Brest Sources - Part 3: Domachevo

Domachevo, a spa town 25 miles south of Brest, had 3,316 Jewish inhabitants in February 1942, according to a German document cited by Dean in this collection (p.259). The fate of most of these Jews was documented in a Gendarmerie report dated October 6, 1942:

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On September 19-20, 1942, an anti-Jewish Aktion was carried out in Domachevo and Tomashovka by a special commando of the SD together with the cavalry squadron of the Gendarmerie and the local police stationed in Domachevo, and in total, some 2,900 Jews were shot. The action took place without any disturbance (cited in Dean, p.259).

This massacre is especially notable in three respects. Firstly, as Browning (p.138) summarizes, the Stadtkommissar for Brest, Franz Burat, wrote a response to the massacre which indicated that he and his SS counterpart, Rohde, were still making futile attempts to retain Jews for essential work in Brest:

Burat noted that the "sudden liquidation" of the Jews of Domachevo and Tomashovka had caused "profound distress" among the Jews of Brest who strove desperately "to prove their indispensability" through "a model organization of Jewish workshops."

Burat continued:

I must unconditionally plead for the retention of the most needed artisans and manpower.

These pleadings were, of course, in vain, as Burat and Rohde would be forced to implement the killing orders for the Brest ghetto issued by their superiors in October.

Secondly, the murders included the slaughter of Jewish children from an orphanage, whose clothes were then handed to ethnic German children attending a kindergarten in Domachevo (Dean, p.259; citing Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, p.1,075). A monument to these children and their teacher can be seen here.

Thirdly, Domachevo was the subject of a historic British war crimes trial held in 1999, which was the first trial in British legal history during which the jury was taken overseas to the scene of the crime. The defendant, Anthony Sawoniuk, was given two life sentences, upheld on appeal, for murdering two Jewish women during a hunt for survivors of the massacre.

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 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.