Anatomy of a Genocide

by Omer Bartov

  45 In early 1943 Thomanek shot two young women point-blank in the head as they begged for their lives on their knees in front of the assembled workers at the Nagórzanka-Jagielnica camp, as punishment for visiting a nearby camp. In June that year he shot the elderly Rosen couple at the Jezierzany labor camp, presumably as unfit for work. Rosental witnessed the liquidation of the camp in Jagielnica: “I watched the Jews . . . being arrayed next to a pit of manure at the farm, surrounded by Ukrainian militia, then stepping individually on a board and being shot one after the other by Thomanek, and falling dead from the board into the pit.” StA Hagen, 11 Ks 1/57, vol. 5, p. 14. Elsewhere the killing of the Rosens is attributed to Köllner during the June 8–10, 1943, action in Buczacz: 208 AR-Z 239/59, vol. 2, p. 523.

  46 Thomanek was released from prison in 1979 and passed away at age eighty-nine in 1998. StA Hagen 11 Ks 1/57, vol. 13, June 12 and 28, 2001, pp. 317–18.

  47 This account is based on BArch B162/5171, December 16, 1966, pp. 3444–84; 5173, May 8–22, 1967, pp. 3737–67; 5187, September 3, 1970, pp. 7587–742; 5188, September 25, 1971, and January 25, 1973; GLA-K 309 Zug. 2001-42/881, pp. 9–24. The German investigation determined that Brettschneider “had no racist or any other prejudices against Jews in Lithuania. Some of his friends were Jews and originally he even wanted to marry a Jewish woman called Markson.”

  48 This account is based on BArch 162/5176, March 5, 1968, pp. 4795–806.

  49 This account is based on StA Mannheim 208 AR-Z 239/59, vol. 6, October 7, 1965, pp. 1672–76; BArch B162/5169, January 10, 1966, pp. 1854–55; 5167, May 6, 1966; 5171, December 16, 1966; 5173, May 29–June 5, 1967, pp. 3822–56, November 20, 1967, pp. 4592–95; 5187, September 3, 1970, August 11, 1971. See also DATO, fond R-279, op. 1, spr. 1 (1941); GLA-K 309 Zug. 2002-42/866 (1944); BArch ZM 967/11, November 3, 1943; IPN, Warsaw, WOI/8A; April 1, 1944, p. 116; Pohl, Judenverfolgung, 250, n. 229.

  50 S. Rosen testified that Pahl “was a drinker and could be bribed. He had several mistresses, including a Jewish woman. . . . He was known as a dangerous murderer and a sadist. People were terrified of him.” Rosen saw him executing the brothers Sokolecki in summer 1943 at the Jewish cemetery. 208 AR-Z 239/59, StA Mannheim, vol. 6, December 9, 1965, pp. 1686–90; vol. 3, Beit Dagon, Israel, March 16, 1965, pp. 934–38. Ginsberg 1964, p. 1220, witnessed Pahl killing two Jewish girls in spring 1944: “He was a terrible person, he was more dreadful than any SS-man.” Worman 1976 described Pahl as “a sadist and a murderer.”

  51 Ignacy Rabinowicz described Pahl as “a sadist”; his brother Józef Rabinowicz saw that he “personally shot Jews” in the actions of February and April 1943; Adam Steizer (Steiger), BArch B162/5169, Haifa, Israel, November 10, 1965, pp. 1829–34; 5166, Bytom, Poland, June 18, 1965, p. 1287; 5163, Tel Aviv, Israel, November 14, 1961, pp. 481–83; November 6, 1968, pp. 6817–23; Beit Dagon, Israel, on October 10, 1965; 5168, pp. 1702–5; vol. 1, pp. 79–111.

  52 DATO, R-279, op. 1, spr. 1; 208 AR-Z 239/59; StA Mannheim, vol. 19, January 28, 1969, pp. 6014–21.

  53 This account is based on DATO, R-279, op. 1, spr. 1; 208 AR-Z 239/59, StA Mannheim, vol. 15, April 25, 1968, pp. 5103–112; vol. 16, September 5, 1968, pp. 5330–31, 5335–36, 5340–54; GLA-K 309 Zug. 2001-42/880, StA Mannheim, 32 Js 78/66, December 20, 1968. Barg was described in 1940 as “sober, reliable, loyal and obedient,” “imbued with the ideological content of National Socialism,” prepared to “fully commit himself to the Reich at any time,” and displaying “an impeccable attitude and conduct toward Poles and Jews.” Still in police service, he was killed trying to make an arrest in 1946 and granted posthumous promotion as “a shining example of dedication to service and sense of duty.” His widow received a generous death benefit. GLA-K 309, Zug. 2001-42/880.

  54 This account is based on 208 AR-Z 239/59, vol. 8, pp. 3137–46. Knaack was described in August 1943 as “a fearless gendarme” who had “distinguished himself by his courage, prudence, and determination.” GLA-K 309 Zug. 2001-42/802; DATO, fond R-279, op. 1, spr. 1. Kardasz moved to the United States in 1951. BArch B162/5177, May 15, 1968, pp. 4971–74.

  55 This account is based on AAN, Warsaw, III/0 Karta: AiB, 842, p. 342; BArch B1621/4148; BArch (Ludwigsburg Außenstelle) Personalkartei, 211 AR-Z 137/62, vol. 2, p. 124; Zentralkartei, Ortskartei, Buczacz, 2 AR-Z 267/60; 208 AR 76/61, vol. 8, p. 1401; AR-Z 239/59, StA Saarbrücken and Dortmund, vol. 4, June 24, 1965, pp. 1153–64; StA Mannheim, vol. 18, November 26, 1968, pp. 5695–99; vol. 21, April 23, 1969, pp. 6672–708. Lissberg’s replacement as Buczacz Landkommissar was the thirty-five-year-old career civil servant Walter Hoffer, who similarly first denied any knowledge of anti-Jewish violence and then conceded having witnessed it but asserted that he never had any personal involvement. Neither man was ever indicted. See 208 AR-Z 239/59, vol. 1, March 31, 1960, pp. 252–55; vol. 3, April 7, 1965, pp. 843–55; BArch (Personalkartei) 2 AR-Z 76/61; AR-Z 267/60; StA Lübeck 2 Js 753/65, July 22, 1965, pp. 820ff; IPN, 196 NTN, 267, p. 244; IPN, 94/2425, pp. 1–3; BArch R 52 II/118-19, 149.

  56 V. Petrykevych diary.

  57 Henriette also remembered her husband’s secretary Julia Rabinowicz as a “black-haired woman” who had studied “to be a pediatrician in Lemberg” and “spoke very good German.” Julia, wife of the former Ordnungsdienst chief Józef Rabinowicz, testified that she had no knowledge of Lissberg participating in roundups or killing Jews, recalling, “One day he said to me that he was going hunting in order not to be present at a roundup. At the same time he gave me to understand that he could help neither me nor my parents, because, as he put it, he was only ‘a little cog’ [ein kleines Figürchen].” BArch 162/5163, November 15, 1961, pp. 487–90.

  58 The Lissbergs also befriended the Peckmanns in Czortków, which proved useful in helping their friend, former Ukrainian district superintendent Mykhailo Chaikivskyi, when the Gestapo arrested him in the fall of 1943. Henriette was also close to Dr. Hamerskyi and his wife, insisting that he “was a very good man with a lot of character, who was very positively inclined toward us Germans,” even though “he also condemned much of what the Germans did” and “had a positive attitude toward the Jews.” She dismissed as a “blatant lie” allegations that “Hamerskyi admitted Jews into the district hospital, took their valuables and then called the police.” But Dr. Max Anderman and his wife, Sala, testified that in spring 1942 Hamerskyi reported the presence of a Jewish couple in the hospital, who were then shot on the spot by Pahl. S. Anderman, BArch, pp. 1972–78.

  59 This account is based on 208 AR-Z 239/59, StA Mannheim, vol. 21, May 7, 1969, pp. 6743–56; May 9, 1969, pp. 6743–56 (investigations of Ewald and Berta Herzig).

  60 See esp. accounts by Johannes Dech, 208 AR-Z 239/59, vol. 3, StA Saarbrücken, March 26, 1965, pp. 756–70; vol. 8, StA Mannheim, February 17, 1966, pp. 1998–2002; vol. 15, May 28, 1968, pp. 4975–84; Julius Wilcke, BArch B162/5169, March 2, 1969, pp. 2069–74; Wilhelm Weippert, AR-Z 239/59, StA Saarbrücken/Dortmund, vol. 4, June 1, 1965, pp. 1198–204; StA Mannheim, vol. 16, July 23, 1968, pp. 5189–197; vol. 18, November 10, 1968, pp. 5787–88; Franz Rauscher, BArch B162/5178, July 24, 1968, pp. 5210–23; Max Bücherl, 208 AR-Z 239/59, StA Mannheim, vol. 16, July 30, 1968, pp. 5271–78; Albert Wachinger, BArch B162/5180, November 12, 1968, pp. 5668–80; Gustav Hein, 208 AR-Z 239/59, vol. 3, April 27, 1965, pp. 1062–66; BArch B162/5178, August 13, 1968, pp. 5324–28; Rolf Lebach, BArch B162/5183, April 28, 1969, pp. 6631–34.

  61 This account is based on BArch B162/5178, July 31, 1968, pp. 5254–62.

  62 O. Bartov, The “Jew” in Cinema (Bloomington, IN, 2005), 89.

  63 This account is based on BArch B162/20034, October 28, 1963, pp. 317–21.

  64 For a description of the murder of several Jews near Potok Złoty by Pahl and others on September 6, 1943, see BArch B162/5185, Josef Staub, New York, August 11, 1969, pp. 7117–18. Wiesław Antochów remembered, “The Nazis brought more than 300 young Jews from Czortków to the courtyard of the prison and shot them all there. The Jews we
re shot like ducks. It all happened in front of everybody’s eyes. People were standing on the walls of the prison. I watched it from the windows of the Courtroom. It was terrible.” IPN Kraków, S 37/03/zn, vol. 3, July 5, 1990, p. 452.

  65 E. Chalfen 1947; Rosental, AŻIH; Sefer Buczacz, 237–94; Mosze Bider, YVA, M-1/E, 796/659, December 22, 1946; Giza Ferber, USHMM, RG-15.084M, reel 27 (AŻIH 301/2528), Bytom, July 12, 1947; 208 AR-Z 239/59, StA Mannheim, vol. 1, “Überstücke,” pp. 79–111; BArch (Außenstelle Ludwigsburg) 110 AR 850/71, pp. 4–5, 13–16; “Judenwohbezirken,” IPN Warsaw 196/333, pp. 276–79; “Judenwohnbezirken,” USHMM RG-31.003M Reel 1, Acc. 1992.A.0069, and YVA M-37; Jakub Wołkowicz, USHMM RG-15.084M Reel 29 (1997.A.0125, AŻIH 301/2653), Opole, July 11, 1947; “Galicia Transport Lists,” Aktion Reinhard Camps, http://www.deathcamps.org/belzec/galiciatransportlist.html (accessed November 17, 2016). Over 250,000 Galician Jews were gassed in Bełżec; the camp was dismantled at the end of 1942. Galicia was declared Judenfrei on June 30, 1943; SS-controlled camps were liquidated in July 1943; only Jews employed on agricultural farms were spared. J.u.NS-V, vol. 18, pp. 559–60; vol. 24, pp. 10–24.

  66 Akademie-Report (Tutzing, Germany), Nr. 3/2005, p. 31. See also W. Dressen, “The Investigation of Nazi Criminals in Western Germany,” Encyclopaedia Judaica Year Book (1987): 132–38; D. O. Pendas, The Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial (New York, 2006); R. Wittmann, Beyond Justice (Cambridge, MA, 2005); A. Rückerl, The Investigation of Nazi Crimes (Hamden, CT, 1980); H. Friedlander et al., eds., Nazi Crimes and the Law (New York, 2008).

  Chapter 6: THE DAILY LIFE OF GENOCIDE

  1 Communication from Professor Linda Rosenman, University of Queensland, Australia, August–September 2015; her father, Dr. David Rosenman, worked in the Jewish hospital in Buczacz and emigrated to Australia in the late 1930s. Leon Rosen was his uncle. Leon’s two sons went to Palestine in the late 1930s; one became a professor of medicine.

  2 BArch (Außenstelle Ludwigsburg), 81/301, pp. 112–18.

  3 A. Klonicki-Klonymus, The Diary of Adam’s Father (Jerusalem, 1969, in Hebrew); English trans. by A. Tomaschoff (Jerusalem, 1973).

  4 Gisela Kleiner’s maiden name was Kriegel; Sofia (Fish) and Hella (or Helga Bauer) Kriegel, possibly her sisters, survived. Sofia was also a nurse at the hospital, and both she and Gisela may be featured on page 211, a wartime photograph of the hospital staff. Hella did “various jobs mainly for the German army.” Both women “didn’t look Jewish” and apparently passed as Christians.

  5 E. Skamene, SFV 37896, February 3, 1998. Menachem Kriegel, Sofia’s younger brother, recalled, “After the first action she acquired false Polish papers and moved to the city of Lwów, where she worked for the last two years of the German occupation.” Z. Karniel (Hirschhorn), “Grandfather Menachem Kriegel tells about the roots of the family,” undated private document courtesy of the late Mr. Karniel.

  6 Lucy Gertner, handed over by her mother to a convent as a small child, was baptized and fell gravely ill with tuberculosis; eventually mother and daughter were reunited. Shoshana Kleiner was hidden with peasants in a nearby village. Six-year-old Rachel Held was the only survivor of her family. Barbara Schechter, born in Buczacz in 1941, was taken by her mother to an Austrian village on false papers and reunited with the father at a DP (displaced persons) camp. In 1946 they emigrated to the United States. Interview with J. Neufeld, July 19, 2002, and subsequent email communications; interview with Regina Gertner, July 31, 2002, and communications with her daughter Lucy Gertner, June 9, 2010; correspondence with S. (Kleiner) Ages and her daughter Deena Ages, January 17, 2007, May 11–12 and September 14, 2009; R. Halpern, YVS M-1/E, 2309 (2283), June 16, 1948; Halpern, Family and Town, 30–31, 38, 72, 78; “Barbara Schechter Cohen interview, 2002,” Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive, http://holocaust.umd.umich.edu/cohenb (accessed December 9, 2016).

  7 A. Karl, SFV 9899, December 10, 1995; email exchanges, July 5 and 18, and telephone interview, July 25, 2002. The family emigrated to Peru. See M. Karl, Escape a la Vida (Lima, 1989).

  8 R. Zurof (Tabak), SFV 6138, August 31, 1995. Zbigniew Posadowski, IPN Kraków, S 37/03/zn, vol. 2, September 25, 2002 (hereafter Posadowski 2002), p. 399, notes that in June 1944 “a Bandera member was caught” in Czortków and “admitted to having murdered 27 Poles.” He “was condemned to death by hanging and the execution was carried out publicly in the market square. . . . The corpse was left hanging for three days.” Romaniia Kazanovich, also born in 1936, survived in Buczacz with her grandparents, Hersh and Cyla Heller. After the war Hersh became a school director in Buczacz, and Romaniia married a local Ukrainian; later in life she considered moving to Israel. “I really love this country,” she said about Ukraine. “But for some reason I never felt myself quite at home here.” She thought it was time they “tell us where the Jews were buried . . . because it saddens me to think that we are all just walking on their corpses. . . . I think that people should know.” R. Kazanovich, SFV 30282, April 10, 1997. In spring and summer 1944 she was cared for by the Russian Anna Skvartsova, whose Jewish husband was denounced by a Ukrainian acquaintance and killed; their daughter Gizela, born in Moscow in 1923, later “married a Jewish man named Fisher who came back from the war and they had two children.” Gizela left Buczacz in 2005 to join her daughter in Israel; she was the last Jew in the city. A. Polec, Zapomniani (Olszanica, Poland, 2006), unpaginated.

  9 G. Weksler, USHMM, RG-15.084 Acc. 1997 A.0125, Reel 19, 1865; AŻIH 301/1865 and a slightly later testimony in Yiddish, Towa Weksler, YVA, M-1/E, 2162.

  10 Six years older, Aliza’s sister Dvorah (Diamant) was deeply traumatized by the experience of hiding in bunkers: “I feel this fear to this day. I often wake up in the middle of the night . . . paralyzed by the fear, a fear that you cannot describe. . . . The older you get, the more difficult it is. . . . You are never liberated.” A. Rosenwasser, YVS 03-10402, VT-1612, July 17, 1997; D. Diamant, YVS 03-10269, VT-1614, July 20, 1997.

  11 In 2005 the Zarivny family was recognized by Yad Vashem as “Righteous among the Nations,” under the Polish rendition of the name, Zarowny: http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/pdf-drupal/poland.pdf (accessed December 27, 2016).

  12 Gekht, “Road from Ghetto to Orphanage”; Gekht, “Stolen Childhood,” 137–39; Hecht, “A Long Search for Roots”; V. Poznanskyy, “Crushed Childhood”; Hecht, personal account to his cousin Z. Karniel (Hirschhorn). Rutyna (interview, 2006) said that Zarivny was his brother-in-law: “They hid several Jews in Wojciechówka.” For the case of Menachem Kriegel, another orphan adopted by the Red Army, see SFV 28634, April 13, 1997; Emanuel Kriegel, YVA, M-49/196, Kraków, May 28, 1945; Karniel, “Grandfather Kriegel.” For David Ashkenaze, who ended up as a high-ranking Soviet officer, see SFV 38119, 1997. See also S. Kovalchuk, “He Was Shot Three Times,” Puls (regional weekly of the Khmelnytskyi region), Nr. 24 (June 21, 2001, in Ukrainian); author’s personal communication with Ashkenaze from Slavuta, Ukraine, March 8, 2004.

  13 A. Resnick (Resnik, Herzog), SFV 5226, August 6, 1995; telephone interview with Dr. A. H. Resnik in 2002. There are some discrepancies between the two.

  14 R. Brecher, YVA, 033/765 E/32-3-3, Czernowitz, late 1944 or early 1945; AŻIH 301/4911, Bucharest, May 20, 1945.

  15 A. Nir (Reinisch), YVA 03/11147, March 9, 1999.

  16 Elaine Flitman (E. Spielberg), SFV 1622, March 14, 1995.

  17 Z. Heiss, YVA; J. Heiss, interview with the author, New York, October 10, 2002.

  18 A. Appleman-Jurman, SFV 11552, January 29, 1996; telephone interview with author, October 19, 2005; and memoir, Alicia (Toronto, 1988).

  19 Fannie Kupitz (Feldman), SFV 2177, April 25, 1994; interview with author, New York City, October 10, 2002.

  20 For another version of Janek Anderman’s death, see chapter 5. Elsewhere Anderman commented that these armed Jews “were, may history forgive me, bandits, they were no partisans, but they fought for their existence.” Z. Anderman, interview with author, Tel Aviv, March 12, 2002 (hereafter Anderman 2002).
On other armed Jews in the forest, see Aaron Silber, SFV 20764, October 23, 1996. Other accounts of February 1943 are in Benjamin Herzog, “The Scene at the Mass Graves after the Action,” YVA M-1/E, 2322, no date, likely late 1940s, and Bernard Kramer, BArch, B162/5167, Beit-Dagon, Israel, May 12, 1966, 4 pages.

  21 Anderman 2002; Ze’ev Anderman, SFV 36290, December 16, 1997.

  22 S. Rosen, USHMM, reel 20, 1935 (AŻIH 301/1935), Kraków, August 6, 1946, and YVA, M-49/1935 (03/2055), Tel Aviv, December 20, 1960; Rosen, 2002. See also A. W. Kaczorowski, “Gdy grób był domem,” Biuletyn Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej 3/98 (March 2009): 66–68; M. Paldiel, The Path of the Righteous (Hoboken, NJ, 1992), 191–93.

  23 Wizinger, YVA. He previously worked in the tunnel reconstruction site. Another tunnel worker, Beno Wechsler, also survived; helped by Polish villagers until spring 1944, he then joined the Red Army. YVA 03/9078, Netanya, Israel, February 22 and July 2, 1968; Wechsler 1995. Henryk Rosen described Świerszczak as “a good Christian” who told them, “If I turn you in, then my kids, my grandkids, and their grandchildren will have to pay for my sin.” H. Rosen, SFV 35502, November 10, 1997. The Armia Krajowa (Polish Home Army, AK) commander of the Buczacz district in 1939–43 was Mieczysław Lipa: WBBH, III/49/289, pp. 1–4.

  24 Bauer 2003. Simcha Tischler had a similar opinion about his Ukrainian friends in Nagórzanka: “You could say that a brother wouldn’t do more for me than they did.” Tischler 1997. Schmetterling 1995 credited Ukrainians in the same village with saving him: “That’s why I survived; they helped me. Not all of them . . . killed.” See also Gross 1996; Rachel Schwechter, Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library (hereafter FA), HVT-986. On Jewish resisters and forest family camps, see also “The Jewish Gang of Buczacz (Galicia),” YVA M-1/E, 1725, January 18, 1948; Gutkowski 1998. The AK reported that Soviet “partisans displayed a dislike for Jews.” AAN, AK, zesp. 1326, 203/XV/26, July 14, 1943, pp. 7–10.