"Here They Go Again for Gassing" - Nazi Euthanasia in German Documents

On 16 May 1941, the Higher Regional Court President of Frankfurt, Arthur Ungewitter, reported to the Reichs Minister of Justice on what the population in the area talked about the "extermination of unworthy life":

The children are said to shout "here they go again for gassing" when they spot "the vehicles with which the sick are taken...to the liquidation institutes". It is also told that the victims are brought to a "gas room, where they would be liquidated with hydrogen cyanide and a numbing gas". Note that the actual killing agent was carbon monoxide gas, although hydrogen cyanide was another candidate considered for the Nazi Euthanasia and possibly tested earlier, in 1939, in Fort VII in Posen (see also Sonderkommando Lange in German Documents: Euthanasia 1940/41).

DOCUMENT

American Knowledge of Grafeneck in 1940

Back in 2009, I posted this New York Times article from 1999, which had explained how Vice Consul Paul H. Dutko in Leipzig had cabled the the American Embassy in Berlin and the State Department in Washington about killings in Grafeneck. The NYT article also cited a "Feb. 23, 1940, memorandum to Secretary of State Cordell Hull from Assistant Secretary Adolf A. Berle Jr." noting "reports from the embassy in Berlin that Jews were being sent to ''unnamed concentration camps'' in Poland." Below I post a highly relevant document, casting light on these matters, which I have scanned from the NARA collection, Records of the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees, 1938-1947, which is available to me here via the Gale Digital Collections resource, Archives Unbound.

On Mattogno's Hallucination That von dem Bach-Zelewski's Extended Testimony on the Minsk Shooting Is a Jewish Forgery

In a handwritten post-war manuscript, the former Higher SS and Police Leader for Central Russia Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski briefly mentioned the show mass shooting carried out by Einsatzgruppe B on 15 August 1941 for the Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler in Minsk (NARA Record Group 238, M1270/1/111, p. 41, see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Page five from a declaration of von dem Bach-Zelewski on the "persecution of Jews".

The mass execution was also reported by numerous other witnesses. From a historiographic point of view, what is most significant in von dem Bach-Zelewski's account is that he described how after the shooting and visiting of a mental asylum in Minsk (which are both confirmed by Himmler's appointment diary) Himmler ordered the Einsatzgruppen B leader Arthur Nebe "to make use of a more human method of killing" on the mentally ill people, which links the incident to the subsequent mass killing trials with explosives and poison gas in asylums in Minsk and Mogilev. The connection between the events is supported by von dem Bach-Zelewski's own documented activity on the next day to get a demonstration of the mobile carbon monoxide gas chamber of Sonderkommando Lange (for obvious reasons, he kept quiet about this in his post-war testimony).

A more vivid and detailed description of the Minsk shooting by von dem Bach-Zelewski was published on 23 August 1946 in the German-Jewish newspaper Aufbau (Figure 2). The account is somewhat more general with respect to the scope of Himmler's order following the mass execution and asylum visit. He considered that "shooting is not the most human method", ordered Nebe "to think about it and submit a report based on the experiences made" and agreed to try explosives on mentally ill people in Minsk.

Figure 2: Aufbau, volume 12, issue 34, p. 2.

But if it were according to the Holocaust denier Carlo Mattogno, von dem Bach-Zelewski's account in Aufbau is a forgery based on his more brief statement from the NARA Record Group 238:

"This anecdote appeared on 23 August 1946 in the New York Jewish newspaper Der [sic!] Aufbau as part of a statement attributed to von dem Bach-Zelewski, but its contents had been massively manipulated by the editorial staff of the newspaper, as is apparent from a comparison with the original statement of this SS officer."

(Mattogno, Inside the Gas Chambers, 2nd edition, p. 58)

Unfortunately for Mattogno, this is rubbish. Upon systematically searching the Yad Vashem Archives digital collection of Yitzhak Stone, who "was a senior aid to the American prosecutor in the Nazi War Crimes Trials at Nuremberg" for interesting material for the blog (and there sure is, so stay tuned), I stumbled across the English translation of an undated, 60 pages long "declaration von dem Bach" (YVA, O.18/90, p. 20ff.). The declaration contains amongst other things also the passages reproduced in German in Aufbau (Figure 3).

German Footage of a Homicidal Gassing with Engine Exhaust. Part 6: Forgery Allegation

German Footage of a Homicidal Gassing with Engine Exhaust

Part 1: Provenance

Part 2: Location

Part 3: Responsibility (I)

Part 4: Responsibility (II)

Part 5: Responsibility (III)

Part 6: Forgery Allegation

Part 7: Tactical Symbol & Homicidal Gas Van 

The Mogilev homicidal gassing footage discussed in the previous parts has been subjected to doubts about its authenticity. Interestingly, these were not limited to the usual suspects, but included a German public prosecutor investigating Nazi atrocities and Holocaust Museum staff. In any case, the suspicion that the footage was faked by the Allies is unsubstantiated in the light of the available evidence.

German Footage of a Homicidal Gassing with Engine Exhaust. Part 2: Location.

German Footage of a Homicidal Gassing with Engine Exhaust

 

Part 1: Provenance

Part 2: Location

Part 3: Responsibility (I)

Part 4: Responsibility (II)

Part 5: Responsibility (III)

Part 6: Forgery Allegation

Part 7: Tactical Symbol & Homicidal Gas Van 

Having established the gassing film's provenance we shall now take a look at the issue of where the film was shot.

Note: this post contains lots of images.

It is usually claimed that the scene depicts a gassing in Mogilev. However there were also some testimonies about similar early gassings elsewhere (Minsk), so we should make sure that we have the right location. In order to do this we should examine photos of the Mogilev psychiatric hospital, specifically of the location where the gassing is claimed to have taken place.

German Footage of a Homicidal Gassing with Engine Exhaust. Part 1: Provenance.

German Footage of a Homicidal Gassing with Engine Exhaust

Part 1: Provenance

Part 2: Location

Part 3: Responsibility (I)

Part 4: Responsibility (II)

Part 5: Responsibility (III)

Part 6: Forgery Allegation

Part 7: Tactical Symbol & Homicidal Gas Van 

 

The only known German footage of a homicidal gassing can be seen in the documentary Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today (1948), partially available, among other places, at USHMM's website, 0:44-1:21. The USHMM description reads:

CU pipes from a German police car bearing a license plate POL-28545 and a German police truck with license POL-51628 (as well as military unit markings: 7 circle-with-flag IX). Apparently metal piping is directed into the brick work of a small brick building, in an area that appears to be a bricked up window or door. Projected against the wall is what appears to be the shadow of a man in uniform. Five emaciated men pass on an open farm cart/wagon to a wooded location; a tall naked emaciated man and two emaciated children (different from those seen first) are led by a man and a woman in white lab coats to the building. Small red cross appears on man's white coat sleeve. The man and woman put blankets around the patients' shoulders as they are led toward the building (and over a child lying on the cart). A uniformed man - probably German - is visible in the background, along the fence, watching the scene. CU car and pipes connecting the car exhaust to the building. [Scene is consistent with descriptions of September 1941 experimental killings by Einsatzgruppe B of patients from a local asylum in the area of Mogilev, Belarus. Corresponding still images were used in evidence at the trial of Albert Widmann.]

The question of what the events on the tape correspond to will be addressed by Hans in parts 3 to 5 of this multi-part article. In this part we'll take a look at the issue of the provenance of this footage.