Anatomy of a Genocide

by Omer Bartov

  Yet Henriette also had extensive contacts with the local German police, including Peter Pahl. Initially she claimed that he “was always polite to me” and that she was “unaware of rumors in Buczacz about Pahl’s conduct toward the Jews.” Confronted with testimony by her former servant Friedländer, Henriette recalled that she had in fact berated “several gendarmes in the German gendarmerie building that it was not necessary to shoot down the Jews” (die Juden über den Haufen zu schießen). Kießling, the squad commander, had agreed with her, “repeatedly” saying “that what was being done to the Jews was not right.” But Pahl was in a very different state of mind. In fact, she admitted, he was “feared by the Jews in Buczacz”; her own “Jewish cleaning girls,” she now remembered, “often told me about this Pahl,” who “would strike Jews on the street or even Jews employed in the gendarmerie station with his whip.” Once, when she hosted the gendarmes in her home, Kießling again “agreed with me that one should not persecute the Jews,” while another gendarme argued that “had Hitler not persecuted the Jews, with their help the German Reich would have been larger than it had ever been.” But Pahl insisted “that when a Jew did not work fast enough one had to step in and give him a beating.”

  Henriette’s testimony gives us a glimpse into the surreal mix of horror and normality in German-ruled Buczacz. For close to three years it was the home of several German families, complete with wives and children, parents and lovers, catered to by a host of household servants and workers, many of them Jewish. These tidy German homes were an island of normality floating on an ocean of blood; one could peer out of the window and watch the horror, or chat about the killings over coffee and cake, card games and beer. Henriette recalled that when still living with her husband in a first-floor apartment facing the Strypa, they had lively social exchanges with Nazi higher-ups. Hermann Müller, the Gestapo chief from Tarnopol, was a welcome guest; after all, Henriette “too, just like my husband, had attended the same school” as Müller, who “came with his driver to visit us in Buczacz shortly after Christmas 1941–42” and again later “three or four times.” The Lissbergs in turn “often went to Tarnopol,” where Henriette “got to know several more Gestapo men.” Of course she knew “for certain” that Müller had “conducted execution actions” in the region; she had heard this from “the chairman of the Judenrat in Buczacz, Reich.” But none of that could dampen the renewed friendship between these old classmates.58

  Henriette Lissberg with Ukrainian policemen in the Buczacz police station’s courtyard, date unknown. Source: GLA-K 309 Zug. 2001-42/878-215.

  The bridge to the monastery and Fedor Hill overlooked by the Lissbergs’ apartment (with balcony), date unknown. Source: GLA-K 309 Zug. 2001-42/878-149, 224.

  Having already been exposed to numerous acts of violence on the streets of Buczacz, Henriette said that when she visited her husband in his training camp, he “dissuaded me from watching any more roundups.” But in fact it was impossible not to witness the killings in the city. One winter’s day, she testified, “my nursemaid Ursula Wolf came from the city and told me that a roundup was taking place, and that I should not let the children out of the house. One could also hear sporadic shots from the direction of the town.” Later in the afternoon, “I could observe the Jews being escorted up the hill past the Ukrainian police station and my house. I was standing by my door about sixty feet from the column of Jews.” The distance “to the actual execution site” was a mere “10–15 minute” walk “from my house.” There were “men, women, and children of all ages.” Once “the Jews reached the hill, one could hear shots.” Later that day, Henriette’s “maid noted that the tap water had a strange smell and appearance”; it turned out that “the water was polluted by the mass grave” on the hill, and residents were instructed “to use only soda water for the next few days.” This was the third action, of February 1943.

  View from the Lissbergs’ balcony of the market square with the Jewish cemetery hill in the background. Source: GLA-K 309 Zug. 2001-42/878-148.

  In April that year Henriette woke up one morning to the sound of shots and decided to take her children to the home of her friend Dr. Hamerskyi, located “near the train station,” so that “they would not hear anything.” But on the way they encountered “uniformed people rounding up the Jews.” There was “an old couple escorted by a Jewish policeman holding a kind of rubber truncheon in his hand,” and “a very young lad in a green uniform escorting a Jewish family with three children down the stairs of the old pharmacy” with “a fire-ready weapon on his hip.” Once again “the Jews were shot on the hill behind my new house next to the Ukrainian militia.” A few weeks later, “my son Klaus came home around lunchtime and told me that he had seen a dead Jewish woman lying on the ground, who had already been in the same spot in the morning.” She went back with him to the pedestrian bridge next to the Sokół building, where she found “the body of a dead Jewish woman, about 30–35 years old, lying on her back with open eyes. It was a frightful sight. . . . She had a bloody wound over her right ear. I hurried back to the house with my boy.” Just then, as she looked out of the window, Henriette saw “a Jewish woman running through the park behind my house . . . pursued by men in uniform.” Not long thereafter they were woken up by the sound of gunfire; it was reported to Henriette by a Polish neighbor that her tailor, Mrs. Reich, “who was about to make suits for my children” and “had a dress I had given her to alter,” was being held in the Ukrainian police station. Henriette appealed “to the Gestapo official who was standing on the Strypa bridge,” and he agreed to help her “look for my Jewish tailor.” There were “some twenty Jews” in the prison, “men, women, and children,” including Reich and others Henriette “also recognized.” The tailor would not leave without “her sister, brother, and husband,” and eventually the Gestapo official released them and several children and craftsmen. Henriette identified the official as Köllner, saying he had “a friendly face.”

  Top: Richard, Henriette, and Klaus Lissberg in their villa; the road is across the wooden fence. Bottom: The Ukrainian police station and the road leading to the Fedor Hill execution site. Source: GLA-K 309 Zug. 2001-42/878-218, 214.

  Some German civilians came to Buczacz neither as part of the security apparatus nor as members of the civilian administration. They too were witnesses of mass murder, even as they maintained social relations with the killers and became acquainted with many of the victims. Some of them were horrified by what they saw, others became willing spectators, and still others joined in. Most adapted to the routine of daily killings and resumed their normal lives after the war without further ado.

  Ewald and Berta Herzig arrived in Buczacz with their baby girl in early 1942.59 Their Jewish maid, a twenty-eight-year-old former hairdresser named Blond, also took care of their baby. They kept her for a while after domestic Jewish labor was forbidden, “because,” as Herzig put it, “even the German gendarmerie station continued to employ Jews.” When the roundups began in the fall of 1942, he “always sent her away so that she could hide.” Herzig was well aware of the violence that surrounded their cozy bourgeois existence. Testifying in 1969, he vividly recalled Pahl, who “stood out” as “a bully” and “drank a great deal. I was afraid of this fellow myself,” because “when he was drunk he brawled in the street and played the strongman.” Pahl “took part in Jewish actions not only under orders but also voluntarily.” In October 1942, as he set out for his office in the train station, Herzig witnessed the first deportation. After following a column of some seven hundred Jews escorted by armed Ukrainian and German policemen from the market square to the station, he watched as the Jews were “shoved . . . kicked and flogged into the railcars.” It was said “that the Jews would be taken to Rawa-Ruska,” where “there was a gassing facility.” That was in fact the last stop before the Bełżec extermination camp. One harrowing scene was imprinted on his mind: “a light-blond, picture-pretty girl age of about 16,” was standing next to a family that had been “
sorted out” and spared deportation because the father was a chemist. “The Gestapo men asked me whether she too belonged to that family,” he testified, “but since the girl denied it, and although the railroad cars had already been sealed, she was thrown into a car that had been reopened and was also deported.” On other occasions Jews he knew simply disappeared: “In our casino in the Buczacz train station we had a Jewish woman named Steffi, who did the cleaning. One day I came to the casino and heard that . . . Steffi had been taken away by the Gestapo.”

  Left to right: Henriette Lissberg, Ewald Herzig, and Ursula Wolf skiing next to the railroad bridge construction site. Source: GLA-K 309 Zug. 2001-42/878-217.

  His wife, Berta, denied ever seeing a roundup in Buczacz, although their third-floor windows looked out onto the Ukrainian police station, the Basilian monastery, and Fedor Hill just beyond, an excellent vantage point to observe the killings. She also recalled taking walks with her husband and child in the “large open meadow” at the top of the road leading to the hill. But when told that “executions took place on these heights,” she declared emphatically, “I know nothing about that.” What she could report in some detail was the daily life of German civilians in Buczacz. She recalled frequently shopping at the butcher’s on the ground floor and at the grocery across the street, and buying fresh vegetables, butter, and milk from a nearby farm and at the local dairy. On market days in town, Berta said, “I would take along our Jewish woman Blond because I could not understand the people there.” She added, “When I left our apartment together with my husband, the Jewish woman Blond stayed . . . to take care of the child”; in fact Blond had “practically taken up the role of a nanny.” Blond “also used to bring me milk from the dairy, which was a little outside town,” and, not to be dismissed in a small town with limited services, “she also did my hair” as well as going “to Frau Lissberg as a hairdresser.” Typically the maid “would come to our apartment at 8 a.m. and leave at about 2 p.m.” The only inconvenience occurred when there were “roundups in Buczacz, during which she would hide.” Even after it became “forbidden to employ Jewish women in the household,” in July 1942, Blond still “came on an hourly basis to do my hair, bring me milk and also to take care of our child when I wanted to go out with my husband.” But this free service could not last forever. Berta heard that “the Jewish woman Blond fled to Hamburg and was brought back and shot.”

  The Buczacz train station during the German occupation. Source: GLA-K 309 Zug. 2001-42/878-140.

  Many German employees of the Ackermann construction firm, which exploited Jewish forced labor for work on the railroad tunnel and bridge, witnessed the mass killings in Buczacz. A number of them appear to have participated in one way or another in the roundups, whether by looting abandoned Jewish homes or by watching the killings at close range; some may have even made use of their weapons.60

  To be sure, such eyewitnesses tended to admit their morbid curiosity only under pressure. Perhaps they were ashamed; more likely they feared prosecution. Matthias Schinagl initially denied categorically ever carrying a gun or witnessing any roundups.61 Later he relented, admitting that he had not only carried a weapon but also participated “with my work comrades” in “military exercises” supervised by “the German gendarmerie.” He then conceded that he had watched “a Jewish action” on the cemetery hill “from a distance of 1,500–2,000 feet,” where “Jews were shot into” a trench. Asked whether he was “present at the Jewish cemetery when a large-scale execution action took place there,” Schinagl finally blurted out, “Yes, we were there once. I can remember. Jews were being shot. I cannot say precisely how many Jews were shot. I also cannot confirm the date. I don’t know who shot the Jews. We did not stand that close. I don’t know whether the Jews were shot into a trench. At the time the Jews at the cemetery were naked.”

  Berta Herzig having drinks with a German official in Buczacz. Source: GLA-K 309 Zug. 2001-42/878-209.

  Adolf Eichmann famously said at his trial in Jerusalem, “Remorse is for little children.” He promised instead to write a book that would explain the “final solution,” but this project was cut short by his execution.62 For those who had lived through a daily routine of genocide, observing from nearby the systematic murder of men, women, and children, partying with their killers, benefiting from their services, occasionally helping them out or even befriending them, at other times denouncing, robbing, or killing them, their capacity to emerge into the postwar era with a clean conscience was nothing short of astonishing.

  In the face of the decades-long postwar silence, denial, and complete lack of remorse that characterized most German defendants and witnesses from the Czortków-Buczacz region, it bears reiterating the public and nonchalant nature of the killings and the perpetrators’ sense of impunity and omnipotence, their absolute power over life and death. Karl Ritter, general director of the tobacco factory in Monasterzyska during most of the German occupation, recalled two decades later how one evening in July 1942 “an SS-Hauptsturmführer [captain] came to me and disclosed that tomorrow an action against the Jews would begin. He also asked me to participate in the action. I explained to him that the next day I had to take care of urgent business in Lemberg.”63 When Ritter returned the following evening the secretary of the Judenrat “came to ask me if I would give him vodka and cigarettes,” which he needed “for the gentlemen who had unleashed the action.” The cost of such items, explained Ritter, “was regularly paid for by the Judenrat.” He had missed the killing. “Even the bodies had already been taken away. The Jews were in cattle cars at the train station and were roaring like animals. I saw that train myself. Later on there were many more actions against the Jews.” Ritter vividly remembered Pahl: “He came to me one day and said that he had just killed his two-thousandth Jew.”

  Ritter’s Polish employee and future wife, Sophie, also witnessed several pogroms, as she referred to them: “The Jews were hunted on the streets like rabbits. Fleeing Jews were shot on the spot. Those who let themselves be captured were brought into the ghetto.” In summer 1942, as she drove into Buczacz in the tobacco factory’s vehicle, they “had to dodge” the “numerous bodies on the street.” Several months later she saw German gendarmes and Ukrainian policemen escorting Jews toward the Jewish cemetery in Monasterzyska. “Because I was curious I went up to the second floor of the factory and observed the cemetery with binoculars.” The Jews “were being taken in pairs to the cemetery. A large trench had already been excavated there. They had to take off all their clothes and were then shot in the back of the head on the rim of the trench. They fell directly into the trench.” One day Pahl, who commanded the gendarmes in Monasterzyska, came into the factory office where Sophie worked with another woman, named Jakubowski. “He held out his hand to Mrs. Jakubowski and said, ‘Today I killed my 1,200th Jew.’ ”64

  While estimates vary considerably, it appears that in the course of two years well over 10,000 Jews were shot in Buczacz or deported to the Bełżec extermination camp. In the first major action, on October 17, 1942, approximately 1,600 Jews were taken to Bełżec and several hundred killed on the streets and in their homes. On November 27 another 2,000 Jews were deported to Bełżec or shot on the spot. The following month a ghetto was established; the crowded conditions and lack of sanitation, food, and medication led to a typhus epidemic that claimed an unknown number of lives. Killings included a “street action” in which Jews were shot in the ghetto or taken to Czortków, where many died. In the third action, on February 2, 1943, an additional 2,000 Jews were shot on Fedor Hill; 3,000 more were murdered at that site on April 15. The last two mass executions took place at the Jewish cemetery: the “liquidation action” of May 27 targeted the remaining population of the ghetto, and the “Judenrein [Jew-cleansing] action” of June 26 attempted to wipe out the inmates of the labor camp and the Jewish police. During the next few months those who survived were hunted down relentlessly. Most of the few hundred Jews who emerged from hiding when the Red Army b
riefly occupied Buczacz on March 23, 1944, were murdered following the town’s reoccupation by the Wehrmacht on April 7. By the time the Soviets returned for good on July 21, fewer than a hundred Jews were still alive in the area.65

  Most of the perpetrators managed to wriggle out of a leaky judicial system and died peacefully in their beds. As this most thoroughly investigated state-directed mass crime in history amply illustrates, perpetrators of genocide usually get away with murder. Especially since the late 1950s, West German courts have performed an exceedingly important service for history by investigating the crimes of thousands of former Nazi perpetrators; at the same time, however, they committed a no less remarkable miscarriage of justice, allowing the vast majority of those investigated, who were in any case just the tip of the iceberg, to get off without penalty. The documentary evidence the courts amassed made it possible to reconstruct the crime, but precisely in view of its scale and nature one cannot but be appalled by the vast gap between the crime and the punishment. Willi Dressen, former director of the Central Office of the State Justice Administration for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes in Ludwigsburg, calculated that by 2005, 106,000 people had been investigated for Nazi crimes, of whom only 6,500 were sentenced and only 166 received life sentences. “Purely statistically,” he wrote, this meant that “each murder cost ten minutes in prison.”66

  The most striking feature of the men who murdered the Jewish community of Buczacz was the seemingly unbridgeable discrepancy between their mundane prewar and postwar lives and the astonishing brutality, callousness, and disdain for humanity they displayed during the occupation. German courts tried to make sense of this moral abyss; they sought the seeds of these men’s criminality in their parental and educational background, religious and political affiliations, ethnic identity, and traits of character. In order to convict them of first-degree murder, the judges had to be convinced that the defendants were capable of distinguishing between good and evil and had chosen to act criminally out of “base motives,” such as sexual lust, greed, or ideologically driven hatred, especially anti-Semitism—that they had, that is, acted on their own initiative, beyond the murderous orders given them by their superiors. Much of the evidence for these crimes came from Jewish witnesses. In this case the courts had to be reassured that these survivors were not motivated by a desire for revenge and could dispassionately yet vividly recall the crimes to which they testified and which they had often experienced themselves. The surreal nature of these investigations and trials was therefore derived from the fact that even as they reconstructed events of the utmost cruelty and barbarism, they were conducted in an atmosphere of rigidly enforced detachment, imposing a suspension of the very human sensibilities that might have prevented the atrocity in the first place. This is why we must listen closely to the voices of the victims.