ensured that the wishes of the centre were imposed locally even in the face of obvious contradictions between the centre's wishes and the region's needs.

Demographics and Killing in Volhynia-Podolia (Part 2: 1942)

Further to Part 1, below I present eight sources of evidence that converge on the conclusion that the Germans exterminated the remaining Jews of Volhynia-Podolia during the period August-October 1942.

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1) There were 326,000 Jews in the Volhynia-Podolia region in May 1942:

NAW RG 238, T- 1 75, roll 235 Report from the occupied eastern territories No. 5, 29 May 1942 gives the figure of 326 000 Jews for Volhynia-Podolia (Dean, p.195)

2) Puetz to Aussenstellen der Sipo/SD, 31/8/42 [Browning, p.136]:

The actions are to be accelerated, so that they are completed within your area within five weeks. At the meeting of the Gebeitskommissaren in Luzk from August 29-31, 1942, it was explained in general that in principle a 100% solution is to be carried out.

3) Meldung 51:

c) Jews executed [Aug-Sep-Oct-Nov-Total] 31246 165282 95735 70948 363211

Kruglov breaks down the 363,211 as follows:

a) The November total is mainly Bezirk Bialystok

b) Of the 292,263 killed before November, approximately 70,000 were in the present-day Belarus part of the RKU, the rest were in present-day Ukraine

The concentration of killings into September matches Puetz's instruction to carry out the actions "within your area within five weeks."

4) Browning

Monthly report of the military armaments commando, Volhynia-Podolia, October 1942, in: Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv Freiburg, RW 30/15. (Im Oktober 1942 fanden nun in Wolhynien die grossen Judenevakuierungen statt, durch die aus allen Betrieben die Juden restlos entfernt wurden, sodass die Betriebe auf kürzere oder längere Zeit vollkommen zum Erliegen kamen, bezw. die Fertigung bis auf Bruchteile zusammenschrumpfte.)

Translation:

Then, in October 1942, there were large-scale Jewish evacuations in Volhynia as a result of which every Jew was removed from all the factories, and the factories came to a complete standstill for a shorter or longer time, or production dwindled to a mere fraction.

This indicates that the final stages of the killing actions initiated by Puetz were completed in October.

5) German police reports copied in Polish archives (Shmuel Spector, p.173; Dean, p.93)

6) Interrogation of Sturmscharfuehrer Wilhelm Rasp 18 Dec 1961 (ZSL 204 AR-Z 393/59 Vol. II, pp. 173-94) confirming details of police actions (Dean, p.93).

7. The mass graves investigations in Nick's blog Mass Graves in the Polesie

8. Browning shows that the killings were ordered over the heads of the civilian administration, who protested that they still needed Jewish labour:

Informed of the impending "overall resettlement of the Jews" (generelle Umsiedlung der Juden), the SS and Polizeistandortführer in Brest-Litovsk, Friedrich Wilhelm Rohde, pleaded: "Insofar as the Jewish question is solved in Brest, I foresee severe economic damage resulting from the lack of labor." He was supported by the local commissioner (Gebietskommissar) Franz Burat: "Although the total resettlement of the Jews from the Kreisgebiet is desirable from the political standpoint, from the standpoint of labor mobilization, I must plead unconditionally for leaving the most needed artisans and manpower."53

These appeals were in vain. On October 15-16, 1942, the 20,000 Jews of Brest, including 9,000 workers, were shot.54 The war diary and reports of Police Regiment 15 show that the Jews working in camps and on state farms in the region were also executed.

Thus the local autonomy aspect of the Holocaust had clear limits in Volhynia-Podolia, as elsewhere.

Demographics and Killing in Volhynia-Podolia (Part 1: 1941)

Documents listing mass killings in the western USSR, such as the Einsatzgruppen Reports, Meldung 51 and police reports, do not exist in isolation from a demographic context. They must be read in conjunction with demographic reports showing that, for example, there were 326,000 Jews in the Volhynia-Podolia region in May 1942 (Dean, p.195); and there were 18,000 Jews in one of that region's largest cities, Brest, as of 28 Feb 1942 [Bundesarchiv Berlin R 94/6 Ernauhrungsamt Brest-Litowsk, Statistischer Bericht 28/2/42, cited by Browning, p.124]. Similarly, demographics and killing reports in Volhynia-Podolia are supported by evidence of mass graves, as Nick showed in great depth back in 2006. Below I present some further proof of convergence between these sources, taken primarily from Browning's study of Brest (Chapter Five of this collection).

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Browning argued that there was a close correspondence between the reduction in the population of Brest (from 59,600 in Sep 39 to 50,000 in Nov 41) and the total number of killings for Brest listed in the Operational Situation Reports. I have summarized Browning's figures into two tables in my opening post of this RODOH thread.

The main killing action in Brest in 1941 is summarised by Longerich:

2.6.4 The Police Battalion 307 shot several thousand Jewish civilians in Brest-Litovsk around July 12; almost all were men between 16 and 60, it was a supposed "retribution measure" (Vergeltungsmaßnahme). Immediately before the massacre, Daluege, the Chief of the Police Regiment Centre, Montua, Bach-Zelewski and further Higher SS Leaders had assembled in Brest.

Browning argues that the inspiration behind these killings was neither totally top-down nor bottom-up. Instead, Himmler and his subordinates learned from the measures taken in late June by PB 309 in Bialystok and Stapo Tilsit in Lithuania.

The relationship between centre and region could therefore be a dynamic one. However, Browning's narrative also shows that the centre would ultimately hold sway when the final killing decisions were made in mid-1942. That will be the subject of Part 2 of this series.

ADDENDUM: March 24th, 2009.

Since writing the above, I have become more critical of Browning's interpretation of the Brest sources he cites, and his omission of other important sources. My revised interpretation of the evidence for Brest is given in this blog.

How Many Perpetrators in the USSR? - Part Nine: Denier Deceit

The mendacity of deniers when discussing the Einsatzgruppen is encapsulated in Graf's screed, Giant with Feet of Clay, which consists of dishonest, ill-informed attacks on the late historian Raul Hilberg. Graf, whose mendacity has been discussed in several previous blogs, 'quote-mines' Hilberg to create a Straw Man version of the historiography of the Einsatzgruppen.

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The analysis given below demonstrates how Graf uses quotes by Hilberg that refer to the personnel composition of the Einsatzgruppen, whilst misrepresenting the instances where Hilberg discusses killings by other agencies, and where Hilberg emphasizes the Einsatzgruppen's utilization of large numbers of Order Police and native auxiliaries. In many cases, this misrepresentation can be shown to be deliberate, because Graf refers to specific killings that are discussed by Hilberg in inter-agency terms. Graf wants the reader to believe that Hilberg is claiming these were exclusively Einsatzgruppen killings, when Hilberg's text actually says the opposite.

Graf sets up his Straw Man as follows (p.40):

The claimed numbers of victims of the Einsatzgruppen are impossibly large. The largest of the four, Einsatzgruppe A, had 990 members. If we subtract from this the 172 vehicle drivers, 3 women employees, 51 interpreters, 3 teletypewriter operators and 8 radio operators, there are about 750 combatants left to use for the mass killings (p. 303; DEJ, p. 289). Up to 15th October 1941, Einsatzgruppe A supposedly killed 125,000 Jews (p. 309; DEJ, p. 289). Considering the fact that the mass murders first began in August (p. 307; DEJ, na), the overwhelming majority of the 125,000 victims, let us say 120,000, must have been killed in a period of ten weeks.

Graf's decision to focus on Einsatzgruppe A exposes his stupidity as well as his mendacity, because even a reader with minimal Holocaust knowledge will be aware that this unit operated in the region with the largest proportion of native collaborators. Moreover, Graf gives this game away himself when he discusses the involvement of native Baltic citizens in pogroms (p.36):

In addition, thousands of Jews were killed in pogroms initiated by the native populations following the German invasion. After they had been freed from the Bolshevist yoke, Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians and others took revenge on Jews because the Red terror machinery had been led mainly by Jews, and this retribution unfortunately fell also on Jews who had nothing to do with the Communist crimes.

Graf is thus skewered by his contradictory aims. In order to promote his antisemitism, he needs to show that the natives hated Jews, but, in order to maintain his Einsatzgruppen Straw Man, he also needs to claim that all killings must have been done by Einsatzgruppe A acting alone.

Hilberg's actual text is clear that Einsatzgruppe A needed local assistance (Note: all quotes below are taken from the 1985 student edition). Hilberg writes that "The importance of the auxiliaries should not be under-estimated" (p.122). Summarizing the actions of Ek 3 in September 1941, Hilberg notes that:

The operations assisted by the Lithuanians accounted for more than half of the Einsatzkommando's killings by that date (p.122)

On the same page, Hilberg makes this point about Ek 4a in Ukraine:

The Ukrainian auxiliaries appeared on the scene in August 1941, and Einsatzgruppe C found itself compelled to make use of them...Thus Einsatzkommando 4a went so far as to confine itself to the shooting of adults while commanding its Ukrainian helpers to shoot children.

Graf's mendacity increases even further when he discusses shootings in large cities (p.38):

Here are the victim counts Hilberg gives for several cities:
33,000 victims in Kiev;
10,600 victims in Riga (this Einsatzkommando numbered only 21
men!);
23,600 victims in Kamenets-Podolsk;
15,000 victims in Dnepropetrovsk (p. 311; DEJ, p. 298);
15,000 victims in Rovno (p. 312; DEJ, p. 298);
10,000 victims in Simferopol (p. 391; DEJ, p. 373).

What does Hilberg say about each of these killings?

Kiev: "two detachments of Police Regiment South helped kill over 33,000 Jews" (p.110);

Riga: "In the northern sector the Higher SS and Police Leader (Pruetzmann), assisted by twenty-one men of Einsatzkommando 2 (Einsatzgruppe A), killed 10,600 people in Riga" (p.110; note how Graf quote-mines the "21 men" but omits the prefix "assisted by"!);

Kamenets-Podolsk: "Next Jeckeln struck at Kamenets-Podolsk, shooting there a total of 23,600 Jews" (p.111; no mention of Einsatzgruppen being involved, because this action was perpetrated mainly by Jeckeln's own forces assisted by Police Battalions 45 and 303);

Dnepropetrovsk: "In Dnepropetrovsk...Jeckeln slaughtered 15,000 Jews..." (p.111);

Rovno: "In its report about Rovno, Einsatzgruppe C stated that, whereas the action had been organised by the Higher SS and Police Leader and had been carried out by the Order Police, a detachment of Einsatzkommando 5 had participated to a significant extent in the shooting" (p.111);

Simferopol (pp.115-116): "In Simferopol, the Crimean capital, the Eleventh Army decided that it wanted the shooting to be completed before Christmas. Accordingly, Einsatzgruppe D, with the assistance of army personnel and with army trucks and gasoline, completed the shootings in time to permit the army to celebrate Christmas in a city without Jews."

Graf has therefore lifted these death figures from Hilberg without acknowledging that each of the killings was instigated by the Higher SS and Police Leaders and/or the Wehrmacht, and was carried out by forces that were often primarily non-Einsatzgruppen personnel.

This dishonest denier apparently has no shame.

How Many Perpetrators in the USSR? - Part Eight: Baltic States

The two main killing actions in Latvia were the Rumbula Action and the Liepaja action. The Rumbula action has been studied in detail by Ezergailis, whose findings can be viewed in a Word file by clicking the 'Chapter 8' hyperlink shown on this page, whilst Liepaja has been discussed in this blog. The main action in Lithuania was the murder of Vilna Jews at Ponary, described here and depicted in these photographs. Additional comments on each of these massacres are given below.

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Ezergailis gives an overview of the Order Police in Latvia as follows:

Before the Aråjs commando was trained, it was the 9th Battalion of the Ordnungspolizei that performed most of the killings for Stahlecker. The 9th Battalion units that were in Latvia during July and August had moved on, following Stahlecker to the environs of Leningrad. At the end of November there were at least two kinds of Ordnungspolizei units in Rîga under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Flick: the Schutzpolizei, headed by Major Heise, and the Gendarmerie, under Captain Rehberg. At least several hundred were posted to assure order (“obtain and maintain a German character”) in Rîga, as in Latvia at large. In addition to overseeing the Latvian precinct police, the Ordnungspolizei was also in charge of the ghettoization of Jews, and after October 25 the guarding of the ghetto. During the initial phase of the ghetto the SD were not involved. The Ordnungspolizei's involvement with the ghetto also predetermined their assignments in the liquidation of the ghetto.

The 2nd company of the 22nd Reserve Battalion from Rîga supplied about seventy men, and the 3rd company of the 22nd Reserve Battalion from Jelgava supplied another seventy men. The 2nd company was employed in overseeing the clearing of the Jewish apartments, organizing the Jews into marching columns, and accompanying the columns to Rumbula. The 3rd company was used to guard of the periphery at Rumbula. The chief Ordnungspolizei activist was Major Heise, and it appears that he was also the liaison person with the Latvian Schutzmannschaften.

In addition to the 22nd Battalion from Rîga and Jelgava and the men of the Gendarmerie, Jeckeln had at his disposal another five regiments of Ordnungspolizei, but we do not know which, if any, of them he used. In general, Jeckeln was against involving the Wehrmacht.

A West German trial of Order Police defendants included a description of Jeckeln's organization of the Rumbula action, provided by the defendant Friedrich Jahnke. Ezergailis also discusses the strong Latvian presence at Rumbula, including the planning meeting:

Various German witnesses mention the presence of Latvian officers in the preparatory meeting. Although the only name mentioned is that of Osis, the head of the Latvian Schutzmannschaften, the names of the other Latvians present at these meetings can easily be identified, for the choice is a very narrow one. The only ones who could have been there in addition to Osis, were Aråjs, Ítiglics, and the head of the Latvian ghetto guard, Danskops.

At Liepaja, there an initial killing action in July 1941. A notable feature of this action is that it was ordered by a naval commander, Kawelmacher, as Ezergailis again describes:

The pace of shootings was not fast enough for commandant Kawelmacher (a.k.a. Gontard). On July 22 he telexed the commanding admiral of the Baltic fleet in Kiel, requesting 100 SS- and 50 Schutzpolizei troops “for rapid execution [of the] Jewish problem. With present SS-personnel, this would take one year, which is untenable for [the] pacification of Liepāja.” His request was promptly granted; the notorious Latvian SD Commando under Viktors Arājs arrived from Riga, shot about 1,100 Jewish men on July 24 and 25, and left. Meanwhile the 2nd Company of Police Battalion 13 under SSHauptsturmführer Georg Rosenstock had arrived, primarily for patrol duty and to a lesser extent for executions. From then on, the Navy played a less active role, leaving the persecution of Jews in the hands of Kügler and his superior, SS-und Polizeistandortführer Dr. Fritz Dietrich, who arrived in mid-September.

As was noted in this blog, Dietrich's arrival was crucial because he kept a diary of subsequent events. The main December massacre was ordered by HSSPF Jeckeln, carried through by Dietrich, and photographed by Strott and Sobeck, as Ezergailis describes:

No ghetto had yet been established in Liepāja, but Dietrich ordered a 2-day curfew for Jews. Thus confined to their apartments, they were methodically rounded up by Latvian police and taken to the Women’s Prison. From there they were marched to the Šķēde execution site, ordered to undress, and were shot in groups of 10 by three firing squads, two Latvian and one German. All together, 2,749 Jews were shot on December 15–17. They were mainly women and children, who had been largely spared until now. Kügler’s deputy SS-Scharführer Carl Emil Strott, as well as SSOberscharführer Sobeck, photographed the executions. An audacious Jew working at the Security Police, David Zivcon, got hold of a 12-exposure film by Sobeck long enough to make copies, which have been widely reproduced and exhibited after the war.

Several of Strott's photographs, linked by Roberto here, and also discussed here, clearly show Latvian police taking women and children to the killing area. Strott's trial, at which he did not deny the photos, is here.

For Ponary, an excellent gallery of photographs can be found here. Three larger-sized examples from that gallery are shown here and here and here. Details in the photos match eyewitness testimony given to West German prosecutors that is reproduced here. See for example the book-keeper's statement that "The other nine walked one behind the other, stooping and holding on to the man in front with their hands because they could not see." Finally, note again that this massacre was not carried out by a unit of Einsatzgruppen acting alone. Lithuanian collaborators played an essential role in this murder.

How Many Perpetrators in the USSR? - Part Seven: Infantry Regiment 727

The following figures were compiled for a criminal investigation into Infantry Regiment 727 by the West German authorities (ZStL) and are reproduced on page 132 of Hannes Heer's chapter in The German Army and Genocide

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30/10/41: Niesvicz ghetto; 4,500 Jews murdered by 8th Company;

2/11/41: Lachovichi ghetto: 1,000 Jews murdered by 8th Company;

5/11/41: Yaremichi & Svierzna & Turec ghettos; 1,000 Jews murdered by 8th Company;

9/11/41: Mir ghetto: 1,500 - 1,800 Jews murdered by 8th Company, assisted by Belorussian auxiliaries;

13-14/11/41: Slonim ghetto: 9,000 Jews murdered by SD and Order Police, assisted by 6th Company;

8/12/41: Novogrudok ghetto: 3,000 Jews murdered by SD and Order Police, assisted by 7th Company.

How Many Perpetrators in the USSR? - Part Six: Zhytomyr

Having discussed the regions of Belorussia and Ukraine, I now discuss the findings of the more localised study within Ukraine by Wendy Lower, which focussed on the Zhytomyr oblast. This complements the work of other Ukraine specialists such as Pohl, Berkhoff and Dean, available in this collection, but with greater detail in this particular oblast.

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Lower begins with the period under military administration, and notes (p.56) how the following structure was implemented, consisting of three Wehrmacht Security Divisions and associated Police Battalions:

1. In Zhytomyr, Security Division 454 incorporated Police Battalion 82, and also contained Infantry Regiment 375, Geheime Feldpolizei [army secret field police] units 708, 721 and 730, and Landesschuetzen [defence unit] Battalions 286, 406 and 566; and Regiment 102;

2. In Berdychiv, Security Division 213 collaborated with Police Battalions 318 and 45;

3. In Vinnytsia, Security Division 444 worked with Battalions 45, 311 and 314.

4. In addition, the 1st SS Infantry Brigade (Waffen-SS Infantry Regiments 8 and 10) joined forces with the 6th Army in the northern part of the region.

Battalion 82 conducted its first "manhunts" in Zhytomyr from July 19, 1941, on the orders of Wehrmacht city commander Josef Riedl.

On August 7, 400 Jews were massacred in Zhytomyr following the public execution of two Jews in the market square. Significantly, those involved in organizing this massacre included Blobel (Sk 4a) and the Sixth Army medical staff, most notably Dr. Panning, who had tested live explosives on prisoners.

In September, Battalion 45 worked alongside Jeckeln's Stabskompanie
in the massacre at Berdychiv, which was partially organized by the city's ethnic German mayor, Reder, and his Ukrainian chief of police, Koroliuk (p.77). In the same month, HSSPF units liquidated 3,353 Jews in the Ovruch part of the region (p.78).

As in Belorussia and across other parts of Ukraine, local auxiliaries and administrators were crucial to Nazi policy. Each gendarme station had between 50 and 80 Schutzmannschaften (p.104). By September 1942, the number of Schutzmaenner in the Zhytomyr region had grown to 5,200, but this more than tripled again to reach 16,400 by April 1943, whilst the number of gendarme leaders by that latter date had grown to approximately 1,100 (p.135).

How Many Perpetrators in the USSR? - Part Five: Ukraine 1942

When Jeckeln received his promotion and headed north, the structure of the SS and police command in Ukraine was reorganized. This coincided with the growing influence of civilian administrators on anti-Jewish policy.

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The first effects of this reorganization were felt in November 1941, when HSSPF z.b.V. Korsemann worked with BdO Oelhafen to organize the murder of at least 17,000 Jews in Rivne [Rovno] by Police Battalions 69, 315 and 320, together with Ostlandkompanie and a detachment of Ek 5 (see Browning and Matthaeus, p.509n.). This was significant because Oelhafen was in charge of the Order Police, not the Sipo, which had not yet been formed into a stationary KdS in Rivne. The killing itself was an important landmark in the Holocaust in Ukraine because it appears to have been prompted by the fact that Erich Koch, who had become the Reichskomissar of RK Ukraine on 1st September, was about to take up residence in Rivne. The Rivne County Commissioner, Werner Beer, had initiated the registration of all Jews without papers in Rivne, and was fully briefed on the killings (see Pohl in this collection), p.43. The switch from military to civilian oversight of killings in that region of Ukraine was therefore advanced a step further. By 1942, most killings would be occurring under civilian administration.

In early 1942, the key issue was how many Jews would be kept alive for essential labour. A key document in that decision-making process was discovered by Wendy Lower, p.251, and is archived at NA, RG 242, T-454/R 154/MR334. It was written by Himmler to Rosenberg on 10th January 1942 and stated that "measures to eliminate Jews shall be taken without regard to economic consequences". However, exceptions were made such as the building of Hitler's new Werewolf HQ.

In January, Korsemann became HSSPF for the areas under military administration whilst Pruetzmann took the HSSPF command for RK Ukraine. One of Pruetzmann's main tasks was to organize forced labour for the DG IV road project. Pruetzmann also delegated much of his command to the new KdS offices, the core of which came from Einsatzgruppe C and the recently disbanded Ek 5, which had been based in Kiev in Autumn 1941. These in turn worked closely with the civilian administration and Order Police.

Pohl (ibid., pp.48-50) describes the killings that resulted from this co-operation. On February 2, a total of 2,202 Jews were killed in the Zlatopil ghetto clearance, "on orders from the county commissioner, by the militia by gassing with Lorpocrin." In July 13 and 14, "KDS Rivne and indigenous police, together with help from the 1st Company of Police Battalion 33, murdered the last 5,000 Jews of Rivne." A further 5,673 Jews were murdered on July 27-28 "in and around Olyka" The fate of many of the region's remaining Jews was sealed at a conference of Volhynia-Podolia's county commissars on August 28-31, in consultation with the KdS Karl Puetz. Pohl concludes:

In all, some 160,000 Volhynian Jews, 35,000 Podolian Jews and several thousand Jews from the Zhytomyr region fell victim to the police and civil administration between May and December 1942 [Pohl's source is Meldung 51].

Finally, An example of the variety of units involved in such killings is the Caucasian Company. Formed by Walter Kehrer, this unit was present when gas vans were used at Simferopol (source: Martin Dean's chapter in this collection) and in the massacre of Jews at Tarnopol. Ex-members of the Company include Yuri Chapodze and Alfons Goetzfrid. The net of Holocaust perpetrators in the Ukraine was very wide indeed.

How Many Perpetrators in the USSR? - Part Four: Ukraine 1941

I have already discussed Wehrmacht complicity in Ukraine in this blog. Below, I deal with the actions of forces under the ultimate control of HSSPF Jeckeln, including the 1st SS Infantry Brigade and Police Battalions 45, 303, 304, 314, 315 and 320. I also examine the role of non-German auxiliaries. My main sources are this collection of essays and Peter Longerich's report to the Irving-Lipstadt trial

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In August 1941, Jeckeln's forces shot "altogether 44,125 people, mostly Jews." By far the largest killing was at Kamianets-Podilsky by "Jeckeln's staff company, the Police Battalion 320 as well as by Ukrainian and Hungarian militia" (Longerich).

Longerich summarizes the killings committed by Battalions 45 and 314 during this period:

3.2.14- The Police Battalion 45, which belonged to the Police Regiment South, proceeded to murder Jews regardless of their age or sex at the end of July-beginning of August. The first victims were the entire Jewish population of the town of Schepetowka, where the Battalion had been based between 26 July and 1 August, 1941; according to the declaration of the Battalion Commander, Besser, made after the war, this involved 40 to 50 men and women, probably however even more. Besser declared on this point that he had been following an order of the Commander of the Police Regiment South, who in turn referred to a general order for liquidation issued by Himmler.

3.2.15 In the following weeks, the Battalion repeated this pattern in other Ukrainian villages: among others, it killed Jewish men and women in Slawuta (according to the declaration of the HSSPF Russia South this included 522 persons), in Sudylkow (471 dead) as well as in Berditschew (1000 victims). When Besser's successor, Rosenbauer, was being briefed on his tasks as Battalion Commander by the Higher SS and Police Leader of Russia South, Jeckeln, he was given very clear instructions, according to his own statements: "Jeckeln said that the order of Reichsführer SS Himmler was the basis for the solution of the Judenfrage: The Ukrainians should become a Helot (slave) people who work only for us. We had no interest, however, in having the Jews multiply: therefore the Jewish population had to be exterminated."

3.2.16 Also the Police Battalion 314, which belonged to the Police Regiment South as well, shot women and children as early as July. This can be documented for the first time in the case of a company of the Battalion on 22 July in a place in the area of Kovel: in the private diary of a member of the Battalion it is stated that on this day 217 people, among them entire families, had been shot.

In September, there were even higher numbers of killings, including four major massacres involving Battalions in Berdichev, Vinnytsia, Kirovohrad and Babiy Yar. The contributions of Pohl and Berkhoff to this collection of essays enable us to identify the assisting forces more precisely.

For Berdichev, Pohl (p.35) notes that Police Regiment South (Battalions 45, 303 and 314) reported the shooting of 4144 Jews on September 4th. Eleven days later, Jeckeln's forces and Battalion 45 murdered a further 12,000 at the airport. On September 19th-20th, Battalions 45 and 314 assisted Ek 6 in the murder of 15000 Jews in Vinnytsia. Ten days later, Battalion 304 - "presumably with Sk 4b" - shot 4,200 Jews in Kirovohrad (Pohl, p.37).

Babiy Yar has already been discussed extensively by Sergey in this series, during which he presented nine German war-time documents concerning the massacre. In addition, Roberto has cited Wette's study of the massacre:

According to German historian Wolfram Wette ("Babij Yar 1941", in: Wolfram Wette / Gerd R. Ueberschär (editors), Kriegsverbrechen im 20. Jahrhundert, pages 152-164), Sonderkommando 4a was made up of members of the Sicherheitsdienst and the Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police), one company of a Waffen-SS battalion and one platoon of a police battalion, and reinforced by another two police battalions and units of Ukrainian auxiliary police; the task of supervising and guarding the march of Kiev’s Jews to the ravine in which they were killed was carried out by Wehrmacht troops under the orders of city commandant Eberhard.

Berkhoff's essay notes that the two German Battalions that took part in the round-ups and cordoning off the site were Battalions 45 and 303. Berkhoff identifies the non-German forces as follows (p.303):

It is appropriate to note here that new and newly found Ukrainian sources also name paramilitary and auxiliary police formations that were in Kiev at the time of the massacre: a squad of what was then simply called the "Ukrainian police" and the Bukovinian Battalion. Both were created or commanded by activists of the Melnick faction of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-M)

More information on the Bukovian Battalion can be found here and here and here.

The Ukrainian militia is mentioned twice in Operational Situation Report No. 106. For Babiy Yar, it notes that:

This order was publicized by posters all over the town by members of the newly organized Ukrainian militia.

For Zhytomyr it states:

The Militia headquarters, according to a suggestion of Sonderkommando 4a, arranged a temporary, local concentration of Jews in Zhitmmir [sic]...On September 19, 1941, from 4 o'clock [a.m.], the Jewish quarter was emptied after having been surrounded and closed the previous evening by 60 members of the Ukrainian militia.

Finally, Longerich notes the involvement of Jeckeln's forces in an October massacre:

Jeckeln also played a central role in the massacre of the Jews of Dnjepreprotowsk on 13 October, where according to the event reports, out of some 30.000 Jews in the city, "approximately 10.000 were shot by a commando of the Higher SS and Police Leaders on 13 October, 1941".

Longerich concludes:

In this series of massacres under Jeckeln's personal management up to October, 1941, more than 100.000 people were murdered.

Shortly after this point, Jeckeln was promoted and relocated to the Ostland region, where he oversaw murders primarily in the Baltic states. Moreover, regional anti-Jewish policy in Ukraine began to be influenced by the civilian administration, under the command of Koch, . The police became stationary and carried out killings under the remit of Sipo, Schupo and Gendarmerie, and (as in Galicia) actions were often organized by the KdS, which were formed from parts of Einsatzgruppe C. The next blog in this series examines that latter post-Jeckeln phase of the Holocaust in Ukraine.

How Many Perpetrators in the USSR? - Part Three: Galicia

Inter-agency collusion in Galicia has already been discussed in this blog, which examined how the regional KdS in Stanislawow, Hans Krueger, was able to use Order Police, and even railway security police, in the "Bloody Sunday" massacre. Below I present evidence of further collusion in the neighbouring area of Kolomyja [German: Kolomea], which was part of the south-eastern Galician region, Stanislawow-Kolomyja-Horodenka.

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The formation of the killing forces in this region provides an interesting case study of how an Einsatzgruppe, upon leaving a region, left behind officers who were required to form the nuclei of local stationary Sipo units, which would then expand their available manpower, and liaise with Order Police (Schupo and Battalions) and native auxiliary police (Ukrainian Hilfpolizei).

In Kolomyja, the KdS was Peter Leideritz, who, like Hans Krueger, had been part of KdS units in the General Government until recruited by Schoengarth for the new detachment for special purposes (Einsatzkommando Z.B.V.- zu Besonderer Verwendung). As Pohl notes, this had:

arrived in Lvov on July 2, on the immediate heels of Einsatzgruppe C; its instructions were to continue the killing squad's work, especially mass executions.

When Schoengarth's squad moved on, Leideritz and Krueger became heads of two of the branch offices of the KdS Lwow, which was commanded by Tanzmann. The region also had an SSPF, Katzmann, who later authored this famous report to his superior, HSSPF Friedrich Krueger.

The role of the Order Police in assisting the KdS in rounding-up and killing Jews in Kolomyja can be pieced together from several sources. Kolomyja was the subject of West German JuNSV legal cases 657 and 743. Although these were Sipo trials (case 743 resulted in the conviction of Leideritz's deputy, Ernst Erwin Gay), they also gathered testimony concerning the roles of Schupo (city police) officers. The research of Robin O'Neil has determined that the Schupo were recruited from the Vienna Schutzpolizei, and were also the subjects of a Viennese investigation after the war:

Vienna doc: Schutzpolizei: Lt. Hertl [Haertl] (commander), Witmann (deputy), Wittich, Doppler, Gross and Kleinbauer. Sergeants: Layer, Pernek, Kneissl, Hofstetter, Steiner. Corporals: Gallhart, Straka. Constables, Gall, Harko, Kroegner, Layer, Mauritz, Reisenthaler, Ruprechtsofer, Stanka[,] Schipany, Uitz. Reinforcements of 7./police 24 detachment who had been engaged in Jewish resettlement in Skole, Stryj and Chodorow during the period 3 – 5 September, 1942, arrived in Kolomyja in time for the action of the 7.9.42.

O'Neil identifies 17 actions in Kolomyja district. Members of the Schutzpolizei were arrested after the war in relation to these actions and gradually issued confessions (ibid.):

Those arrested acted very much like the norm, i.e., when they knew their precarious situation, they implicated others to lessen their own actions, and so to speak, spread the blame as a barrier to a more severe justice. There was no honour among this selection of thieves and murderers, as they crumpled under interrogation and 'spilled the beans' to save their own necks.

Ex Schupo officers Stanka and Straka were the first to break under interrogation and detail the systematic weekly killing of Jews in Kolomyja – in the Scheparowce forest, the cemetery, ghetto and abattoir. Ex Schupo Uitz stated that his police detachment shot over 15000 Jews in Kolomyja.(18) Pernek tried to hang himself in the prison cell, but later he was so overcome with remorse, he requested pen and paper to record what had happened in Kolomyja and confirmed the forest liquidation's and the use of dogs to tear at Jewish throats.(19) An interesting fact emerged that has been discussed elsewhere, was that Lt. Gross refused to participate in killing actions and there had been a row with his commander (SD) Hertl. Gross was not included in further actions, and no disciplinary action was taken against him. (20) All admitted shooting of Jews and complicity in Belzec transports in the districts of Kuty, Kosow, Jablonow, Pistyn, Peczenizyn, Horodenka, Czernilicia, Gwozdiec, Sniatyn, Zablotow, and Zabie.

Police Battalions also played key roles in these actions. When Gay was ordered by Leideritz to carry out an action in Kossow starting on 16th October, 1941, he borrowed personnel from Reserve Battalion 133 in Stanislawow, which had already participated in Bloody Sunday just four days earlier. On the same date, 3rd company of the same battalion assisted border police (BPP) in a killing action in Tatarow under Krueger's subordinate, Ernst Varchim (for both these actions, see Browning and Matthaeus, p.350).

When the time came to deport many of the remaining Kolomyja Jews to Belzec, the KdS was able to recruit Company 6 and Company 7 of Reserve Battalion 24. The commander of Company 7, Lt. Westermann, wrote two reports on the deportation, one of which is reproduced here. Reports were also written by the commander of Company 6, Brenner, and by Schutzpolizei Zugwachtmeister Jacklein of Company 7. Jacklein's report is shown on the same link as Westermann's above. Archival references for all four reports are given by Hilberg in The Destruction of the European Jews, 3rd edition, p.518, footnote 63.

Ukrainian auxiliaries were a huge factor enabling these actions. Browning and Matthaeus, p.349, estimate that the Schupo in Kolomyja had 100 Ukrainians, a ratio of four Ukrainians to every Schupo German.

Finally, it should be noted that the civilian administration in Kolomyja, led by Kreishauptmann (Chief of District) Klaus Volkmann, was fully involved in ghettoization, seizure of Jewish property, and the liquidation of Jews. Significantly, Volkmann set up his own units of Sonderdienst (ethnic German auxiliary police).

How Many Perpetrators in the USSR? - Part Two: Belorussia

To demonstrate the wide range of perpetrators outlined in Part One of this series, this blog presents a case study of inter-agency co-operation in killing operations in Belorussia. Information is taken from German criminal trials and from three main secondary sources: Christian Gerlach's chapter in this collection, Peter Longerich's report to the Irving-Lipstadt trial, and the passages concerning Belorussia in Browning and Matthaeus (hereafter B/M).

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Gerlach's chapter identifies three mass killings in which Wehrmacht commanders were involved at some stage in the round-ups or in ordering the actual killing. Firstly, in the first few weeks of occupation in the Summer of 1941, it seems that Generalfeldmarschall Guenther von Kluge of the 4th Panzer Army acquiesced in the selections of men in a prison camp in Minsk, some of whom were then shot by Nebe's Einsatzgruppe B. Kluge had at least one meeting with Nebe on the issue (Gerlach, p.217).

Secondly, on 7th July 1941, FK 184 acquiesced in the round-up of 4,000 Jews and 400 non-Jews in Brest. These were shot the following day by units of Police Battalion 307, the Security Police, and SD from Lublin (ibid.).

Whether the involvement of these commanders was 'acquiescence' (passive consent) or active engagement in the killing process, there can be no doubt that the killings occurred under their watch, and with their knowledge.

The third example is a killing for which Wehrmacht orders definitely existed. In the autumn of 1941, the commander of 707th Infantry Division, Bechtolsheim, issued orders to Reserve Battalion 11 (led by Lechtaler) and a detachment of EK 3, both of which had been sent (along with large numbers of native auxiliaries) from Lithuania to Belorussia at the request of the Wehrmacht. These orders resulted in the killings of 14,400 men, women and children in massacres that spanned Slutzk, Kleck, Kliniki, Smilovichi, Kojdanov and the Minsk civilian prisoner camp (B/M, pp.289-90). Lechtaler received a prison sentence for these killings at this trial.

Other Wehrmacht commanders who shared culpability for mass murder included von Schenckendorff, the commander of Rear Army Area Center. He had been at Bialystok on 8th July when Himmler arrived in the city and addressed a group that included HSSPF Bach-Zelewski and the commander of Police Regiment Center, Max Montua, whose battalions included 316 and 322. Shortly after Himmler's visit, these two battalions participated in the shootings of 1,000 Jews in Bialystok (B/M, p.257).

In late-September, von Schenckendorff organised an anti-partisan training course attended by Bach-Zelewski, Nebe and Fegelein, to promote inter-agency co-operation. Nebe was the leader of Einsatzgruppe B and Fegelein commanded the the SS Cavalry Brigade, which was the force given to the HSSPF Bach-Zelewski in July by Himmler. Von Schenckendorff was also instrumental in securing the transfer of Reserve Battalion 11 for the killings described above.

Fegelein's SS Cavalry Brigade was a major killer in Belorussia. It conducted two sweeps of the Pripet Marshes on Himmler's orders. This sweeps are summarized in Longerich's report here.

In the area behind the central section of the Front, the character of the mass executions began to enter a new stage as a result of the use of the SS Cavalry Brigade. This Brigade carried out a first "cleansing operation" in the Pripet marshes between 29 July and 12 August under the leadership of the Higher SS and Police Leader, by which 13,788 "looters" (i.e. mostly Jews) were shot and 714 were held prisoner. On the side of the Brigade 2 were killed and 15 wounded. Between 17 August and 23 August the Cavalry Brigade initiated a second "action" by which, according to their own report, altogether 699 Red Army men, 1001 partisans and 14,178 Jews were shot. Shortly before these two "actions", Himmler had visited Baranovice where he ordered the brigade to kill all Jewish men and the women as well - although in a different way. From a radio-telegraph text dated August 1 from the Second Cavalry Regiment we can read: "Explicit order of the RFSS. All Jews must be shot. Jewish women to be driven into the swamp."

Another subordinate of the HSSPF implicated in killing was SSPF White Ruthenia, Carl Zenner. In this trial, Zenner received a sentence of 15 years for his role in killing 6,000 Jews in the Minsk ghetto to make space for Reich Jews.

The involvement of Police Battalions in the murder campaigns is summarized by Longerich. The major killing Battalions in Belorussia were 307, 309, 316 and 322. Longerich summarizes their early actions:

In Bialystok, the Police Battalion 309 committed a massacre as early as 27 June in which at least 2000 Jews, among them women and children were victims. In the course of this action, members of the Battalion forced at least 500 into the Synagogue and murdered them by setting fire to the building.

2.6.2 In Bialystok, Police Battalion 316 and 322 staged a massacre in the middle of July whereby altogether 3000 Jewish men were killed. A few days before this massacre, on the afternoon of 8 July, Himmler appeared in Bialystok together with the Chief of the Order Police, Daluege. In a meeting with SS and Police Officers Himmler stated, according to Bach-Zelewski's testimony, that "basically every Jew was to be regarded as a partisan". On the next day, Daluege announced in a speech to members of the Police Regiment Centre that "Bolshevism must now be definitively exterminated". Two days later, on 11 July, the Commander of the Police Regiment Centre issued the order to shoot all Jewish men between the ages of 17 and 45 convicted as looters. The police made it very easy to "convict" Jews as "looters"; three days previously, members of the Battalion 322 had searched the Jewish quarter and confiscated the goods therein as "loot". Jews were thus per se "looters."

2.6.3 The Police Battalion 316 perpetrated in Baranowicze a further massacre in the second half of July with probably several hundred dead; it was later involved in two mass executions in Mogilev, whereby on September 19, 3700 Jews (also women and children) were killed.

2.6.4 The Police Battalion 307 shot several thousand Jewish civilians in Brest-Litovsk around July 12; almost all were men between 16 and 60, it was a supposed "retribution measure" (Vergeltungsmaßnahme). Immediately before the massacre, Daluege, the Chief of the Police Regiment Centre, Montua, Bach-Zelewski and further Higher SS Leaders had assembled in Brest.

Battalions 316 and 322 were also key agencies in the escalation of killing in October 1941, which began in Mogilev:

On 2 October, a Company of the Police Battalion 322 in Mogilev (where Bach-Zelewski's Headquarters were located) lead a "special action upon the orders of the High SS Police Leader", in which "2208 Jews of both sexes " were involved. (This formulation reveals that children were included.) These people were shot without exception, together with Ukrainian militia men. On 19 October, four days before Himmler appeared for an inspection in Bach's new headquarters in Mogilev, "an important action" against the Jews (Judenaktion grösseren Ausmasses), as it was called in the event report, "was carried out there, by which 3726 Jews of both sexes and all ages were liquidated". This was a clear signal that once again children had also been victims.132 In this "action" the EK 8 and the Police Battalion 316 were implicated. With these two massacres in Mogilev, Bach-Zelewski began a whole series of further, similar "major actions" (Grossaktionen) in eastern Belorus.

The final agency to join this killing process was the civilian administration. Relations between these bureaucrats and the SS did not always runs smoothly, as we know from the complaint by Slutzk District Commissioner Carl, which was Nuremberg document 1104-PS, and Kube's strained relations with KdS Strauch. Mostly, however, administrators were complicit in the killings of Jews. This was the subject of two major German trials - for Slonim and Lida respectively. More on the Lida trial can be found here.

The pattern noted here for Belorussia was typical of the Nazis' organisation of genocide across the USSR. The next two blogs will illustrate this fact further with case studies of Galicia and Ukraine

How Many Perpetrators in the USSR? - Part One: Overview

There is a common misapprehension among some non-scholars that the Einsatzgruppen were solely responsible for shootings of Jews in the USSR. This creates the potential for a false paradox because the Einsatzgruppen had less than 4,000 members. The misunderstanding is innocent if perpetrated by a small Holocaust museum but can become mendacious when exploited by a Holocaust denier whose purpose is to set up a Straw Man which can then be used to attack the proper historiography of the Holocaust. It is therefore necessary to correct this misapprehension at every opportunity by demonstrating that the Einsatzgruppen formed a small percentage of the total manpower involved in Jewish actions on former Soviet territory.

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There are five main types of perpetrator that are often overlooked in 'Einsatzgruppen-focussed' accounts of the East. The first is the Wehrmacht, which was often in overall charge of territories where killings were taking place. I have already discussed the nature of Wehrmacht collusion in Ukraine in this blog.

The second type is the Order Police, under the overall command of Karl Daluege, which was split into mobile and standing units. The mobile units consisted, during the Summer of 1941, of 21 Police Battalions (Browning and Matthaeus, p.231) that were assigned partially to the Wehrmacht and partially to the Higher SS and Police Leaders (HSSPF). For example, in Ukraine, battalions 318, 311 and 82 were assigned respectively to the 213rd, 444th and 454th Wehrmacht security divisions, whilst battalions 45, 303 and 314 were assigned to Police Regiment South under HSSPF Russia South, Jeckeln, who also commanded reserve battalions 304, 315 and 320 (source: Dieter Pohl, p.26 of this collection). I will show in a future blog in this series how the battalions were used by Jeckeln in major killing actions such as Kamenets-Podolsk and Babij Jar. This will demonstrate that, as Pohl notes:

Altogether the six battalions subordinated to HSSPF Russia South killed considerably more Ukrainian Jews than Einsatzgruppe C and Einsatzgruppe D combined (same source, p.40).

The main stationary Order Police were the municipal police (Schupo) and the rural police (Gendarmerie). Many of these units were the subjects of war crimes trials held in Germany between the 1950's and 1990's, which can be accessed here. These units will be discussed in another blog in this series. Eric Haberer, pp.17-18, cites their manpower numbers:

According to Daluege's annual report for 1942, the strength of Order Police stationary personnel deployed at year's end in the two Reichkommissariats [Ostland and Ukraine] amounted to 5,860 Schutzpolizei and 9,093 Gendarmerie, or a near total of 15,000. Other sources indicate that in October-November 1942, these forces had a combined strength of nearly 14,000, of which 9,463 were stationed in the RKU and 4,428 in the RKO. Of the latter, 1,394 were at the disposal of the KdO Minsk, consisting of a Schupo complement of about 300 men for policing Minsk and Baranovichi and over 1,000 Gendarmerie for the extensive rural areas of the Gebietskommissariats Lida, Novogrudok, Slonim, Gantsevichi, Baranovichi, Vileika, Glubokoe, Slutsk, Borisov (Pleshchenitsy), and Minsk-Land.

Gendarmerie placement and organization in these regions is well documented in the case of Baranovichi.21 As of November 1942, this Gebiet of 5,695 square kilometers with a population of 341,522 was policed by 73 Gendarmes in the rural areas and 27 Schutzpolizei in Baranovichi city itself.22 Located in the city as well was a 37-strong motorized Gendarmerie platoon (Zug 7) and the administrative personnel of the Gendarmerie-Gebietsfu¨hrer, the Gendarmerie-Hauptmannschaft, and the SS and Police Garrison Commander (Standortfu¨hrer). Overall, this amounted to a force of 145 Order Police, roughly half of whom were thus Gendarmerie deployed outside of the city of Baranovichi.

The third type of non-Einsatzgruppen unit was the units of the Kommandostab Reichsfuehrer SS, which were under Himmler's personal command. In mid-July 1941, two of these units - the First SS Brigade and the SS Cavalry Brigade - were assigned respectively to the areas of HSSPF Jeckeln (Russia South) and HSSPF Bach-Zelewski (Russia Center). The total manpower of these units was between 10,000 and 11,000 men (Browning and Matthaeus, p.233 and pp.279-281).

However, by far the largest numerical collections of killers were the non-German auxiliaries, known as Schutzmannschaft (Protective Detachments). Eric Haberer, p.17-18, again provides the essential background and numbers:

Although Nazi politics and racism militated against a sound policy of indigenous self-administration and policing, sheer necessity forced from early on the recruitment of local manpower to strengthen the operational capabilities of stationary and mobile Order Police formations. Thus already one month into the war with the Soviet Union, Himmler was forced to acknowledge that “the Police is unable to carry out its tasks in the occupied eastern territories with available Police and SS personnel alone. It is therefore necessary to establish as fast as possible additional protective formations [Schutzformationen] consisting of native, pro-German elements in the conquered areas.” This key-directive of 25 July 1941 set the stage for the creation of indigenous Order Police auxiliaries, ofŽ cially termed Schutzmannschaft of the Einzeldienst (stationary units) and Geschlossene Einheiten (mobile units or battalions). Subsequent orders regulating recruitment, provisioning, SS and Police jurisdiction (Gerichtsbarkeit) and many other necessities of Schuma organization (uniforms, awards, ranks, wages, and so on) were quickly forthcoming via Daluege’s Order Police Main Office and led to the rapid build-up of formidable auxiliary police forces which, as of 1 July 1942, totaled 165,128 men or Schutzmaenner.

This massive injection of non-German manpower continued for the remainder
of 1942 and leveled off at around 300,000 in early 1943.

In the Baltic states, as MacQueen notes in pp.37-38 of this article:

By late 1941, fifteen of them, ranging in strength from 200 to almost 500 men, had been formed, with another five battalions added by August 1942. While some of these were deployed primarily for the security of rail lines and other installations within Lithuania and on the occupied territories of Russia and Ukraine, others have been tied to the mass killing of Jews and reprisals against non-Jewish civilian populations in Lithuania and Belarus.

The units are mentioned in Stahlecker's consolidated report of early 1942. In other regions, Schutzmannschaft assisted the Einsatzgruppen, Jeckeln's First SS Brigade and the Order Police in the role of auxiliaries. For example, as I will show in a future blog, there was a Bukovina Battalion of auxiliaries at Babij Jar.

The final category of perpetrators was the civilian administrations. These bureaucrats sometimes gave the killing orders. For example, in the case of Lithuania, Christoph Dieckmann (in page 261 of this collection) claims that Hans Gewecke, the Regional Kommissar of Siauliai, ordered that Jewish women and children were to be shot by "Lithuanian police, overseen by Germans."

When these categories are added together, the total number of perpetrators becomes large indeed. To give one regional example, Thomas Sandkuehler (in page 127n. of this collection) has shown that, as of September 1942 there were 14,366 Reich Germans in eastern Galicia. Of these, 2,000 participated in the Jewish extermination. In addition there were eventually 4,000 Ukrainian perpetrators in the eastern Galicia region in total.

In conclusion, therefore, we an see how an excessive focus on the Einsatzgruppen distorts the true picture and only gives a small fraction of the true number of people responsible for the Holocaust in the East. The rest of this series will correct this distortion.

Wehrmacht Complicity in the Holocaust in Ukraine

Wendy Lower has estimated that "As many as 300,000 Jews were killed under Wehrmacht administration in Ukraine" (p.245 of this collection). The higher ranks of the Wehrmacht in Ukraine cannot therefore be viewed as bystanders or silent partners in the genocide. Senior military figures often took part in meetings that decided the fate of Jews; they sometimes supplied the manpower that rounded them up; and they were often informed about the killings, even if their troops did not pull the triggers.

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The Wehrmacht is thus an important source of material both for understanding the co-ordination of the Holocaust in Ukraine and for combating Holocaust denial, because many of the most explicit accounts of killing policy were written by Wehrmacht administrators.

Furthermore, as Dieter Pohl writes on p.39 of his essay in this collection, when Wehrmacht reprisal actions in Ukraine are contrasted with such actions in Serbia:

...Wehrmacht units operating in remote areas of Ukraine shot not only Jewish men but also Jewish women and children.

These points are illustrated below with five examples of massacres drawn from the essays of Lower and Pohl referenced above. These took place in 1941 in Bila Tserkva, Zhytomyr, Lutsk, Kamienets-Podilsky and Babi Jar. (Note that each of these place names may have different spellings in other sources).

Bila Tserkva is doubly significant because the killing was requested by Field Commander Oberst, Josef Riedl, and authorised by his superior, Sixth Army general Walter von Reichenau. Ninety Jewish children had been left over in an abandoned school-type building at the edge of town after the adults had been killed. Despite objections from the local chaplains, Riedl insisted that "this brood must be stamped out" (Lower, p.243). Perpetrator testimony of the killing was provided by August Häfner and can be viewed here. Reichenau's authorisation for their killing, which occurred on August 22, 1941, was inevitable given that he harboured a deep antisemitism that was expressed, only seven weeks later, in his infamous 'Reichenau order' which stated, in part, that:

Therefore the soldier must have full understanding for the necessity of a severe but just revenge on subhuman Jewry. The Army has to aim at another purpose, i. e., the annihilation of revolts in hinterland which, as experience proves, have always been caused by Jews.

Reichenau may also have assumed that he was expressing the wish of the chief of the High Command of the Wehrmacht, William Keitel, who on September 12th called for "ruthless and energetic action, and first of all against the Jews as well, as the main bearers of Bolshevism." After the children had been killed, the 454th Division's Security Section wrote (Pohl, p.34):

There can hardly be any more talk of a Jewish question. In several places, the provisioning of Jewish children and infants left without parents sometimes created difficulties; also in this regard, however, remedial action has since been taken by the SD.

In Zhytomyr, the problem of killing children was resolved differently. As Lower (p.244) notes:

Sk4a commando leader Heinrich Huhn...recounted that at the subsequent ghetto liquidation at Zhytomyr on 19 September: "The women were allowed to hold their children in their arms" (Heinrich Huhn statement of 13 October 1965, Callsen Trial, ZSt 207 AR-Z 419/62, BAL.).

The Zhytomyr liquidation was authorised at a meeting between Blobel and FK 197 [Wehrmacht field administration commandant 197] on September 10 and is described in Operational Situation Report USSR No. 106, which shows that the Wehrmacht supplied some of the trucks:

On September 19, 1941, from 4 o'clock [a.m.], the Jewish quarter was emptied after having been surrounded and closed the previous evening by 60 members of the Ukrainian militia. The transport [deportation] was accomplished in 12 trucks, part of which had been supplied by military headquarters and part by the city administration of Zhitomir. After the transport had been carried out and the necessary preparations made with the help of 150 prisoners, 3,145 Jews were registered and shot.

After 25-30 tons of linen, clothing, shoes, dishes, etc. that had been confiscated in the course of the action were handed over to the officials of the NSV in Zhitomir for distribution. Valuables and money were conveyed to the Sonderkommando 4a.

The third example, Lutsk, was a reprisal shooting described in Operational Situation Report USSR No. 24:

On July 2 the corpses of 10 German Wehrmacht soldiers were found. In retaliation, 1160 Jews were shot by the Ukrainians with the help of one platoon of the police and one platoon of the infantry.

The fourth example, the massacre at Kamienets-Podilsky [or Kamenets-Podolsk], involved the killing of 23,600 Jews, many of whom had been expelled from Hungary. As Angrick notes:

Their fate was sealed in a meeting headed by the Quartermaster-General Wagner and the Chief of Military Administration Schmidt von Altenstadt; otherwise, the main topic discussed at the session was the transfer of the territory under military rule to the civil administration of the Reich Commissariat Ukraine. The Higher Police and SS Leader Friedrich Jeckeln (responsible for the rear lines of communication in Army Area South and the Reich Commissariat Ukraine), who did not attend the meeting, had hastily offered to solve the “problem” for all concerned by promising to “liquidate” the Jews by September 1. None of the participants objected.

The notes of this meeting, with a full list of participants, are preserved as Nuremberg document PS-197 and can be viewed here.

The final example, Babi Jar, has already been discussed in detail by Sergey in this blog. I will add four points. Firstly, the massacre was arranged in a meeting between "Jeckeln, Blobel and the city commandant, Kurt Eberhard of FK 195" (Pohl, p.35). Secondly, as Sergey's extract showed, Wehrmacht approval was noted in Operational Situation Report USSR No. 106. Thirdly, the massacre may have been pre-determined by food supply and housing shortage considerations (Gerlach, Kalkulierte Mord, p.595). Fourthly, the the ultimate Jewish death toll for Babi Jar shootings may have been higher than 33,000. Pohl (p.65n.) cites Wila Orbach (1976), "The Destruction of the Jews in the Nazi-Occupied Territories of the USSR", pp.39f., as citing a figure up to 50,000. Kruglov, on page 278 of the same book as the Pohl essay, gives a figure of 64,000 for Jews killed in the Kiev oblast in 1941.

In addition to these five major examples, some other killings with Wehrmacht involvement, noted by Pohl, can be summarized. On June 30th, a pogrom took place in Lviv after, as noted here:

The 17th Army Command...suggested the use first of all of the anti-Jewish and anti-Communist Poles living in the newly-occupied areas for self-cleansing activities.

On 3rd November in Myrohod, 168 Jews were shot by 62nd Infantry (Pohl, p.39). In Kharkov, in December, a census initiated by AOK 6 found 10,271 Jews. These were mostly killed in Drobytsky Yar ravine while a few hundred died in a gas van.

In conclusion, therefore, Wehrmacht documentation poses another problem for Holocaust deniers. There is simply so much of this material, found across a range of archives, which converges on one conclusion, that the number of people that a 'conspiracy' would have required becomes even more absurd to contemplate. The Wehrmacht is a massive source of contemporary perpetrator information that leaves no doubt that a genocide was being committed in the USSR.