Read Army of Evil: A History of the SS Online
Authors: Adrian Weale
One of the most infamous actions of the special task groups took place in Kiev between 29 September and 11 October 1941. Special Unit 4a of Special Task Group C had arrived in the city on 25 September in the wake of Field Marshal von Reichenau’s 6th Army, which had captured the Ukrainian capital six days earlier. Meanwhile, a number of explosions had rocked the city as mines and booby traps left behind by the retreating Soviets had detonated. One of these explosions killed the 6th Army’s artillery commander, General von Seydlitz, but others started fierce fires that burned out of control, destroying many buildings and leaving some 25,000 Ukrainians homeless. A meeting was convened between Rasch, Blobel, SS-General Friedrich Jeckeln (who had recently been appointed Senior SS and Police Leader South) and Major General Eberhardt (the military
commander in Kiev). Between them, they decided to take radical action. On 28 September, a notice was posted around the city, addressed to the Jewish population:
All Jews living in the city of Kiev and its vicinity are to report by 8 o’clock on the morning of Monday, September 29, 1941, to the corner of Melnikovsky and Dokhturov Streets (near the cemetery). They are to take with them documents, money, valuables, as well as warm clothes, underwear, etc. All who do not carry out this instruction will be shot. Anyone entering flats evacuated by Jews and stealing property will be shot.
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Some thirty thousand Jews arrived at the designated location in the belief that they were about to be evacuated to labour camps. Instead, they were met by a group consisting of Sipo and SD men from Special Unit 4a; a company of Waffen-SS soldiers who were attached to Special Task Group C; members of the Order Police from Special Unit 4a and from Police Regiment South; and some Ukrainian auxiliary policemen recruited as reinforcements by the Order Police. The Jews were then marched in groups of a hundred or so through the Jewish cemetery to the ravine of Babi Yar. Once there, they were ordered to strip naked and pile their belongings neatly. Kurt Werner, a member of Special Unit 4a, described what happened next:
Soon after my arrival at the execution site I was ordered to the bottom of the ravine, together with other comrades. After a short time the first Jews were brought to us via the slopes of the ravine. The Jews had to lay face down at the edge of the ravine. Three groups of marksmen were in the pit, around 12 marksmen. Jews were constantly brought from above to these groups of marksmen. The Jews following had to lie down on the corpses of the Jews who had already been shot. The marksmen stood behind the Jews and killed them by shots in the neck. Today I still remember
the horror of the Jews who saw the corpses in the pit. Many Jews were shocked, and screamed. One cannot imagine the nervous strain involved in carrying out this dirty job in the pit. It was horrible…
The whole morning I had to stay in the ravine. There I was ordered to shoot again and again for a while, and then I was busy filling MP (machine pistol) magazines with ammunition. During this time other comrades were detailed for shooting. At noon we were allowed to leave the ravine, and in the afternoon together with others comrades I had to bring the Jews towards the pit. During this time other comrades carried out the shooting in the pit. We brought the Jews to the border of the pit; from there they ran down the slopes themselves. On this day the shooting went on until approximately 5 or 6 p.m. Then we were ordered back to our quarters. That evening alcohol was handed out again.
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The official report was more prosaic, but the writer’s satisfaction at what Special Unit 4a had accomplished was clear:
Partly because of the better economic situation of the Jews under the Bolshevist regime and their activities as informers and agents of the NKVD, partly because of the explosions and the resulting fires, the public feeling against the Jews was very strong. As an added factor it was proved that the Jews participated in the arson. The population expected adequate retaliatory measures by the German authorities. Consequently all Jews of Kiev were requested, in agreement with the city commander, to appear on Monday, 29 September by 8 o’clock at a designated place. These announcements were posted by members of the Ukrainian militia in the entire city. Simultaneously it was announced orally that all Jews were to be moved. In collaboration with the Special Task Group staff and 2 Kommandos of the Police Regiment South, the Special Unit 4a executed on 29 and 30 September, 33,771 Jews. Money,
valuables, underwear and clothing were secured and placed partly at the disposal of the NSV [National Socialist Party Public Welfare Organisation] for use of the racial Germans, partly given to the city administration authorities for use of the needy population. The transaction was carried out without friction. No incidents occurred. The “resettlement measure” against the Jews was approved throughout by the population. The fact that in reality the Jews were liquidated was hardly known until now; according to up-to-date experiences it would, however, hardly have been objected to. The measures were also approved by the
Wehrmacht
. The Jews who were not yet apprehended as well as those who gradually returned from their flight to the city were in each case treated accordingly.
Simultaneously a number of NKVD officials, political commissars, and partisan leaders was arrested and liquidated.
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Unsurprisingly, given the speed with which the atrocity had been carried out, some of the victims had been wounded rather than killed. Three days after the main massacre, Anton Heidborn, another member of Special Unit 4a, returned to the site:
On arrival we saw a woman sitting by a bush, having obviously survived the execution. This woman was shot by an SD man who joined us, name unknown. Furthermore, we saw a person waving to us with their hand out of a pile of corpses. I don’t know if it was a man or a woman. I assume that this person was shot by the SD man but I did not see it. That day we started to cover the heaps of corpses. For this purpose civilians were used. In addition some walls of the ravine were partially blown up. After that day I did not return to the execution site. For the next several days we were busy smoothing banknotes from the property of the shot Jews. I estimate that it must have amounted to millions. I don’t know what the money was used for. It was packed in bags, and sent away.
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The method of execution employed at Babi Yar was typical of that used throughout the Soviet Union. Hermann Graebe was a German engineer employed on building projects in the Ukraine who witnessed another massacre, this time by members of Special Unit C:
I walked around the mound, and found myself confronted by a tremendous grave. People were closely wedged together and lying on top of each other so that their heads were visible. Nearly all had blood running over their shoulders from their heads. Some of the people shot were still moving. Some were lifting their arms and turning their heads to show that they were still alive. The pit was already two thirds full. I estimated that it contained about 1,000 people. I looked for the man who did the shooting. He was an SS man, who sat at the edge of the narrow end of the pit, his feet dangling into the pit. He had a tommy gun on his knees and was smoking a cigarette. The people, completely naked, went down some steps which were cut in the clay wall of the pit and clambered over the heads of the people lying there, to the place to which the SS man directed them. They lay down in front of the dead or injured people; some caressed those who were still alive and spoke to them in a low voice. Then I heard a series of shots. I looked into the pit and saw that the bodies were twitching or the heads lying already motionless on top of the bodies that lay before them. Blood was running from their necks. I was surprised that I was not ordered away, but I saw that there were two or three postmen in uniform nearby. The next batch was approaching already. They went down into the pit, lined themselves up against the previous victims and were shot. When I walked back around the mound, I noticed another truckload of people which had just arrived. This time it included sick and infirm persons. An old, very thin woman with terribly thin legs was undressed by others who were already naked, while two people held her up. The woman appeared to be paralyzed. The naked people carried the woman around the mound…
On the morning of the next day, when I again visited the site, I saw about 30 naked people lying near the pit—about 30 to 50 meters away from it. Some of them were still alive; they looked straight in front of them with a fixed stare and seemed to notice neither the chilliness of the morning nor the workers of my firm who stood around. A girl of about 20 spoke to me and asked me to give her clothes, and help her escape. At that moment we heard a fast car approach and I noticed that it was an SS detail. I moved away to my site. Ten minutes later we heard shots from the vicinity of the pit. The Jews still alive had been ordered to throw the corpses into the pit; then they had themselves to lie down in this to be shot in the neck.
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The majority of the Order Police and Waffen-SS members of the special task groups had simply been labelled unsuitable for combat operations at the front—in general, because they were too old. In other words, they had not been selected for the special task groups because they had exhibited particular fanaticism, or because they were sadists or psychopaths. Indeed, many of the commanders recognised that the executions, particularly of women and children, placed their men under great psychological strain. Several methods were employed by various commanders to minimise this. In Special Task Group D, Ohlendorf insisted that the murders had to be carried out in what he imagined was a “military” way. Thus, the firing squads had no contact with their victims until the last moment, and three riflemen were allocated to each person to be shot. This was designed to alleviate individual guilt among the execution squads. Rasch took a different tack. He insisted that every member of his unit participate in the killings, ensuring a sense of collective, and shared, guilt.
In August 1941, Himmler—accompanied by his adjutant, Karl Wolff, and SS-Lieutenant General von dem Bach-Zelewski—observed a mass execution near Minsk, organised by Arthur Nebe’s Special Task Group B. As the victims awaited their fate, Himmler is said to have
spotted a tall, blond, blue-eyed man of about twenty whom he engaged in conversation:
“Are you a Jew?”
“Yes.”
“Are both of your parents Jews?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have any ancestors who were not Jews?”
“No.”
“Then I can’t help you.”
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Standing close to the pit, Himmler became increasingly distressed as the shooting commenced. According to Wolff: “After many volleys, I could see that Himmler was trembling. He ran his hand across his face and swayed. ‘You could have spared yourself and me this,’ I said to him. His face was almost green. And then he said, ‘A piece of brain just splattered in my face.’ He immediately threw up.”
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Once the killing was over, Himmler made a speech to the men in which he exhorted them to “see it through.” However, he asked Nebe to devise a less gruesome means of mass execution than simply shooting people.
Nebe summoned the gassing expert Albert Widmann from the Criminal Technical Institute in Berlin to carry out some experiments.
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The first method to be tested was explosives. Two wooden bunkers were packed with explosives before twenty mental patients were herded inside. Then the dynamite was detonated. This first explosion did not kill all of the patients, so the wounded were placed back in the bunkers with even more dynamite. A work detail spent much of the next day retrieving body parts from nearby trees and undergrowth.
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The next method to be tried was gassing. A number of gassing vehicles had already been built for Operation T-4, which utilised them as mobile gas chambers. The passenger cab was hermetically sealed,
and the driver operated a switch that pumped carbon monoxide into the back of the truck. Nebe’s version was more rough and ready. He and his assistants travelled to an asylum at Mogilew and ran a hose from their car exhaust into a sealed room containing mental patients. This didn’t seem to be working quickly enough, so they swapped the car for a truck. The victims were dead within eight minutes.
T
HE EASTWARDS EXPANSION
of the Third Reich created the need for both civil administration and a security apparatus in the conquered territories. Himmler therefore appointed three new senior SS and police leaders to assume control of the security forces in these areas: SS-Major General Prutzmann in the North, based in Riga; SS-Lieutenant General von dem Bach-Zelewski in the Centre, based in Minsk; and SS-Lieutenant General Jeckeln in the South, based in Kiev. Each of these men controlled a regiment of Order Police as well as various Waffen-SS units and locally recruited militias. All of these forces were used to attack the surviving Jewish populations that had been missed or bypassed by the initial wave of special task groups. Hilberg characterises these operations as the “Second Sweep”;
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they were often deliberately misrepresented as “anti-partisan” actions.
A typical example was the massacre of Jews at Józéfow in eastern Poland that was carried out by the 101st Reserve Police Battalion in July 1942. This came about because a shortage of transport had led to a temporary hiatus in traffic from Poland’s ghettoes to the Operation Reinhard death camps (see
Chapter 22
). Frustrated by the lack of killing, the SSPF for Lublin, Odilo Globocnik, ordered the police battalion to travel to Józéfow, pick out any young male Jews who could be employed by the work camps, and murder the rest of the Jewish population. This they duly did. Unusually for such an operation, the commander, a Major Trapp, excused some members of his battalion—which comprised mostly middle-aged reservists from Hamburg—from taking part in the actual shooting. Nevertheless, over the next six months,
this same battalion killed Jews in Lomazy, Miedzyrzec, Serokomla, Kock, Parczew, Konskowola, Miedzyrzec again and Lukow.
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In total, they are estimated to have murdered some 38,000 Jews and to have deported some 45,000 more. Although they operated within the framework of the Lublin SSPF, not one of the battalion’s policemen was a formal member of the SS.