Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews Peter Longerich (grave mercy .TXT) 📖

murdered on 26 September; on 4 October another 1,845 people were murdered on

the pretext of a ‘punishment operation’; on 29 October after a large-scale filtration

operation 9,200 people were shot (‘cleansing the ghetto of superfluous Jews’). 124

The methodical nature of the activities of the Germans can also be demon-

strated using the example of the annihilation of the Jews in Vilnius, where all the

inhabitants of the ghetto except a tiny core of specialist workers were systemat-

ically killed over a period of a few months. At the beginning of September, a major

series of arrests was made and 3,700 men, women, and children were shot in the

woods at Ponary; the surviving Jewish population was resettled into two new

ghettos. During September further shootings took place and thousands more were

killed. On 1 October, the day of Yom Kippur, several thousand men were taken out

of the ghetto and shot, mostly those who were not registered as specialist workers.

In the middle of October the so-called Small Ghetto was dissolved and some

15,000 people murdered. Towards the end of the month the occupants of the

Large Ghetto who were fit for work were transferred into the Small Ghetto

and those who remained were shot in two ‘operations’ by the beginning of

November, which cost 8,000 and 3,000 lives respectively. On 20 and 21 December

those without identity papers to confirm that they were skilled workers or their

dependents were shot—a total of 15,000 people. 125

In Jäger’s report for 1 December the situation in Lithuania is described thus: ‘I

can confirm today that the goal of solving the Jewish problem in Lithuania has

been achieved by Einsatzkommando 3. There are no more Jews in Lithuania

except worker Jews and their families. That makes: in Šiauliai c.4,500, in Kaunas,

c.15,000, in Vilnius, c.15,000.’126 Jäger added, as if by way of apology, ‘I also wished to bump off these worker Jews and their families but this was strongly resisted by

the civilian administration (the Reichskommissar) and the Wehrmacht and pro-

voked the following ban: these Jews and their families must not be shot.’ By the

end of November Jäger gave a total figure for those murdered in the General

Region of Lithuania of 125,000 people, overwhelmingly Jews.

At the end of October the rural areas of Latvia were also ‘wholly cleansed’ of

Jews. The survivors were imprisoned in the ghettos of Liepāja (Libau), Daugavpils

(Dünaburg), and Riga, where the enforced resettlement was only completed at the

end of that month. In November and December the Latvian Jews were also almost

wholly annihilated in a series of large-scale ‘ghetto operations’. First of all,

between 7 and 9 November, at least 3,000 Jews were murdered in the Daugavpils

ghetto, where similar ‘operations’ had already taken place in August and Septem-

ber. 127 Friedrich Jeckeln, who had just been made Higher SS and Police Commander for Russia North and who, when he had held the same office in Russia

South, had been responsible for the death of an estimated 100,000 Jews, claimed to

have received an explicit order directly from Himmler on or around 10 November

to liquidate the ghetto in Riga. On Jeckeln’s orders, during Riga’s Bloody Sunday

on 29–30 November, more than 10,000 people were shot outside Riga near the

Extension of Shootings to Whole Jewish Population

237

railway station at Rumbuli. Previously, Jeckeln had had 4,500 working Jews

separated from the rest and put into a separate area of the ghetto, the ‘Small

Ghetto’. In a second major ‘operation’ on 8 and 9 December—also at Rumbuli—

the total of Jewish victims from Riga rose to 27,800, on Jeckeln’s own admission. 128

In Liepāja between 15 and 17 December a further 2,350 Jews were murdered, which

meant the whole population of the ghetto except for 350 craftsmen. 129

Of only 4,500 Jews living in Estonia the invading army had merely encountered

some 2,000. The male Jews above the age of 16 and the female Jews fit for work and

between 16 and 60 were imprisoned in provisional camps and most of the men

were shot. Einsatzgruppe A reported from Estonia as early as October that ‘the

rural communities are now already free of Jews’. 130 In February the women and children in a camp near Pskov (Pleskau) who had not been detailed for forced

labour were also murdered on the instructions of Higher SS and Police Com-

mander Jeckeln. 131

In the areas of Belarus under civilian administration the ‘major operations’

aimed at women, men, and children began in October. They were carried out by a

sub-unit of Einsatzkommando 6, the Commando of the Security Police Minsk

(formerly Einsatzkommando 1b), the Order Police and the Wehrmacht. 132 They began initially with the ‘cleansing’ of the ‘flat land’. For this purpose, according to

a report by the division commander, Reserve Police Battalion 11, which was part of

the 707th Security Division, was deployed for a ‘major operation’ between 8 and 15

October 1941 ‘under the command of the Intelligence Office at Minsk’. This

involved shooting more than 2,000 people in Smilovichi in Rudensk and other

Belarusian towns—people who had been labelled ‘partisans, Communists, Jews

and other suspicious rabble’. The battalion was supported by two companies of

Lithuanian auxiliary police, the Secret Field Police and the Engineers’ Company of

the 707th Division. The reports and orders signed off at the same time by the

divisional commander are very clear with respect to the treatment of Jews in the

‘area to be secured’: they talk of ‘annihilation’ and ‘extermination’. The statement

made by the battalion leader in 1960 that he received the order for the ‘operation’

from the staff of the 707th Division therefore seems perfectly credible. 133 At the same time that this series of mass murders was being carried out, a sub-unit of

Einsatzkommando 3 murdered more than 3,000 Jews in the areas around Minsk

and Borisov. 134

Following the ‘major operation’ in the area of Smilovichi, members of the

battalion shot ‘1,000 Jews and Communists’ in the city of Koydanava (now

Dzerzhinsk) on 21 October (again with the support of the Lithuanians). There

exists a report by the Regional Commissioner, Heinrich Carl, concerning the

deployment of the battalion on 27 October in Slutsk, which the Commissar

General in Minsk, Kube, was to use as the occasion to petition the Reichskom-

missar Eastland for disciplinary proceedings to be initiated against all the officers

of the battalion. 135 In his report