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

Kovno Ghetto

Diary (Cambridge, Mass., 1990), 7 ff.

10. EM 19.

11. On Riga see also EM 15 and ZSt, II 207 AR-Z 7/59, judgement of the District Court in

Hamburg.

12. EM 40. Details on events in Jelgava (Mitau) may be found in Andrew Ezergailis, The

Holocaust in Latvia (Washington, 1996), 156 ff.

13. EM 24; Pohl, Ostgalizien, 60 ff.; Hannes Heer, ‘Einübung in den Holocaust: Lemberg

Juni/Juli 1941’, ZfG 40 (2001), 389–408, sees in this pogrom an ‘enactment’ of something

carefully prepared by the Germans.

14. Pohl, Ostgalizien, 69.

15. Ibid. 64–5. The ‘reason’ for the pogrom was the 15th anniversary (delayed by two

months) of the murder of Ukraine’s former (anti-Semitic) prime minister, Simon

Petljura.

16. EM 24, and Bernd Boll, ‘Zloczow, Juli 1941: Die Wehrmacht und der Beginn des

Holocaust in Galizien’, ZfG 50 (2002), 901–16.

17. EM 14 and EM 19. On Sonderkommando 4b see Ogorreck, Einsatzgruppen, 135 ff.

18. EM 14 from 6 July 1941.

19. Ibid.

20. EM 47.

21. EM 10.

22. Andrzey Zbikowski, ‘Local Anti-Jewish Pogroms in the Occupied Territories of Eastern

Poland, June–July 1941’, in Lucjan Doboszycki and Jeffrey S. Gurock, eds, The Holocaust

in the Soviet Union: Studies and Sources on the Destruction of the Jews in the Nazi

Occupied Territories of the USSR, 1941–1945 (New York and London, 1993), 173–9—

where 35 places are named for eastern Galicia alone. Zbi Aharon Weiss, ‘The Holocaust

and the Ukrainian Victims’, in Michael Berenbaum, ed., A Mosaic of Victims: Non-Jews

Persecuted and Murdered by the Nazis (New York, 1990), 109–15 refers to 58 pogroms in

West Ukraine, including Volhynia. On the number of victims, see Pohl, Ostgalizien, 67.

Bogdan Musial, ‘Konterrevolutionäre Elemente sind zu erschiessen’. Die Brutalisierung

des deutsch-sowjetischen Krieges im Sommer 1941 (Berlin and Munich, 2000), 172, makes

reference to numerous other places in which pogroms occurred.

23. EM 47.

24. EM 81 and EM 112.

Notes to pages 195–197

503

25. Pohl, Ostgalizien, 54 ff.

26. Documented in (amongst others) Jacek Borkowicz et al., eds, Thou Shalt not Kill: Poles on Jedwabne (Warsaw, 2001); Antony Polonsky and Joanna B. Michlic, eds, The

Neighbors Respond: The Controversy over the Jedwabne Massacre in Poland (Princeton

and Oxford, 2004) and the contributions to YVS 30 (2002).

27. Jan T. Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland

(Princeton and Oxford, 2001).

28. See in particular the contribution by Edmunt Dimitrów in the volume edited by him

with Pawel Machcewicz and Tomasz Szarota, Der Beginn der Vernichtung. Zum Mord

an den Juden in Jedwabne und Umgebung im Sommer 1941. Neue Forschungsergeb-

nisse polnischer Historiker (Osnabrück, 2004); see also Dariusz Stola, ‘Jedwabne:

Revisting the Evidence and Nature of the Crime’, HGS 17 (2003), 139–52; and Radoslaw

J. Ignatiew, ‘Findings of Investigations 1/00/Zn into the Murder of Polish Citizens of

Jewish Origin in the Town of Jedwabne on 10 July 1941’, in Polonsky and Michlic, eds,

The Neighbors Respond, 133–6, and Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, The Massacre in Jed-

wabne July 10, 1941: Before, During, and After (New York, 2005).

29. BAB, R 70/32, published in Peter Klein, ed., Die Einsatzgruppen in der besetzten

Sowjetunion 1941/42. Die Tätigkeits- und Lageberichte des Chefs der Sicherheitspolizei

und des SD (Berlin, 1997), 320–1.

30. On the early executions by Einsatzgruppe A see Hans-Heinrich, Wilhelm, Einsatz-

gruppe A der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD 1941/42 (Frankfurt a. M., 1996) and the

overview by Wolfgang Scheffler in Klein, ed., Die Einsatzgruppen.

31. EM 24; Ezergailis, Holocaust, 272 ff.

32. EM 24.

33. Judgement of the Hamburg District Court of 21 Dec. 1979. ZSt, 207 AR-Z 7/59. On the

Arajas commando, see Ezergailis, Holocaust, 173 ff.; on the murders in the Bikernieki

Forest, ibid. 222 ff.

34. Klee, ed., ‘Schöne Zeiten’, 122 ff.; Max Kaufman, Churbn, Lettland: The Destruction of the Jews of Latvia (Munich, 1947), 305; Margers Vestermanis, ‘Ortskommandantur Libau.

Zwei Monate deutscher Besatzung im Sommer 1941’, in Hannes Heer und Klaus Nau-

mann, eds, Vernichtungskrieg. Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941–1945 (Hamburg, 1995),

219-26. On the shootings in Liepa

$ ja (Libau) see also the statements by Werner Schäfer,

naval officer, from 16 July 1959 (ZSt, 207 AR-Z 7/59, Red Files, 8, pp. 1557 ff.), Georg

Rosenstock, leader of the 2nd commando of Police Battalion 13, 2 Nov. 1959 (ibid.) and

Kawelmacher, marine commandant of Liepa

$ ja (207 AR-Z 18/58, pp. 22 ff.).

35. ZSt, II 207 AR 1779/66.

36. The so-called Jäger Report (OS, 500-1-25 and USSR Central Document Office 108).

37. Ibid.

38. OS, 500-1-758, telex from the Gestapo office in Tilsit of 1 July 1941 and EM 14. In the trial of former members of the Tilsit Einsatzkommando, which took place in 1958 in Ulm,

the historian Helmuth Krausnick, employed as an expert witness, took the view that the

commando leader, Böhme, had been told on 23 June by the leader of Einsategruppe A,

Franz Stahlecker, that in this border area all the Jews including women and children

were to be shot. This view formed part of the judgement of the court and this fact

was cited again and again by Krausnick as a confirmation of his thesis in favour of an

504

Notes to pages 197–198

early comprehensive order for the murder of the Jews in the occupied Eastern zones. A

closer analysis of the witness statements, however, and of newly discovered documents

shows that this thesis is not tenable (see Longerich, Politik, 326 ff.). The executions

perpetrated by the Tilsit Commando were not the first steps in carrying out a general

order for the murder of all Jews that had only recently been transmitted to the

commando, as Krausnick assumed, but part of a series of ‘reprisal operations’ originally

initiated by the Wehrmacht.

39. EM 19.

40. EM 26.

41. EM 19 and the judgement of the Ulm District Court of 29 Aug. 1958, (¼ Sagel-Grande,

Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, no. 465); Streim, SWCA 6 (1989), 333 ff.

42. See below, p. 31.

43. Also in EM 26. For Himmler’s journey see also the diary of his personal assistant,

Brandt, for 30 June 1941 (BAB, NS 19/3957).

44. OS, 500-1-25 (also ZSt, Dok. SU 401). See also EM 11.

45. On the first murders committed by Einsatzgruppe B in Belarus, see Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, 540 ff., and the overview of Einsatzgruppe B by Gerlach in Klein, ed., Einsatzgruppen, 52–70.

46. EM 50, 12 Aug. 1941. On Sonderkommando 7a see also the judgement of the Essen

District Court of 29 Mar. 1965 (¼ Sagel-Grande, Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, xx, no. 588),

and Ogorreck, Einsatzgruppen, 114 ff.

47. EM 50 and judgement of the Essen District Court of 29