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

76/59, vol. 8, pp. 34–41, 14 May 1971; ZSt, 201 AR-Z 14/58, vol. 7, pp. 3327 ff., 14

Aug. 1959; cf. Ogorreck, Einsatzgruppen, 59; Otto Bradfisch, ZSt, 202 AR-Z 76/59, vol. 11, p. 7605, 8 Oct. 1971; ZSt, 202 AR-Z 81/59, vol. 2, pp. 531 ff. (cf. Ogorreck, Einsatzgruppen, 73); Erhard Kroeger, ZSt, 76/59, vol. 9, pp. 14 ff., 28 Aug. 1967; cf. Ogorreck, Einsatzgruppen, 83 ff. Two leaders, Günther Herrmann (ZSt, 4 AR-Z 11/61, 5, pp. 24 ff., 11 Oct.

1962 and pp. 108 ff., 1 Feb. 1963; cf. Ogorreck, Einsatzgruppen, 80–1) and Erich Ehrlinger (ZSt, 204 AR-Z 21/58, 4, pp. 2421 ff., 5 May 1959) only admitted that they had been

ordered to shoot Jewish men by the heads of their Einsatzgruppen after the invasion of

the Soviet Union. Ehrlinger later drew back from this statement and claimed that Jews

had not expressly been mentioned in the relevant orders but had been involved ‘in so

far as they were seen as carriers of Bolshevism’ (ZSt, 201 AR-Z 76/59, vol. 9, pp. 100 ff., 23 June 1971; cf. Ogorreck, Einsatzgruppen, 62 ff.).

72. Walther Blume: ZSt, 201 AR-Z 76/59, 39, pp. 9 ff. (bzw 7118 ff.), 11 May 1971; thus also already in ZSt, 202 AR-Z 96/60, 9, pp. 3104 ff., 19 Dec. 1962; cf. Ogorreck, Einsatzgruppen, 68 ff. Woldemar Klingelhöfer: ZSt, 202 AR-Z 287/60, 1, pp. 207 ff., interrogation of 2 Nov.

1961; ZSt, 201 AR-Z 76/59, 9, pp. 122 ff., interrogation of 30 June 1971. Martin Sandberger, ZSt, 201 AR-Z 76/59, 2, pp. 34 ff., 30 Sept. 1957; also in ZSt, AR-Z 246/59, 2, pp. 209 ff., 18

Feb. 1960 and ZSt, 201 AR-Z 76/59, 2, pp. 351 ff., 30 Nov. 1964 and 1 Dec. 1964; ZSt, II 207

AR-Z 18/58, 11, pp. 2313 ff., 3 Nov. 1965; on Sandberger’s statements cf. Ogorreck, Einsatzgruppen, 59 ff. Rudolf Batz, ZSt, 207 AR-Z 7/59, 11, pp. 1255 ff., 26 Jan. 1961 and pp. 1279 ff., 27 Jan. 1961; cf. Ogorreck, Einsatzgruppen, 65f. Karl Jäger, ZSt, 207 AR-Z 14/58 pp. 1883 ff., 15 June 1959; cf. Ogorreck, Einsatzgruppen, 67–8. Alfred Filbert, ZSt, 207 AR-Z 14/58, 54, pp. 171 ff., 11 May 1959; ZSt, 201 AR-Z 76/59, 11 (¼ supplementary volume II, vol. xii of the Hamburg files), pp. 7563 ff., 23 Sept. 1971; cf. Ogorreck, Einsatzgruppen, 74–5.

73. ZSt, 201 AR-Z 76/59, 12, pp. 7766 ff., 9 Dec. 1971; ibid. 4, application for pre-investigation, 29 Dec. 1969, quoting from an earlier interrogation (pp. 5324–5 of the Hamburg

files); STA Munich, 114 Ks 8/71, pp. 3980 ff., 3 Jan. 1968. Cf. Ogorreck, Einsatzgruppen, 88–9, with references to further interrogations.

Notes to pages 189–193

501

74. ZSt, 204 AR 1258/66, 23.

75. Quoting Blume literally and Filbert in summary: see n. 72.

76. BAB, NS 19/3957, 11–15 June 1941. This will have been the meeting at which Bach-

Zelewski says Himmler spoke about the imminent decimation of the Russian popula-

tion by 30 million (cf. n. 8)—which Bach-Zelewski dated at January 1941.

77. This emerges clearly from statements about this meeting.

78. See for example: ZSt, 201 AR-Z 76/59 2, 315–325 30 July 1964, Gustav Adolf Nosske; ibid.

6, pp. 58 ff, 22 Mar. 1971, Erwin Schulz; 207 AR-Z 7/59, Red Files, 8, pp. 1523 ff., 14 Aug.

1966, Erhard Grauel, Deputy Commando Leader, Einsatzkommando 3; 204 ZSt, AR

1258/66, 17, pp. 5 ff. 1 Aug. 1967, Friedrich Buchardt, speaker for the staff of the

Einsatzgruppe B, 1 Aug. 1964.

79. BAB, R 70 SU/32.

80. BAB, R 70 SU/31, published in Peter Longerich, ed., Die Ermordung der europäischen

Juden. Eine umfassende Dokumentation des Holocaust 1941–1945 (Munich, 1989), 116 ff.

English translation in J. Noakes and G. Pridham, eds. Nazism 1919–1045, vol iii: Foreign

Policy, War, and Racial Extermination (Exeter, 1988), 489.

81. This is the text of the letter of 29 June.

11.

The Mass Murder of Jewish Men

1. Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, 536.

2. Bogdan Musial, however, assumes that Soviet crimes in the summer of 1941 ‘had as a

consequence the brutalization of the German-Soviet war’ and led to a corresponding

radicalization of the persecution of the Jews by Germans (cf. summary in Deutsche

Zivilverwaltung und Judenverfolgung im Generalgouvernement, 291–2). He fundamen-

tally underestimates the influence the Germans had in triggering the pogroms and the

high level of potential violence against Jews that was expressed in the orders given by

the German side before the start of the war.

3. See Karlis Kangeris, ‘Kollaboration vor der Kollaboration? Die baltischen Emigranten

und ihre “Befreiungskomitees” in Deutschland 1940/41’, in Werner Röhr, ed., Europa

unterm Hakenkreuz. Okkupation und Kollaboration (1938–1945). Beiträge zu Konz-

eption und Praxis der Kollaboration in der deutschen Okkupationspolitik (Berlin and

Heidelberg, 1994), 165–90.

4. Siegfried Gasparaitris, ‘ “Verrätern wird nur dann vergeben, wenn sie wirklich bewei-

sen können, dass sie mindestens einen Juden liquidiert haben.” Die Front Litauischer

Aktisten (LAF) und die antisowjetischen Aufstände 1941’, in ZfG 49 (2001), 886–904.

The quotation in the title of this article means ‘traitors are only forgiven when they can genuinely prove that they have liquidated at least one Jew’, and is from an appeal

circulated by the LAF in Lithuania in March 1941. See also Michael MacQueen, ‘The

Context of Mass Destruction: Agents and Prerequisites of the Holocaust in Lithuania’,

HGS 12 (1998), 27–48.

5. For Latvia see Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm, ‘Offene Fragen der Holocaust-Forschung. Das

Beispiel des Baltikums’, in Uwe Backes, Eckhard Jesse, and Rainer Zitelmann, eds, Die

Schatten der Vergangenheit. Impulse zur Historisierung des Nationalsozialismus

(Frankfurt a. M., 1990), 403–25, n. 22.

502

Notes to pages 193–195

6. See Rsyzard Torzecki, ‘Die Rolle der Zusammenarbeit mit der deutschen Besatzungs-

macht in der Ukraine für deren Okkupationspolitik 1941 bis 1944’, in Röhr, ed., Europa

unterm Hakenkreuz, 239–72.

7. Dieter Pohl, Nationalistische Judenverfolgung in Ostgalizien 1941–1944 (Munich, 1996), 56–7, has a relevant reference, albeit a somewhat vague one.

8. Bericht v. 15 Oct., 180-L, IMT xxxvii. 670 ff.

9. On the pogrom in Kaunas (Kowno), see: ZSt, 207 AR-Z 14/58, 297 ff., report by retired

Colonel von Bischoffshausen of 19 Apr. 1959, published in Ernst Klee et al., eds, ‘Schöne Zeiten’. Judenmord aus der Sicht der Täter und Gaffer (Frankfurt a. M., 1988), 35–6

(where there are also other witness statements concerning what happened there from

trials 207 AR-Z 14/58 and 201 AR-Z 21/58). See also Ereignis Meldung (EM) 8 and the

collection of documents by Avraham Tory, Surviving the Holocaust: The