“After having been on site for almost two hours, Reindel, satisfied with what he saw, shook the directors’ hands, saluted all the others with a hand gesture so as not to interrupt them in their work, smiled, said something else, and left by car to return to Kamaniets-Podilsky. The shooting continued.”
The comportment of the men in charge of the shooting only amplifies the break with humanity that was revealed at the ditches: some laughed, some encouraged the killers in their work, some clubbed the victims, and others watched. The crime, with its combination of rationality, violence, blows, meals for the killers, encouragements, and greetings from the chiefs, all of it will effectively be over at noon.
The Search
That includes searching through the pockets and hems of the murdered Jews’ clothing, collecting their jewelry, and the filling in of the ditch by requisitioned villagers. All this within eight hours.
It can nauseate you and make your head spin to think of the unity of the human species coordinating its actions at the side of a ditch. This was the method. Orders raining down for the tightest timing, absolute violence authorized and encouraged in the name of murderous efficiency and productivity, constrained by the short time frame of a half day or a day in a Soviet village.
The Jews were not sheep. They ran because of the murderous blows raining down. To the laughter and encouragement of the chiefs.
I cannot forget another deposition that I read years earlier. It tells the story of a German who also used the term “method.” And it is so violent that I wish I could forget it.
It concerned the execution of the Jewish people of Sdolbunov, in Ukraine. A certain Wacker helps to round up the Jews. He talks about a method for avoiding delays. Here again, the term masks repellent facts.
“I can still remember the Aktion at Sdolbunov on October 13, 1942. I saw the way Wacker opened the door and pulled someone out. It was an old woman, with a small child in her arms, who tried to defend herself, saying, “Leave me, Herr Kommissar!” Wacker grabbed the child by the legs, swung him around several times and then hit his head against the doorpost. It sounded like an exploding tire. When the child was dead, the inhabitants of the house came out without any resistance, completely resigned. I heard how Wacker said to his comrades: ‘It’s the best method, we just have to understand this.’”7
To smash a child’s head against a doorjamb thus became the method to eat on time. How many times have I heard witnesses describe with horror these same acts to effect the brutal murder of Jewish children!
Zaloga and Walter both leave out a category of people always present at these crimes: the neighbors, the spectators. It is because of these thousands of ordinary Soviet people, forgotten in most archives, that I decided to investigate their method. Because the Jewish babies, the Jewish women, the Jewish fathers and grandfathers murdered and thrown into ditches were human beings. Like us.
The End of the Killers’ Day
Very often for the killers, the day isn’t over yet; it ends when they return to the town from which they set out the day before. And that evening, there is a party, with plenty of alcohol accompanied by criticism or praise from their chiefs. Here again, the German depositions are about congratulations for having followed the process.
In Slonim, for example, the killers returned on time. Then the “process” was evaluated.
“At eight o’clock, everyone came back from where they’d been. There was a meeting with the Gebietskommissar,8 in which they discussed the entire process for the whole day. A lot of praise was given out; the weak were reprimanded and told to do better in the future…. After that in the meeting, they drank and celebrated. The total dead for the day was between four and eight thousand Jews, men, women, and children.”9
The evening event resembles a professional debriefing. But the work in question is nothing other than mass murder. The chiefs congratulate those who remained professional during the murder of thousands of Jewish human beings. Then there is alcohol and a party.
Tomorrow will be another day of genocide.
Zaloga could have stopped there. However, he goes on to deviate from his professional narrative. He departs from it not through inadvertence but quite deliberately, when he describes the collection of the Jews’ goods and the personal thefts committed by the Germans at the scene of the crime, at the ditches and in public. Suddenly, the Germans’ private life intrudes on the account of the crime.
“Under the direction of a German employee of SD, three to four Schutzmann started to shake out and inspect all the clothes and shoes of the victims. It was mostly the clothes they combed through, under the watchful eyes of other SD men. They followed this procedure because in folds, under linings, in the belts of pants, you could find coins and gold objects, bills (dollars, marks, ten-ruble Soviet bills), deeds for loans from the Soviet Union, and other documents. All this, along with lighters, pocketknives, leather pouches, cigars, and wallets, were put in a bag held by an SD man. The new things: dresses, scarves, boots, booties, coats, and cloth were taken by the Germans who ripped them out of one another’s hands while swearing at each other. Then they packed up these things and sent them back to their homes or gave them as presents to their ‘panienka.’10 For example, I know that the Kommandantur’s former cleaning lady, a certain Vera Dounina, was the mistress of the chief of police in Kamaniets-Podilsky, Lieutenant Jakob. On his recommendation, she was hired as a translator at police headquarters, the prison, and the work exchange. She lived in a two-room apartment and had clothing that used to belong to the Jews. I personally saw her wearing a scarf and a dress that Lieutenant Jakob had taken after the shooting of the Jewish population in Kamaniets-Podilsky in November 1942.”
Sleaze comingles with horror. Starting on the day after the execution, certain villagers were dressed as Jews! In his deposition, Zaloga isn’t shy about naming the girlfriends who benefitted from the Germans’ favors and who wore, for all to see, the scarves of the women murdered by their beaux.
Zaloga resumes his narrative, explaining that some of the requisitioned people, especially the ditch fillers, were also rewarded with clothes.
“Once all the clothes were examined, and all the objects of value had been put into the SD chief’s car, the chief allowed the Schutzmann and the peasants who had dug and filled the ditches to each take between four and six items. All the other things were loaded into trucks and taken to a warehouse or to the cooperative in Staraïa Ouchitsa, and, as I learned later, were sold to the local population. The Jewish houses, along with their furniture, were also sold to the local population. In short, everything they owned. However, some of the furniture was graciously given to the Kreislandwirt,11 to the chief of the district, and to the chiefs of police and the border guards.”
Zaloga describes the auction and the public sale of everything that wasn’t taken by the Germans, officially or covertly. The theft of goods for personal use, especially women’s clothing, at the crime scene, begs to be more broadly studied. It seems to sully the account of the method. It was as though, suddenly, the personal interest and greed of each killer, of his wife or local girlfriend, reemerged at the end of the day. It’s as if, suddenly, Himmler’s men were no longer just men obeying orders; obedience hadn’t obliterated their humanity as thugs guilty of crimes like property theft from those they had just murdered. As if the murderers suddenly revealed themselves as the most unsavory of human beings.
After the trial, Zaloga was condemned to death for high treason. Here is the verdict.
In the name of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
July 29, 1944
The Military Tribunal of the NKVD for the region of Kamaniets-Podilsky, held in the town of Kamaniets-Podilsky … without the presence of the accused and the defense, has examined in a closed hearing the affair of the accused Zaloga Fiodor Aleksandrovitch, born in 1906 in Stalino, of Ukrainian nationality, former member of the Ukrainian Communist Party, higher education unfinished, married, with a clean police record, acc
used of crimes as described by Part 1 of the Presidium decree of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of April 19, 1943.
The Tribunal has condemned Zaloga Fiodor Aleksandrovitch … to death by firing squad and confiscation of all goods belonging to him.
The sentence was carried out a few months later, on November 30, 1944, in Kamaniets-Podilsky.
Neither Zaloga nor the KGB could have ever known that they would allow us, through their depositions and their verdicts, to understand the nature of “the method.”
Conclusion
THE PHOTOGRAPHER
Berlin, January 2015
It is cold, or rather I am cold inside. I go down the three steps at the entrance to the German-Russian Museum in Berlin-Karlshorst. This is where, on May 9, 1945, the surrender of the Third Reich to the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union was signed. The signing room appears intact: sober tables, simple blue tablecloths each decorated with four small flags, and, displayed in metal cases, the yellowed pages of the surrender that put an end to one of history’s most abominable and massive crimes: the Second World War.
I’m moved. I have been to Berlin several times, but this is the first time I’ve been inside the immense, empty rooms of this museum, which today is maintained by Germany, Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. All the texts are in Russian and German. I was particularly shaken by a display case containing the uniform of a Soviet prisoner of war. My grandfather’s face comes back to me.
I am most touched by a temporary exhibit, on the second floor, of the work of a German photographer from one of the PK companies, the commando squads that followed the German units. A short film that shows the hanging of a young Belarusian girl dressed in white keeps passing before my eyes.
It was on the steps of this museum in Berlin that I recalled March 22, 2008, in Belarus. There, for the first time, I had found evidence of one of these photographers of genocide.
It was at the beginning of our investigations in that country. From our first steps on Belarusian soil, I tried to understand what I was seeing; the red flags, Marx and Lenin, the giant red effigy of the hammer and sickle on the outskirts of the airport in Minsk, the kolkhozes with their immense stables full of dairy cows. One of the last remaining Communist countries.
As we conducted our investigations, I learned as much as I ever had in my history courses on the Soviet Union about the execution of the Jews by the Fascists.
On that March 22, I was with the entire team in the small village of Prozoroki, not far from Vitebsk, the pretty regional capital. The wind was blowing so hard that sometimes I could hardly hear the words of Tadeouch, a very tall villager in a turtleneck sweater and checked cap, blessed with a memory that seemed prodigious to me.
This witness, interviewed seven years before the time of this writing, has stayed fixed in my memory as though he were the first one. He clearly described the Soviet deportations of villagers before the arrival of the Germans, the shootings of the Belarusian partisans by the Germans, and, of course, the shootings of the Jews that he had seen.
His testimony surprised me. Almost immediately, he wanted to explain to us in his hoarse voice who the polizei were. His words fell, precise and relentless. He got straight to the point in describing the active role of these “local auxiliaries” on the day of the murder of their Jewish neighbors. This was uncommon.
Many witnesses are generally ill-at-ease when it comes to discussing the presence of local police by the ditches. Tadeouch, on the contrary, talked often about the polizei, even going so far as to name them.
“Just after their arrival here, the Germans created a police force. The people who joined up with the police first were the ones who didn’t like the Communists. Everywhere in Belarus, there were people who had suffered under the Bolsheviks. When the Germans came, these victims went into the police and took advantage of the situation to get revenge.”
Tadeouch wasn’t content to just talk about this; above all, he wanted to make us understand that in his village the polizei played more than a supporting role in the shooting of the Jews.
“They wore a black uniform with green stripes. They were paid fifty marks and given food rations. I remember that some of them, like Sklimovski and Logoch, who had participated in the shooting of the Jews, took great pleasure in counting by the dozens the Jews they had personally shot.”
I tried to keep a noncommittal expression, sensing that maybe he was going to share something unexpected with us: “What was required to become a policeman? What agency did one apply to become a policeman?”
“All you had to do was put in an application with the police. It’s interesting that, after the German retreat in 1945, all these applications fell into the hands of the Russians. This facilitated their search for collaborators. After the war, many of them took refuge in Poland. But since Poland became Communist, the applications could be used to find people there, too. The ones who had been in the police but hadn’t done anything bad weren’t arrested either here or in Poland. However, those who shot Jews were sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. They deserved it.”
He finally got to the murder of the Jews.1
“Yes, there were Jews here. They shot the inhabitants of what was called the mestetchko.2 Then they also shot the few Jewish families who lived near the Zagatie3 station, which is about fifteen kilometers [eight miles] from here, as well as the inhabitants of a Jewish village near the station of Ziabki,4 six kilometers [three miles] from here. The Jews from these three villages were brought here and locked in the school…. The Jews spent the night in the school, and the next day they shot them.”
I kept listening, waiting. Patience is often the key to a successful interview. As in many villages, carts, horses, and grooms were requisitioned here.
“There were a lot of inhabitants here, and almost all of them owned a cart and a horse. The Germans had given orders to the soltys to procure them ten to twenty carts that had to be kept ready at a stopping point near the local administration. Eventually, they were accompanied by a German and a translator who translated the orders: ‘Come on, let’s go!’ The place is located near the local administrative building and police headquarters. They were told where they had to show up. Everybody knew this spot.”
Were they summoned early in the morning?
“Yes. They had been given a precise hour at which to be at the stoïka. Later, they were told what they had to do, to transport things. They needed means of transport.”
He came back to the polizei: “And on the day of the shooting, there were police everywhere: they were in the fields, blocking the roads.”
But if, today, in the wide frozen streets of Berlin, I still remember the biting cold of Prozoroki, the dark color of its freshly turned earth, the grayish thickets off to the sides, it’s because Tadeouch was the first to put me on the trail of the German photographers.
December 6, 1941, on the day of the crime, the Germans were not firing, they were taking photographs. Tadeouch told it very simply, as though it were obvious, even though I hadn’t suspected it. To investigate a genocidal crime is also to make accidental discoveries. The interview continued as follows.
“Were there many shooters: two, three, five?”
“It was mostly policemen…. There were only three men from the Gestapo, who were members of the punitive detachment and wore insignias of skulls on their helmets and sleeves. These men were only taking photos for their report.”
“How many shooters were there?”
“People said that Sendr and Logoch,5 who were particularly eager, counted the number of people they had personally shot by the dozens. They were considered models to emulate.”
“When they took photos, were they far from the ditch or up close?”
“They got up close to the ditch…. Our neighbors told us that after the shooting, when they started to fill in the ditch, they saw the Gestapo and the police drinking and smoking in the bushes.”
I recall having looked at the bushe
s where the drunken Germans had hung up their cameras on the evening of the crime. There, over to the left, the ditch, the shooters, the polizei, and here, on the right, the Germans who were taking photographs.
Six years later, here in Berlin, as I get silently into the car that will take me to the airport, I remember the topography of the crime that was photographed in Prozoroki.
I had already seen, studied, and understood the importance of photographs in the crimes against the Jews. I especially recall having combed the streets of Lwow to find the spots where a photographer had stood and asking Guillaume to put his lens at the same angle.
In certain images, nothing had changed, not a tree, not a window, not a train track. Only the Jews and the photographers had disappeared.
It is one thing to use photographs in an investigation; it is another, for me, to rediscover the placement and actions of the photographers at the edge of the ditches. To retrace the steps of these Germans who, either as members of propaganda teams or simply for their own benefit, took the time to immortalize the scene while the Jews were agonizing in their grave. Since then, we have discovered other photographers, most notably in the villages of Lithuania.
Before Prozoroki, my team would try to figure out where the Jewish victims, the German murderers, the auxiliary police, and the neighbors were all positioned. Now we also ask “the neighbors” where the photographer stood.
Thus, the crime against the Jews was sometimes very public: public for the villagers, public for Germans in movie theaters, and public for families who received a snapshot, a trophy from their beloved criminal. The question only grows more insistent: how can a mass crime that is openly displayed and exhibited like a scene at a fair, and so often photographed, remain so little known?
In Broad Daylight Page 24