Becker gave instructions that ‘D’ Group’s vans should be camouflaged as trailer caravans by putting a set of window shutters on each side of the small trucks and two sets on the larger type. Nevertheless they became so well known that they were very soon called the ‘death vans’ not only by the troops but by civilians as well, and in Becker’s opinion it was impossible to keep their purpose secret even by camouflage. The rough ground and bad roads over which the vans had to be driven rapidly made them rattle, and the rivets and caulking became loosened. This, of course, meant a leakage of gas and it became necessary to have this seen to frequently in the unit workshops. The drivers and operators were also ordered to keep well away when the gassing operation was in progress to avoid any ill effects from the escaping fumes.
Becker’s report continued:
I should like to take this opportunity to bring the following to your attention: several commands, after the gassing is completed, have had the bodies unloaded by their own men. There is great danger that this will lead to their health being affected, if not immediately, at least later on. The commanders do not want to countermand these orders as they fear that if prisoners were employed they would find some opportunity to escape.
The application of gas is not always carried out in the correct manner. In order to get the job finished as quickly as possible, the driver presses the accelerator down to the fullest extent. Thereby the victims suffer death by suffocation and not by dozing off as was intended. By correct adjustment of the levers death comes faster and the prisoners fall asleep peacefully. Previously the victims’ faces and other signs showed that they died in agony.
In 1941, during the month of September alone, 35,000 Soviet citizens, mostly Jews, were killed by Ohlendorf’s Kommandos in the neighbourhood of Nicolaiev. All these massacres were duly reported to headquarters in detail: ‘The Kommandos continued clearing the area of Jew and Communist elements. In the period covered by this report, i.e., 16th-30th September 1941, the towns of Nicolaiev and Cherson in particular were cleared of Jews and the officials still left there were treated accordingly … total number
Another 2,000 Jews were killed by SD units attached to von Manstein’s forces on 13th October 1941. This was the subject of a routine report by the Town Major of Melitopol to Rear Army HQ. The report described the arrival of the advance party of the HQ in the town where 40,000 inhabitants remained. All the Jews, numbering 2,000, were executed by the SD. The report ended: ‘The population shows confidence in the German Armed Forces and in particular the Ukranians were grateful for their liberation.’
Only a fortnight later a further 8,000 Jews met their death in Mariopol. When the German troops entered this town all the Jews were executed by the SD and their vacant homes taken over by the Army. All the victims’ clothing, after being cleaned, was handed over to a military hospital. A new Mayor was then appointed by the Kommandantur as the wife of the existent Mayor was, until her death, a Jewess.
When the Germans entered the Crimea they began to experience some difficulty as the following report from Einsatzgruppe shows:
Jews: Simferopol, Jewpatoria, Aluschta, Karasabarsar and Feodosia and other districts of the Western Crimea have been cleared of Jews; between 16 November and 15 December 1941, 17,645 Jews have been executed. Rumours about executions in other areas rendered the situation at Simferopol very difficult. Reports about action against Jews gradually filter through from fleeing Jews or from the careless talk of German soldiers.
In the Western Crimea, the Jewish population was estimated by the Germans at the end of 1942 to be about 40,000, of whom approximately one quarter still lived in Simferopol itself.
At the beginning of December 1941 Einsatzgruppe ‘D’ HQ had moved from Odessa to the Crimea and was stationed at Simferopol. The preparatory registration and segregation of Jews had already been carried out by one of the Kommandos and Ohlendorf was informed by the SS liaison officer at Army HQ that the Army required the shooting of all the Jews in Simferopol to be completed before Christmas.
The task was entrusted to Kommando II B whose commanding officer, Karl Rudolph Braune, being unable to carry out the mission with unit resources, visited the ‘Q’ Branch at Army HQ, to obtain assistance. Lorries, cars, motor-cycles, drivers, and guards were placed at his disposal upon the understanding that the soldiers were not to take any part in the actual shooting but used for transport and security purposes only.
The execution then began. The Jews were assembled, men, women, and children, at collecting points, put on to the lorries, and transported in convoys at suitable intervals to the scene of the execution, an anti-tank ditch a short distance outside the city. There they were shot. By the end of the third day they had all been disposed of in this way.
The usual arrangements were in force with regard to the disposal of the victims’ property except that on this occasion about 120 watches were sent by special request to the Eleventh Army.
Thus the carnage proceeded—a senseless remorseless annihilation of innocent citizens—merely because they were Jews.
There were some German officials, however, who were not afraid to criticize the wholesale nature of the persecution in the Ukraine, albeit not from the highest motives.
The local representative of the Industrial Armament Department in Berlin reported the industrial situation in the ‘Reichskommissariat Ukraine’ to his chief, General Thomas.
The report was not sent through official channels and was headed, ‘For the personal information of the Chief of the Industrial Armament Department.’ Its contents leave no doubt as to the reasons which led the writer to by-pass the usual channels. This is what he says:
The attitude of the Jewish population was obliging from the beginning. They tried to avoid everything that might displease the German administration. That they hated it and the army inwardly goes without saying and cannot be surprising. There is, however, no proof that Jewry was in any great degree implicated in acts of sabotage, though there were some saboteurs among them as among other Ukrainians. It cannot be said that the Jews represented a danger to the German Armed Forces. The Jewish output production which was the result of nothing but a feeling of fear was satisfactory to the troops and the German administration.
The Jewish population remained unmolested for a short while after the fighting. But later specially detached formations of police executed and planned mass shootings. It was done entirely in public and unfortunately in many instances members of the Armed Forces voluntarily took part. The way these ‘operations’, which included the killing of old men, women and children of all ages, were carried out was horrible. So far, about 150,000 to 200,000 Jews have been executed in this part of the Ukraine: no consideration has been given to the interests of the economic situation.
Summarizing, it can be said that this kind of solution of the Jewish problem as applied to the Ukraine, and which was obviously based on ideological theories has had the following results:—
(a)
Elimination of a number of superfluous eaters in the cities.
(b)
Elimination of a part of the population which undoubtedly hated us.
(c)
Elimination of badly needed tradesmen who were, in many instances, indispensable even in the interests of the Armed Forces.
(d)
Consequences in relation to foreign policy propaganda which are obvious.
(e)
Bad effects on the troops who, in any event, are indirectly concerned with the executions.
(f)
Brutalizing effect on the formations which carry out the executions.
The report of that zealous official, who appears to have been not without the bowels of human compassion, is revealing.
It has frequently been contended by German defendants in War Crime Trials that as the purpose of war is the overpowering of the enemy, the achievement of that purpose justifies any means including, in case of military necessity, the violation of the laws of war if such viola
tion will afford either the means to escape from imminent danger or to overpower the enemy.
This theory dates very far back in the history of warfare and originated in those times when warfare was not regulated by the laws of war but by usages. It is not without significance that it is of German origin though by no means all German writers on International Law endorse it. One of them, Strupp, disposes of it in these words, ‘If this opinion were justified no laws of warfare would exist, for every rule might be declared impracticable on the ground that it was contrary to military necessity.’
Furthermore, in the preamble of Hague Convention IV it is expressly stated that the rules of warfare were framed with regard to military necessity, the provisions of the Convention ‘having been inspired by the desire to diminish the evils of wars as far as military requirements permit’.1
When an Occupying Power is administering a territory in which its armed forces are engaged in military operations or stationed as garrison troops it is entitled to take all proper measures necessary to ensure the safety of its forces and to secure the provision of their needs.
It is evident that in the Ukraine, the Jews as such did not constitute a menace to the security of the German Armed Forces and were more disposed to co-operate with them than to rise against them.
It could not, therefore, even be argued by those responsible for it, that this wholesale murder of Jews was a military necessity; and to do the Nazis justice they made no such pretence. These Jews were killed because of their race. The final solution of the Jewish question had begun.
As one of the German witnesses at the Nuremberg Trial himself said, ‘If for years a doctrine is preached to the effect that the Slav race is an inferior race and the Jews not even human beings, an explosion of this sort is inevitable.’2
But it was not only the Russian Jews who were to be exterminated. Wherever the German forces marched under the ‘Crooked Cross’1 the ‘resettlement of the Jews’2 went with them.
In Poland, the Treblinka extermination camps A and B were set up during the spring and summer of 1942. These camps were part and parcel of the machinery used for the total annihilation of the Jewish community in Poland.
In these two camps hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered. The first railway transports of victims arrived in July 1942 and from then until the end of 1943 these convoys arrived with unfailing regularity.
The massacres were carried out by two methods, steam and gassing. The first building to be erected contained three gas chambers, but by the autumn of 1942 a new building containing ten others had been completed. The arrangements for burning the corpses were primitive in comparison with the more up-to-date methods in some of the concentration camps. There were no ovens in the crematorium, only large gridirons made out of railway lines mounted on concrete supports across which the corpses were laid, 2,500 at a time.
In the camp there was a building known as the ‘Lazarett’ or hospital, but no sick were ever tended there. It was enclosed by a high fence and was entered through a small hut on which flew the Red Cross flag. The hut led into a waiting-room with plush coloured sofas, and here the unsuspecting victims waited. Beyond this was a pit, at the edge of which an SS man shot each victim, as he was ushered in from the waiting-room, through the back of the neck with a revolver. In this way were killed invalids, old people, and small children who were too weak or too young to enter the gas chambers themselves.
When the Jews arrived at Treblinka station, as there was no time to lose, the waggons were opened and those still alive were driven out and on into the special enclosures where the men were separated from the women and children. Meanwhile Jewish workers removed the corpses from the trucks which they cleaned out. As many as 200 Jews were crammed into each van and many died on the journey.
What happened to the new arrivals is described in an official report made by a Polish Government Commission which investigated German crimes in Poland.
After unloading at the siding, all the victims were assembled in one place … where they had to take off their clothes and shoes. The men did this in the courtyard, the women and children in a hut nearby. The women then had all their hair cut off and the whole convoy, men women and children, now naked and shorn, were driven along the road to the gas chambers, having been told that they were going to the bathhouse.
When they reached the lethal chambers they were driven in with their hands above their heads so that as many might be squeezed in as possible. The children were piled on top. Sometimes the infants were first killed…. One SS specialized in this, seizing them by their legs and killing them with one blow on the head against a wall…. The actual gassing in the chamber lasted about fifteen minutes and when it was thought that they were all dead the doors were opened and the Jewish working party removed them and prepared the chamber for the next batch.
The belongings of the victims were collected and sorted before being despatched to the Reich. The human hair was steamed, packed in bales, sent to Germany, and used in the manufacture of mattresses.
But camps at Treblinka were unable to meet all demands and another extermination camp had to be established at Chelmno. There 300,000 Jews from the provinces of Poznania and Lodz were put to death.
The procedure was the same as at Treblinka and Jews were employed to do the ‘dirty jobs’. From time to time these Jewish working parties were themselves done away with and a fresh supply obtained. When the time came to liquidate a batch of these workers the SS men had great sport, sometimes using them ‘as living targets, shooting them like hares’.
As far as can be ascertained, for the last pre-war census in Poland was in 1931, there were more than 3,300,000 Jews living there when the Germans began their invasion. The final solution of the Jewish question in Poland was, therefore, no light task.
The Governor-General, Hans Frank, had said in 1941, ‘What are we to do with the Jews? Do you think that we shall settle them in the Ostland? Why all this prattle? In short, liquidate them by your own means. We must take steps to extirpate them. The Government General must be as free from Jews as is the Reich.’
The Nazis began to put their plan for the extermination of the Jews into operation from the first day of the invasion of Poland.
Jews were first subjected to discriminating legislation; their right to own property was extinguished and they had to wear special markings on their clothing. Ghettos were instituted, valuables confiscated, and even the Jews’ scale of rations was less than that of other inhabitants. They performed forced labour and were habitually terrorized and severely punished for minor offences.
The persecution continued and increased in intensity. Hostages were taken and the Jews were consistently derided and humiliated. Their women could be violated with impunity, their places of worship were desecrated and set on fire. Their shops were looted, and executions began. Jew hunts were organized and when Rabbis were caught their beards were cut or torn off. The Jews were made to perform the filthiest and most degrading tasks: to clean out latrines with their hands; to collect horse droppings in the streets and fill their caps and pockets with them.
Then followed the final solution—the mass murders in extermination camps which have already been described. From the statistics available it would appear that the total annihilation ordered by Himmler in 1942 was almost accomplished. Of the 3,000,000 or more Jews living in Poland in September 1939 not more than 50,000 could be traced in 1946 and not less than 2,600,000 perished.
In France, all books by Jewish authors as well as those in which Jews had collaborated were withdrawn from sale by German occupation authorities save works of a scientific nature in respect of which special exceptions were made. Even biographies of Jews which were written by Aryans were on the prohibited ‘Otto’ list.1 The biography of Offenbach had to be withdrawn from sale for this reason.
Later came the economic measures, bullying and petty irritations, the yellow star and other indignities. A large number of anti-semitic decrees were proclaimed lowerin
g the civic status of French Jews.
There was always an intention eventually to deport all Jews from France for the purpose of extermination and it was only the pace of the programme which differed from that elsewhere.
It might have been supposed that in order to get rid of the Jews the solution of emigration would have commended itself to the Germans. It clearly did not as the following correspondence shows.
From Civil Administration HQ, in Bordeaux to Paris head office, 22 July 1941.
It has just been established that about one hundred and fifty Jews are still in the territory of the District Command of St Jean de Luz. At the time of our conversation with the District Commander, Major Henkel, the latter asked that these Jews should leave his District as soon as possible. At the same time he pointed out that in his opinion it would be far better were they allowed to emigrate rather than they be sent to concentration camps.
A reply was received to the effect that Major Henkel’s suggestion was not approved, as RSHA had decreed that the emigration of Jews living in the occupied territories of the West and in Unoccupied France was, if possible, to be prevented.
The Scourge of the Swastika Page 26