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

ation’ in Belarus with the support of the Secret Field Police and the Division’s

Company of Engineers that claimed several thousand Jews as its victims. The

orders of the 707th Division, which are preserved in the State Archive in Minsk,

demonstrate that this was not an operation initiated by the SS or Police in which

the Wehrmacht merely played a supporting role. This ‘operation’ was part of a

comprehensive approach to annihilation in which the Division played a decisive

role.

On 16 October, thus immediately after the end of the ‘major campaign’ in the

area around Smilovichi in Rudensk, the Divisional Commander ordered an

increased deployment of patrols by his formation and noted, ‘as far as these

patrols are concerned, we have to ensure that the Jews are well and truly removed

from the villages. We are continually finding that they are the only support that

the partisans have for surviving now and over the winter. Their annihilation must

therefore be carried out uncompromisingly.’192

In his report for the period between 11 October and 10 November, the

Divisional Commander (who also had the title ‘Commandant in Belarus’)

noted, ‘it has been observed that the Jews often leave their homes and move out

into the countryside, probably southwards, in an attempt to escape the operations

targeted at them. Because they persist in making common cause with the Com-

munists and partisans, this alien element will be completely eradicated. The

operations that have been carried out so far took place in the east of the district

rather than in the old Soviet border areas and on the stretch of railway between

Minsk and Brest-Litovsk. And in addition, in the area under the Commandant in

Belarus the Jews in the countryside will be assembled in ghettos in the larger

towns.’193

An officer of the War Economy and Armaments Department, who was in

Minsk on 25 October 1941 for a meeting, passed on in his report the following

suggestion from the First Officer of the General Staff of the Division to his office:

‘All Jews and other disruptive elements should be replaced by specialist workers

Extension of Shootings to Whole Jewish Population

245

from amongst the prisoners of war.’ For the ‘security formations’ deployed in

Belarus ‘the only appropriate instructions are those associated with the worlds of

Karl May and Edgar Wallace’ is how the First Officer [Ia] of the Division

characterized the mood prevailing in his unit. 194

An order to the 707th Division from 24 November is quite unambiguous in this

respect: ‘As previous orders have already indicated, the Jews must disappear from

the flat lands and the Gypsies must also be destroyed. The implementation of

large-scale anti-Jewish operations is not the task of units from this Division. These

will be carried out by civilian or police authorities, where appropriate on the

instructions of the Commandant in Belarus if he has the necessary units at his

disposal, or if there are reasons of security or collective measures at issue. Where

small or moderate-sized groups of Jews are encountered in the countryside they

can either be dealt with at once or brought together in ghettos in the larger towns

that have been identified for this purpose where they will then be handed over to

the civilian authorities or the SD. Whenever operations of any size are carried out

the civilian authorities are to be informed in advance.’195

In his report for November, the First Officer of the Division wrote, ‘The

measures instigated against the Jews as supporters of Bolshevism and leaders of

the partisan movement have had noticeable success. We will continue to gather

them together in ghettos and liquidate Jews found guilty of partisan activity and

rabble-rousing and thereby best promote the pacification of the countryside.’196

This meant therefore that the ‘cleansing’ of the ‘flat lands’ that Reichskommissar

Lohse had already ordered in his ‘guidelines’ for handling the Jewish question on

18 August was a task apportioned between the civilian administration, the Police

and SS, and the Wehrmacht. 197 The Wehrmacht combed the ‘flat lands’ and

‘cleansed’ them of Jews and Gypsies, which is to say that it liquidated them or

transferred them to ghettos. Larger-scale ‘operations’ were not the responsibility

of the Division but fell to the Police; more substantial ‘operations’ like this could

also be carried out by the Division if it had appropriate units at its disposal or if

there were particular military grounds for doing so, such as ‘reasons of security’ or

‘collective measures’.

The unit commanders of the 707th Division therefore had fairly broad room for

manoeuvre within the scope of these orders. If they encountered Jews in a given

town they had three possibilities if they decided not to leave the whole matter to

the Police: they could take action against the Jews they encountered either ‘for

reasons of security’, or using the pretext of collective reprisal measures, or within

the context of general instructions for ‘cleansing’ the territory. In the matter of

whether the Jews thus encountered should be ‘dealt with’ by the Division itself or

handed over for imprisonment in a ghetto the unit leaders of the 707th Division

also had plenty of freedom for manoeuvre.

Whether the operations of the 707th Division aimed at ‘cleansing the flat lands’

were one component in a programme of annihilation carried out by the other

246

Mass Executions in Occupied Soviet Zones, 1941

security divisions of the army cannot be stated with complete confidence on the

basis of documentary material currently available. There is, however, an indica-

tion that the procedures of the 707th Division were by no means to be attributed to

an isolated initiative on the part of a single Divisional Commander. As early as

August 1941, a Regimental Commander in the 221st Security Division had made

his assessment of the situation known to his superiors and it conforms to the

pattern of the activities of the 707th: ‘The Jewish question must be solved in a

radical manner. I suggest the confinement of all the Jews living in the countryside

in assembly camps and work camps under guard. Suspect elements must be

removed. ’198 The 354th Infantry Regiment also took part in the massacres carried out by Einsatzkommando 8 that ensured that the area around Krupka in Belarus

was rendered ‘free of Jews’. 199

There is in addition much evidence that units from the Wehrmacht were taking

measures against the Jewish civilian population as part of anti-partisan or reprisal

‘operations’ in accordance with the distorted image they had been fed of the

‘Jewish-Bolshevist complex’.