Russian and Russian territory, the great majority of Jews had already been
murdered in 1941. According to an official census, 22,267 Jews still lived in the
territory at the beginning of 1942, mostly in labour camps and remote towns. In
this military administrative area the murders were continued throughout the
whole of the winter and during the spring. By around the middle of the year
almost all the ghettos had been liquidated; the last ghetto to be exterminated in
this way was probably the one in Smolensk, where around 2,000 people were
killed on 15 July 1942. After this date, in the military administrative area Centre,
there were only a few thousand Jews who lived in camps or were hiding in the
woods. These murders were carried out in particular by Einsatzkommandos 8 and
9, supported by the Order Police and Wehrmacht units. Thus in February alone,
according to a report, Wehrmacht troops killed 2,200 ‘Jews (Bolsheviks)’. The
sequence of actions was generally agreed with the leaders of the army rear area
and the local garrisons. 182
In the rear area of Army Group South, that is eastern Ukraine, there was a
similar picture. Here too the mass murders continued throughout the winter of
346
Extermination of the European Jew, 1942–1945
1941/2, in Charkov, for example, where on 16 December the liquidation of
12,000–15,000 Jews began, in Stalino (now Donetsk) on 9 January, or in Zaporozhe
at the end of March. Early in the spring the majority of the Jews living in this
territory had been shot. The murders were substantially carried out by Sonder-
kommandos 4 and 5 of Einsatzgruppe C, again supported by the Order Police.
In the Ukraine, too, the mass executions were generally carried out in agreement
with the local Wehrmacht authorities, and in this territory too Wehrmacht units,
particularly the Secret Field Police, engaged independently in the shooting of
Jews. 183 Little is known about the murder of Jews in the rear area of Army Group North, Russian territory south of Leningrad. Here, the Security Police were present
in relatively low numbers (sub-units of Commandos 1a and 1b). 184
To the west, in the General Commissariat of White Ruthenia, abutting the
military administrative area Centre, the murder actions proceeded in a different
manner. Here the murder campaigns almost came to a standstill around the turn
of 1941/2. This had variously to do with the frozen ground that made it impossible
to dig pits to bury the victims—an explanation that is plainly not sound, as the
continuation of the shootings in the military administrative area during the winter
shows: either the ground was blown up, or already existing pits were used.
A second reason repeatedly given for the decline in shooting actions appears
more plausible; the civil administration did not want to lose the specialist workers,
who were urgently needed.
In spite of these difficulties, the KdS (Commander of the Security Police) for
Minsk stressed at a meeting of the administrative heads of the General Commis-
sariat of White Ruthenia on 23 January 1942 that the goal of the ‘complete
liquidation’ of the Jews was still being pursued. He thus promised, in the following
spring, to ‘relaunch the large-scale executions’. 185 At this point the KdS of White Ruthenia believed there was a realistic prospect of ‘liquidating’ the ‘Jewish question’ within his area of responsibility within two months. 186
For the months of January and February there are only—somewhat dubious—
references to two actions in Minsk in which up to 3,000 people may have been
shot. 187 In March there were mass executions above all in the area of Vileyka, namely in Vileyka itself, in Ilya, Krasne, Rakov, and Radoschkowicze (Radoszyce),
and also—outside this area—in Lida, Baranowicze, and Slutzk as well as in Kopyl.
In this way more than 8,000 people were murdered in March. 188
In the large ghettos that had been set up after the murder of the majority of the
Jewish population in the General Commissariats of Lithuania and Latvia, the
situation remained relatively quiet in 1942. There were few large massacres. This
did not apply, however, to the area around Riga. Between February and April 1942,
in the Riga ghetto and the Jungfernhof camp, some 5,000 people were selected in a
number of actions as ‘unfit for work’ and transported out in motor vehicles—
supposedly to a new camp near Dünamünde, actually to the Bikernieki Forest,
where they were shot. 189
Extermination on a European Scale, 1942
347
At a meeting of the General Commissars held by Reichskommissar Ostland
(Baltic states) on 26 March, a certain perplexity was expressed about the future
course of the anti-Jewish policy. There was general agreement that ‘the Jewish
question must be resolved clearly and urgently’. However, the following sentence
in the minutes suggests that in the meantime mass executions were no longer seen
as the solution: ‘It is felt to be regrettable that the method employed hitherto,
however much it might represent a political liability for us, has for the time being
been abandoned.’ However, Generalkommissar Kube’s following suggestion
that the liquidation should be effected ‘in accordance with correct procedures
[korrekter]’ shows that they did not generally wish to abandon this means. It
was agreed that the solution did not lie in ceasing to distribute food to the Jews, as
was happening at the time. 190
In April the occupying forces in the area of Vileyka carried out two further
mass executions in Dohyno with 800 and 1,200 victims respectively, another in
Krzywicze (Krzeszowice) (400 fatalities), and on 1 April 1,200 Jews were mur-
dered in Kopyl, 191 as well as various murders in Minsk with at least 500
fatalities. 192 The KdS Minsk reported that his department had killed 1,894 Jews in April alone. 193 In spite of these mass murders, however, in April 1942 the number of massacres and murder victims in White Ruthenia declined in
comparison with the previous months.
In May 1942, however, the murders resumed systematically and on a large scale;
plainly the intensified murderous activities coincided with a visit by Heydrich to
Minsk, which appears to have occurred in April. 194 While, on 11 May, the KdS Minsk demanded that the Gendarmerie throughout the whole of the General Commissariat
supply summary statistical data about the Jewish communities, under the heading
‘Selection of Jewish specialist workers’, the murder of the great majority of the Jews
still living there, organized according to a plan by the Security Police and the civil
administration, had already begun on 8 May. Over the following five days more than
16,000 Jews were shot in all the ghettos in the area. 195
This action was the starting point for the extension of the murder actions to all
areas of the occupied territory of White Russia. In the district of Glebokie an EK
9 unit and other agencies murdered at least 12,000 Jews between 29 May and
20 June. 196 From May onwards, the branch of the SD in Vileyka, which took part in numerous mass murders even outside its area of responsibility, intensified the
programme of mass murders that had resumed in March, and had murdered
more than 5,000 people there by the end of September. 197 At the begin
ning of 1943
only 3,000 Jewish artisans were still living in the area of Vileyka. 198
In the district of Slutzk, where two actions had been carried out in Slutzk and
Kopyl as early as the end of March, further massacres took place between May and
August. 199 In Slonim the ghetto was liquidated on 29 June, and 7,000 people were murdered. In the weeks that followed there were also further massacres in the area
of Slonim with thousands of fatalities. In September the district commissar,
348
Extermination of the European Jew, 1942–1945
Gerhard Erren, stated that of 25,000 Jews originally living in his area only around
500 remained. 200 In the district of Novogrodek, at least 2,900 Jews were shot in various places between April and June, and more than 8,000 in early August in
Novogrodek and other localities. 201 In the district of Hansewitschi (Hancewicze) almost 2,000 people were shot in Lenin on 14 August. 202
In the district of Baranowicze—after a first major ‘action’ in Mir in March or
April—mass executions were carried out in July and August in the towns of
Kletzk, Lachowicze, Gorodeya, Moltschad, in Mir again, and in various other
places, killing at least 7,000 people. Further executions occurred in September
and October in Baranowicze, Gorodicze, Polonka, and Stolpce. According to the
district commissar, in 1942 a total of 23,000 people were murdered in this
region. 203 In Minsk, between 28 and 31 July about 10,000 people were killed, apart from White Russian Jews also 3,500 ghetto inhabitants who had been
transported from Central Europe. 204 In the last few weeks of the year further mass murders took place in the district of Glebokie, leading to over 7,000
victims, in Baranawicze, Dvorzec, Slonim (where the last surviving 500 Jews
were murdered), and in Novogrodek. 205
At the end of July, Commissar General Wilhelm Kube drew up an initial record
of the massacres, when he reported to Reichskommissar Hinrich Lohse, ‘in the last
10 weeks we have liquidated about 55,000 Jews’. 206 The ‘we’ makes clear the extent to which the civil administration had also shouldered the task of the mass
murders.
Between December 1941 and mid-May 1942, unlike the murders that con-
tinued uninterrupted in the military administrative area of Army Group
South, which abutted the Commissariat on the east, only relatively few mas-
sacres are documented within the sphere of the Ukraine Reich Commissariat
and most of those may be attributed to local initiatives. One exception to this
was the area of Vinnitsa in the General District of Zhitomir, where it was
planned to locate Hitler’s field headquarters. All the Jews were gradually
murdered in a designated high-security area. By 10 January, 227 Jews from
Strishavka had been shot, and on 10 April, according to the report of the Reich
Security Service, which was responsible for cordoning off the new headquar-
ters, ‘4,800 Jews were killed in Vinnitsa’. In July the remaining 1,000 unskilled
workers were murdered. 207 The massacre of the Jews of Chmelnik, 120 km from Vinnitsa, to which we may assume that 8,000 people fell victim, may be
connected to this development. 208
In February and March 1942, the last surviving Jews in the General Commis-
sariat of Nikolayev were murdered. The Commissar General reported on 1 April
that there were ‘no Jews or half-Jews left’ in the district. 209 In April 1942, in the District Commissariat of Dunayevzny (General Commissariat of Volhynien-Podolien), according to a Soviet Commission report, 2,000 Jews are alleged to
have been driven into a phosphorus mine that was then blown up. According to
Extermination on a European Scale, 1942
349
these documents, mass shootings are also supposed to have taken place there in
the spring of 1942. 210
In the other areas of the Reich Commissariat Ukraine, however, the focus
of Judenpolitik, as pursued by the civil administration between December and
April, was on the formation of ghettos. At a meeting of the Reich East Ministry on
10 March 1942 the temporary continuing engagement of Jewish artisans and
skilled workers was confirmed. 211
However, as in the General Commissariat of White Ruthenia, the Reich
Commissariat of the Ukraine began a new wave of murders which led in the
summer to the total extermination of the Jewish population in the Reich
Commissariat. This wave of murders began around 20 May in the General
Commissariat of Wolhynien-Podolien (Volhynia-Podolia), where massacres
occurred in, among other places, Dubno (27 May, with at least 4,000 fatalities)
Korec (21 May). 212 On 27 May, in the General Commissariat of Zhitomir, there were simultaneous massacres in several places in the district of Gaissin, namely
in Teplick (769 victims), Ternovka (2,300), and Sobolevka (several hundred
victims). The local garrison of Gaissin, the local police, the Vinnitsa branch of
the KdS, and Hungarian soldiers were all involved in these massacres. 213 In Monastyrishch, also in the General Commissariat of Zhitomir, some 3,000 Jews
were shot towards the end of May. 214
At the beginning of June, in the General Commissariat of Volhynia-Podolia
there followed massacres in Kovel (Kowel) with some 5,000 victims, 215 as well as, immediately afterwards, in Luck. 216 The murders were also extended to the General Commissariats of Kiev and Nikolayev. However, information for these
two regions is sparse.
We have the following information for the General Commissariat of Kiev: in
June 1942 1,500 Jewish residents of Zvenigorodka (Swenigorodka) were mur-
dered. 217 There are also reports from Schuma Batl. 117 about ‘a major “Jewish action” in Shpola (Schpola)’, also in the District Commissariat of Zvenigorodka,
which lasted from 13 until 17 May 1942. This was evidently the liquidation of the
ghetto. 218
In the General Commissariat of Nikolyev (Nikolajew), in the village of Stalindorf
(district of Kherson), the elderly Jewish men and women who had survived the first
wave of murders were killed. 219 In Ingulec in the General Commissariat of Dnepropetrovsk, according to a Soviet Commission report, on the night of
10 June some 1,800 people, mostly Jews, were shot. 220
As in White Ruthenia the murders were intensified again in July. On 13 and
14 July, the KdS of Rovno, who was responsible for Volhynia-Podolia, along
with other units, murdered all the 5,000 Jews still living in the city. On 27 and
28 July, 5,673 Jews from Olyka and the surrounding areas, the entire Jewish
population, were shot. In Berdichev in the General Commissariat of Zhitomir
the members of the KdS outstation murdered the last Jews living there, at least
350
Extermination of the European Jew, 1942–1945
300, on 15/16 July 1942.221 The escalation of the murders since July corresponded to developments in the General Government. On 19 July, Himmler had ordered
the extermination of the Jewish population there by the end of the year, and
after 22 July the deportations began from the Warsaw ghetto—5,000 people per
day—to Treblinka extermination camp.
From the end of August 1942 the murders in the Ukraine became even more
widespread and systematized; the goal was now the complete extermination of the
Jewish population.
At the meeting of the district commissars in Luck, held between 28 and
31
August, the representatives of the civil administration agreed with the KdS
that, during the coming five weeks, they would kill all the Jews in the General
Commissariat of Volhynia-Podolia with the exception of 500 skilled workers.
During this meeting, Reichskommisar Koch’s deputy gave an assurance that
these ‘hundred per cent cleansings’ were ‘also the emphatic wish of the Reichs-
kommissar’. 222 This ‘wish’ on Koch’s part may also have had something to do with the fact that he had just had higher delivery quotas imposed upon him by
Berlin. 223 Shortly before the conference, between 19 and 23 August, about 15,000
Jews had been murdered in the city.
After this massacre the occupying power systematically set to work on the
General Commissariats of Volhynia-Podolia and Zhitomir murdering county by
county almost all the Jews still living there.
The murders in Volhynia-Podolia are comparatively well documented. The
Pinsk out-station 9 of the SD played a considerable role in the destruction of the
ghettos in the District Commissariats of Pinsk and Stolin, most of which had been
set up in the spring of 1942. The shootings themselves were carried out by the
SD. 224 They were supported by the district commissars, the Gendarmerie, local auxiliary police, as well as several police battalions. The biggest of these massacres
took place in Pinsk in late October/early November and cost far more than 15,000
people their lives, perhaps even more than 26,000. The destruction of the ghetto
had been ordered by Himmler at short notice. 225
After this the first ghetto to be destroyed in August was the one in Mokrov, in
which 280–300 people were shot. On 3 September 1942 the ghettos in Kozan-
grodek and Lakhva were destroyed. During the night of 2/3 September the 500
inhabitants of the ghetto in Kozangrodek were shot. Then the execution com-
mando squad of Pinsk SD travelled to the neighbouring town of Lakhva and
murdered 500, possibly 2,000 people there.
On 18 September, during the liquidation of the Luniniec ghetto between 1,000
and 2,800 people were murdered. In the period between 9 and 12 September 1942,
the ghettos in the department of Stolin were destroyed, with 8,000 to 10,000
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