Raul Hilberg
Page 51
German army could hardly wait to see the Jews of Russia dead—no
wonder
that
the
commanders of
the
Einsatzgruppen
were pleasantly
surprised.
While most of the mobile killing units were operating in the territorial domain of the German army, Einsatzkommandos of Groups C and D also moved into sectors of the Hungarian and Romanian armies. A
novel situation faced the Security Police in these sectors. The RSHA
had made no agreements with the satellite commands. The German
government had not even informed its allies of the special mission of
the
Reichsführer-SS.
New
experiences
were
therefore
in
store
for
Himmler's men as they moved into areas held by alien authority.
References to the relations with the Hungarians are scarce, and
whenever we find them they do not show the Hungarians in a cooperative attitude. In Zhitomir, for instance, the Hungarian army stopped an action by native police against the Jews.59 60 61 Again, farther to the south,
Einsatzgruppe D reported at the end of August that it had “cleared of
Jews” a territory bordering on the Dniester from Hotin to Yampol,
except for a small area occupied by Hungarian forces.62 The Romanian
59. Report by Major Teichmann (Korück 553/Ic), January 1, 1942, NOKW-1866.
60. Affidavit by Werner Braune (commander, Sonderkommando lib), July 8, 1947,
NO-4234. Still another example of army cooperation is Zhitomir. See RSHA IV-A-1,
Operational Report, USSR No. 106 (48 copies), October 7, 1941, NO-3140.
61. RSHA IV-A-1, Operational Report USSR No. 23, July 15, 1941, NO-4526.
Control of the city passed subsequently into the hands of a German commander.
62. RSHA IV-A-1, Operational Report USSR No. 67 (48 copies), August 29, 1941,
NO-2837.
304
THE FIRST SWEEP
attitude, on the other hand, was quite different. Repeatedly, Romanian
forces on the march invaded Jewish quarters and killed Jews, and their
actions took the form of atrocities rather than well-planned or well-
reasoned killing operations. The German witnesses of that Romanian
fury were slightly disturbed by what they saw and at times attempted to
introduce discipline into the ranks of their ally.
Early in July, Sonderkommando 10a of Einsatzgruppe D moved
into the city of Bäl{i. The Sonderkommando sent search parties into
the Jewish quarter of the Romanian-occupied city. “In one room,”
reported
Obersturmbannführer
Seetzen,
“a
patrol
last
evening
discovered fifteen Jews, of different ages and both sexes, who had been
shot by Romanian soldiers. Some of the Jews were still alive; the patrol
shot them to death for mercy’s sake.”63 64 Another incident in the same
town occurred on the evening of July 10. Romanian army authorities
drove together four hundred Jews of all ages and both sexes in order to
shoot them in retaliation for attacks on Romanian soldiers. The commander of the 170th German Division in the area was taken aback by the spectacle. He requested that the shooting be limited to fifteen Jewish men.“ By July 29 another report from Bälji indicated that the Romanians were shooting Jews en masse. “Romanian police in Bälji
and
surrounding
area
proceeding
sharply
against
Jewish
population.
Number of shootings cannot be determined exactly." Kommando 10a
pitched in by shooting the Jewish community leaders in the town.65 66 67
The Einsatzgruppe also had trouble with the Romanians in Cer-
näuji. In that city the Romanians were busily shooting Ukranian intellectuals
“in
order
to
settle
the
Ukrainian
problem
in
the
North
Bukovina once and for all.” Among the victims the Security Police
found
many
Ukrainian
nationalists
who
had
been
potential
collaborators in German service. Kommando 10b consequently had a dual
reason
for
interfering.
It
requested
the
release
of
the
pro-German
nationalists (OUN men) in exchange for Communists and Jews.“ The
arrangement
was successful. Two weeks later, Einsatzgruppe D and
Romanian police were jointly shooting thousands of Jews.6’
63. Sonderkommando 10a (signed Seetzen) to Einsatzgruppe D, July 10, 1941, NO-
2073.
64. RSHA IV-A-1, Operational Report USSR No. 25 <34 copies), July 17, 1941,
NO-2939.
65. RSHA IV-A-1, Operational Report USSR No. 37 (45 copies). July 29, 1941,
NO-2952.
66. RSHA IV-A-1, Operational Report USSR No. 22 <30 copies), July 14, 1941,
NO-4135. The OUN was a pro-German organization of Ukrainians.
67. RSHA IV-A-1. Operational Report USSR No. 40(45 copies), August 1. 1941,
NO-2950. RSHA IV-A-1, Operational Report USSR No. 67 (48 copies), August 29,1941,
NO-2827.
305
MOBILE KILLING OPERATIONS
The occurrences at Bäl(i and Cemäu{i were destined to be dwarfed
by a bloodbath that followed in the fall. The city with the largest
Jewish population in the USSR, Odessa, was captured by the Fourth
Romanian Army after a long siege, on October 16, 1941.“ During the
first days of the occupation, fires broke out night after night, but—in
the
eyes
of
a
German
observer—the
Romanians
were
proceeding
against
the
Jewish
“elements”
with
“relative
loyalty
[verhältnismässiger
Loyalität]."
There
were
no
“special
excesses
[besondere
Ausschreitungen].'' In the late afternoon of October 22, however, partisans blew up the Romanian headquarters on Engel Street, killing the commander of the 10th Division, General Glogojanu, and his entire
staff. The number of identified dead was forty-six, of whom twenty-one
were officers, including some Germans. Others were believed buried in
the debris.® That evening, the deputy commander of the 13th Division,
General Trestioreanu, reported that he was taking measures to hang
Jews and Communists in public.68 69 70 During the night, Odessa was the
scene of numerous hangings and shootings.71 72 These killings had hardly
ceased when, on October 23, Romanian gendarmerie began a major
roundup. According to an Abwehr liaison officer with Romanian intelligence, who was in Odessa at the time, about 19,000 Jews were shot that moming in a square surrounded by a wooden fence in the harbor
area. Their bodie
s were covered with gasoline and burned.” At 12:30
p.M. of the same day, the Romanian dictator, Marshal Ion Antonescu,
issued
instructions
that
200
Communists
be
executed
for
every
officer—Romanian or German—killed in the explosion, and that 100
Communists be executed for every dead enlisted man. All Communists
68. OKW communiques, October 16 and 17, 1941. published in the press. Following Soviet evacuation by sea, about 300,000 inhabitants were reported left behind. Institute of Jewish Affairs, Hitler's Ten-Year War on the Jews (New York, 1943), p. 185, citing Novoye Slovo (Berlin), July 22, 1942. An estimate of the Jewish component of the total
population is a "round" irundl 100,000. Report by Oberkriegsverwaltungsrat Dr. Ihnen
(German legation in Bucharest), December 15, 1941, last unnumbered folder in Rumänien series, once in Federal Records Center, Alexandria, Va.
69. Director (Leiter) of Abwehrstelle Rumänien (signed Rodler) to 11th Army/Ic,
German Army Mission lc, German Air Force Mission Ic. and German Naval Mission Ic,
November 4, 1941, T 501. roll 278.
70. Telegram from Trestioreanu to 4th Army, October 22, 1941, 8:40 P.M., in
Matatias Carp, ed., Cartea Neogra (Bucharest, 1947), vol. 3, p. 208.
71. Rodler report. T 501, roll 278. An indictment in the war crimes trial of Romanian dictator Ion Antonescu noted that 5,000 people were shot. Extract from indictment in Carp, Cartea Neagra, p. 208. The majority of the victims were Jews. Comment by
Carp, ibid., p. 199.
72. Rodlerreport,T50l,roll278.
306
THE FIRST SWEEP
in Odessa, as well as one member of every Jewish family, were to be
held as hostages.” The Odessa prisons were now filling rapidly with
more victims. On October 24, masses of Jews were moved some ten
miles west of the city to the collective farm of Dalnik, where they were
to be shot in antitank ditches. The shootings, which took place in
batches of forty to fifty along a two-mile stretch, were too slow for the
Romanian officers in charge of the operation. The remaining Jews were
thereupon
crowded
into
four
sizable
warehouses
and
sprayed
with
bullets fired through holes in the walls. One warehouse after another
was then set on fire. A Romanian indictment presented in a postwar
trial contains an estimate of 25-30,000 dead at Dalnik. The Abwehr
officer in Odessa was told by the Romanian director of telephone “surveillance” ( Überwachung) that 40,000 Odessa Jews had been "conveyed to Dalnik [nach Dalnik geschafft].''7' Some tens of thousands of Jews remained in Odessa after the October massacres.” They were to
be swept up in a second wave during the following months.
The mobile killings had thus become an operation of SS, police,
and military units, Romanian as well as German. Much, however, depended also on the attitude of the civilian population. How were the Slavs going to react to the sudden annihilation of an entire people living
in their midst? Would they hide the Jews or hand them over to German
occupation authorities? Would they shoot at the killers or help in the
killings?
These
were
vital
questions
for
Einsatzgruppen
commanders
and their subordinates.
In fact, the behavior of the population during the killing operations
was characterized by a tendency toward passivity. This inertness was
the product of conflicting emotions and opposing restraints. The Slavs
had no particular liking for their Jewish neighbors, and they felt no
overpowering urge to help the Jews in their hour of need. Insofar as
there were such inclinations, they were effectively curbed by fear of
reprisals from the Germans. At the same time, however, the Slavic
population stood estranged and even aghast before the unfolding spectacle of the “final solution." There was on the whole no impelling desire 73 74 75
73. Text of order in Carp, Corleo Neagra, pp. 208-9.
74. See extract from Romanian indictment in Carp, ibid. , pp. 309-10; extract from
the deposition of Romanian Sublieutenant Alexe Neacsu. 23d Regiment, ibid., pp. 210-
11; German figure in Rodler report T 501, roll 278. See also Dora Litani, ‘‘The Destruction of the Jews of Odessa," Yad Vashem Studies 6 (1967): 135-54, and Julius Fischer, Transnislria (New York, 1969), pp. 120-21.
75. Carp estimates that 30,000 remained. Carp, Cartea Neagra, p. 201. On Jews,
insecure after shootings, streaming into the central prison without “prodding" of the
Romanians (ohne Zutun der RumänenI. see report by confidential agent, code no. USSR
96, recorded in Bucharest, beginning of November 1941. WL/1C 4.2-a.
307
MOBILE KILLING OPERATIONS
to cooperate in a process of such utter ruthlessness. The fact that the
Soviet regime, fighting off the Germans a few hundred miles to the
east, was still threatening to return undoubtedly acted as a powerful
restraint on many a potential collaborator. The ultimate effect of this
psychological constellation was an escape into neutrality. The population did not want to take sides in the destruction process. If few were on the side of the Germans, fewer still were on the side of the Jews.
In all the Einsatzgruppen reports, we discover only one indication
of the pro-Jewish act in the occupied lands. Sonderkommando 4b reported that it had shot the mayor of Kremenchug, Senitsa Vershovsky, because he had “tried to protect the Jews.’”6 This incident appears to
have been the only case of its kind. The counterpressure was evidently
too great. Whoever attempted to aid the Jews acted alone and exposed
himself as well as his family to the possibility of a death sentence from
a German Kommando. There was no encouragement for a man with an
awakened conscience. In Lithuania, Bishop Brizgys set an example for
the entire population by forbidding the clergy to aid or intercede for the
Jews in any way (sich in irgend einer Form fur Juden zu verwenden)?
Across the whole occupied territory Jews were turning to the
Christian population for assistance—in vain. Einsatzgruppe C reported
that many Jews who had fled from their homes were turning back from
the countryside. “The population does not house them and does not
feed
them.
They
live
in
holes
in
the
earth
or
pressed together
[zusammengepfercht] in old huts.”7*
Sometimes the failure to help the Jews appears to have weighed on
the conscience of the population. Thus in the northern sector, south of
Leningrad, Einsatzgruppe A reported a subtle attempt by the local
residents to justify their inactivity. The following anecdote was circulating in that sector: A group of Soviet prisoners of war was requested by its German captors to bury alive a number of Jewish fellow prisoners. The Russians refused. The German soldiers thereupon told
the Jews to bury the Russians. The Jews, according to the anecdote,
immediately grabbed the shovels.”
The refusal to help the Jews was only a little
more tenacious than 76 77 78 79
76. RSHA, IV-A-l, Operational Report USSR No. 156, January 16, 1942, NO-
3405.
77. RSHA IV-A-l, Operational Report USSR No. 54 (48copies), August 16,1941,
NO-2849.
78. RSHA IV-A-l. Operational Report USSR No. 94 (48 copies), September 25,
1941, NO-3146.
79. RSHA IV-A-l, Operational Report USSR No. 123 (50 copies), October 24,
1941, NO·3239.
308
THE FIRST SWEEP
the reluctance to help the Germans. On July 19. Einsatzgruppe B in
White Russia had already noted that the population was remarkably
“apathetic” to the killing operations and that it would have to be asked
to cooperate in the seizure of Communist functionaries and the Jewish
intelligentsia.“
From
the
Ukraine,
Einsatzkommando
6
of
Einsatzgruppe C reported as follows:
Almost nowhere can the population be persuaded to take active steps
against the Jews. This may be explained by the fear of many people that
the Red Army may return. Again and again this anxiety has been pointed
out to us. Older people have remarked that they had already experienced
in 1918 the sudden retreat of the Germans. In order to meet the fear
psychosis, and in order to destroy the myth [Bann] which, in the eyes of
many Ukrainians, places the Jew in the position of the wielder of political
power [Träger politischer Macht], Einsatzkommando 6 on several occasions marched Jews before their execution through the city. Also, care was taken to have Ukrainian militiamen watch the shooting of Jews.11
This “deflation” of the Jews in the public eye did not have the desired
effects. After a few weeks, Einsatzgruppe C complained once more
that the inhabitants did not betray the movements of hidden Jews. The
Ukrainians were passive, benumbed by the “Bolshevist terror.” Only
the ethnic Germans in the area were busily working for the Einsatzgruppe.“
Neutrality is a zero quantity that helps the stronger party in an
unequal struggle. The Jews needed native help more than the Germans
did. The Einsatzgruppen, however, not only had the advantage of a
generally
neutral
population;
they
also
managed
to
obtain—at
least
from certain segments of the local citizenry—two important forms of
cooperation in the killing operations: pogroms and the help of auxiliary
police in seizures and shootings.