Misplaced Pages

#715284

105-619: As of February 10, 1942, the approximate ghetto and concentration camp populations of German Jews in Riga and the vicinity were: Jungfernhof concentration camp , 2,500; the German ghetto: 11,000; Salaspils: 1,300. Of the Latvian Jews, about 3,500 men and 300 women were in the Latvian ghetto. In December 1941, Kurt Krause , whom the author Max Kauffman describes as the "man-eater", became the German commandant of

210-403: A certain street corner on 29 September; anyone who disobeyed would be shot. Since word of massacres in other areas had not yet reached Kyiv and the assembly point was near the train station, they assumed they were being deported. People showed up at the rendezvous point in large numbers, laden with possessions and food for the journey. After being marched three kilometres (two miles) northwest of

315-519: A collective act without individual responsibility. Framing the shootings in this way was not psychologically sufficient for every perpetrator to feel absolved of guilt. Browning notes three categories of potential perpetrators: those who were eager to participate right from the start, those who participated in spite of moral qualms because they were ordered to do so, and a significant minority who refused to take part. A few men spontaneously became excessively brutal in their killing methods and their zeal for

420-749: A cyanide-based pesticide gas. Plans for the total eradication of the Jewish population of Europe—eleven million people—were formalised at the Wannsee Conference , held on 20 January 1942. Some would be worked to death , and the rest would be murdered in the implementation of the Final Solution of the Jewish question (German: Die Endlösung der Judenfrage ). Permanent killing centres at Auschwitz, Belzec , Chelmno , Majdanek , Sobibor , Treblinka , and other Nazi extermination camps replaced mobile death squads as

525-714: A lack of transportation led to a slowdown in deportations of Jews from points further west. Thus, an interval passed between the first round of Einsatzgruppen massacres in summer and fall, and what American historian Raul Hilberg called the second sweep, which started in December 1941 and lasted into the summer of 1942. During the interval, the surviving Jews were forced into ghettos. Einsatzgruppe A had already murdered almost all Jews in its area, so it shifted its operations into Belarus to assist Einsatzgruppe B. In Dnepropetrovsk in February 1942, Einsatzgruppe D reduced

630-537: A large crowd that cheered each murder with much applause; he occasionally paused to play the Lithuanian national anthem " Tautiška giesmė " on his accordion before resuming the murders. As Einsatzgruppe A advanced into Lithuania, it actively recruited local nationalists and antisemitic groups. In July 1941, local Lithuanian collaborators, pejoratively called "White Armbands" ( Lithuanian : Baltaraiščiai , lit.   'People with white armbands'), joined

735-576: A memorandum of complaint to Hitler about the atrocities, Hitler dismissed his concerns as "childish", and Blaskowitz was relieved of his post in May 1940. He continued to serve in the army but never received promotion to field marshal . The final task of the Einsatzgruppen in Poland was to round up the remaining Jews and concentrate them in ghettos within major cities with good railway connections. The intention

840-471: A mobile patrol of ten to fifteen Latvian auxiliary police ( Hilfspolizei ) under the German commandant Rudolf Seck . In December 1941 a total of 3,984 people were brought in four separate trains to Jungfernhof, including 136 children under ten years old, and 766 elders. On 1 December 1941, 1,013 Jews from Württemberg were put on trains and sent to the camp. A further 964 were deported on 6 December 1941 from Hamburg, Lübeck (leaving only 90 Jews resident in

945-505: A negative impact on the economy and the food supply. The Nazis began to round their victims up into concentration camps and ghettos and rural districts were for the most part rendered Judenfrei (free of Jews). Jewish councils were set up in major cities and forced labour gangs were established to make use of the Jews as slave labour until they were all dead, a goal that was postponed until 1942. The Einsatzgruppen used public hangings as

1050-449: A supposed town called Dünamünde to work at fish processing. This was a ruse put together by Obersturmführer Gerhard Maywald. There was no longer a town called Dünamünde, there had not been one for several decades. The ruse succeeded, many people were anxious to go. Despite the Germans only calling for 1,500 to be selected, Sunday March 15, 1942, saw about 1,900 Jews assembled in the streets of

1155-426: A terror tactic against the local population. An Einsatzgruppe B report, dated 9 October 1941, described one such hanging. Due to suspected partisan activity near Demidov, all male residents aged 15 to 55 were put in a camp to be screened. The screening produced seventeen people who were identified as "partisans" and "Communists". Five members of the group were hanged while 400 local residents were assembled to watch;

SECTION 10

#1733085847716

1260-461: A thousand people toward the execution ground. As they walked, some SS men went up and down the line, shooting people who could not keep up the pace or who tried to run away or rest. When the columns neared the prepared execution site, the victims were driven some 270 metres (300 yd) from the road into the forest, where any possessions that had not yet been abandoned were seized. Here the victims were split into groups of fifty and taken deeper into

1365-466: A transition should be made to gassing the victims, especially the women and children, and ordered the recruitment of expendable native auxiliaries who could assist with the murders. Gas vans, which had been used previously to murder mental patients, began to see service by all four main Einsatzgruppen from 1942. However, the gas vans were not popular with the Einsatzkommandos , because removing

1470-577: The Freikorps . Heydrich instructed Wagner in meetings in late July that the Einsatzgruppen should undertake their operations in cooperation with the Ordnungspolizei (Order Police; Orpo) and military commanders in the area. Army intelligence was in constant contact with Einsatzgruppen to coordinate their activities with other units. Initially numbering 2,700 men (and ultimately 4,250 in Poland),

1575-841: The Schutzstaffel (SS) before and during World War II . The Einsatzgruppen had their origins in the ad hoc Einsatzkommando formed by Heydrich to secure government buildings and documents following the Anschluss in Austria in March 1938. Originally part of the Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police; SiPo), two units of Einsatzgruppen were stationed in the Sudetenland in October 1938. When military action turned out not to be necessary due to

1680-691: The Arājs Kommando in Latvia and the Rollkommando Hamann in Lithuania, the attacks changed from the spontaneous mob violence of the pogroms to more systematic massacres. With extensive local help, Einsatzgruppe A was the first Einsatzgruppe to attempt to systematically exterminate all the Jews in its area. Latvian historian Modris Eksteins wrote: Of the roughly 83,000 Jews who fell into German hands in Latvia, not more than 900 survived; and of

1785-651: The Arājs Kommando murdered 2,300 Jews in Riga on 6–7 July. Within six months, Arājs and collaborators would murder about half of Latvia's Jewish population. Local officials, the Selbstschutz , and the Hilfspolizei (Auxiliary Police) played a key role in rounding up and massacring local Jews in German-occupied Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. These groups also helped the Einsatzgruppen and other killing units to identify Jews. For example, in Latvia,

1890-562: The Einsatzgruppe released the criminals from the local jail and encouraged them to join the pogrom which was underway. Between 23 and 27 June 1941, 4,000 Jews were murdered on the streets of Kaunas and in nearby open pits and ditches. Particularly active in the Kaunas pogrom was the so-called "Death Dealer of Kaunas", a young man who murdered Jews with a crowbar at the Lietukis Garage before

1995-563: The Einsatzgruppen has been attributed to several factors. Since the Russian Revolution of 1905 , the Kresy Wschodnie and other borderlands had experienced a political culture of violence. The 1940–1941 Soviet occupation had been profoundly traumatic for residents of the Baltic states and areas that had been part of Poland until 1939; the population was brutalised and terrorised, and

2100-454: The Einsatzgruppen in front-line areas were to operate under army command, while the army provided the Einsatzgruppen with all necessary logistical support. Given their main task was defeating the enemy, the army left the pacification of the civilian population to the Einsatzgruppen , who offered support as well as prevented subversion. This did not preclude their participation in acts of violence against civilians, as many members of

2205-523: The Einsatzgruppen 's mission was to murder members of the Polish leadership most clearly identified with Polish national identity: the intelligentsia, members of the clergy , teachers, and members of the nobility. As stated by Hitler: "... there must be no Polish leaders; where Polish leaders exist they must be killed, however harsh that sounds". SS- Brigadeführer Lothar Beutel , commander of Einsatzgruppe IV, later testified that Heydrich gave

SECTION 20

#1733085847716

2310-502: The Einsatzkommandos began to take their victims out in larger groups and shot them next to, or even inside, mass graves that had been prepared. Some Einsatzkommandos started to use automatic weapons, with survivors being murdered with a pistol shot. As word of the massacres got out, many Jews fled; in Ukraine, 70 to 90 per cent of the Jews ran away. This was seen by the leader of Einsatzkommando VI as beneficial, as it would save

2415-629: The Hilfspolizei , consisting of auxiliary police organised by the Germans and recruited from former Latvian army and police officers, ex- Aizsargi , members of the Pērkonkrusts , and university students, assisted in the murder of Latvia's Jewish citizens. Similar units were created elsewhere, and provided much of the manpower for the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. With the creation of units such as

2520-956: The Ardennes offensive . Hahn had previously been in command of Einsatzgruppe Griechenland in Greece. Other Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommandos included Einsatzgruppe Iltis (operated in Carinthia, on the border between Slovenia and Austria) under SS- Standartenführer Paul Blobel , Einsatzgruppe Jugoslawien (Yugoslavia) Einsatzkommando Luxemburg (Luxembourg), Einsatzgruppe Norwegen (Norway) commanded by SS- Oberführer Franz Walter Stahlecker, Einsatzgruppe Serbien (Yugoslavia) under SS- Standartenführer Wilhelm Fuchs and SS- Gruppenführer August Meysner, Einsatzkommando Tilsit  [ de ] (Lithuania, Poland), and Einsatzgruppe Tunis ( Tunis ), commanded by SS- Obersturmbannführer Walter Rauff . After

2625-654: The Daugava River . Originally Jungfernhof was to have been established as an SS business enterprise, and being under the jurisdiction of the SS it could be employed without consulting with the German civil administration ("Gebietskommissariat") in Latvia. Under the new plan, Jungfernhof would serve as improvised housing in order to make available labor for the construction of the Salaspils concentration camp . The sixth transport, which arrived on 10 December 1941 with Cologne Jews on board,

2730-492: The Einsatzgruppen trial in 1947–48, charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes . Fourteen death sentences and two life sentences were handed out. However, only four of these death sentences were carried out. Four additional Einsatzgruppe leaders were later tried and executed by other nations. The Einsatzgruppen were formed under the direction of SS- Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich and operated by

2835-576: The Geneva Conventions . However, Hitler had decreed that the army would have to tolerate and even offer logistical support to the Einsatzgruppen when it was tactically possible to do so. Some army commanders complained about unauthorised shootings, looting, and rapes committed by members of the Einsatzgruppen and the Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz , to little effect. For example, when Generaloberst Johannes Blaskowitz sent

2940-586: The Munich Agreement , the Einsatzgruppen were assigned to confiscate government papers and police documents. They also secured government buildings, questioned senior civil servants, and arrested as many as 10,000 Czech communists and German citizens. From September 1939, the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Main Office; RSHA) had overall command of the Einsatzgruppen . As part of

3045-602: The Riga Ghetto was overcrowded and could not accommodate the Jewish people deported from Germany. The first transport train with 1,053 Berlin Jews arrived at the Šķirotava Railway Station on 30 November 1941. All persons on board were murdered later the same day at the Rumbula Forest near Riga. The next four transports were, on the orders of SS- Brigadeführer Franz Walter Stahlecker , commander of Einsatzgruppen A , brought to Greater Jungfernhof, an abandoned farming estate on

3150-525: The Wehrmacht assisted the Einsatzgruppen in rounding up and murdering Jews of their own accord. Heydrich acted under orders from Reichsführer-SS Himmler, who supplied security forces on an "as needed" basis to the local SS and Police Leaders . Led by SD, Gestapo, and Kripo officers, Einsatzgruppen included recruits from the Orpo, Security Service and Waffen-SS , augmented by uniformed volunteers from

3255-606: The "Dünamünde Action". (The word "action" was a euphemism employed by the Germans to describe mass shootings and later this was picked up by the ghetto inmates themselves.) The Nazis ordered each of the groups in the German ghetto to prepare a list of between 60 and 120 people for further "resettlement", with the Berlin group required to name 600. The Nazis informed the Judenrat that the people, who were mostly unable to work, being either elderly, infirm, or mothers with young children, would go to

Dünamünde Action - Misplaced Pages Continue

3360-517: The 1,900 German Jews from the ghetto 11 days earlier. The method employed had been designed by the infamous mass murderer Friedrich Jeckeln and was called "sardine packing" ( German: Sardinenpackung ). The historians Richard L. Rubenstein and John K. Roth describe Jeckeln's system: In the western Ukraine, SS General Friedrich Jeckeln notices that the haphazard arrangement of the corpses meant an inefficient use of burial space. More graves would have to be dug than absolutely necessary. Jeckeln solved

3465-722: The Babi Yar massacre, to liquidate the Riga ghetto . Jeckeln selected a site about 10 km (6 mi) southeast of Riga near the Rumbula railway station, and had 300 Russian prisoners of war prepare the site by digging pits in which to bury the victims. Jeckeln organised around 1,700 men, including 300 members of the Arajs Kommando , 50 German SD men, and 50 Latvian guards, most of whom had already participated in mass-murdering of civilians. These troops were supplemented by Latvians, including members of

3570-568: The Eastern Front to carry out operations ranging from the murder of a few people to operations which lasted over two or more days, such as the massacre at Babi Yar (with 33,771 Jews murdered in two days), and the Rumbula massacre (with about 25,000 Jews murdered in two days of shooting). As ordered by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler , the Wehrmacht cooperated with the Einsatzgruppen , providing logistical support for their operations, and participated in

3675-523: The Führer, which he would carry out independently. This directive was intended to prevent friction between the Wehrmacht and the SS in the upcoming offensive. Hitler also specified that criminal acts against civilians perpetrated by members of the Wehrmacht during the upcoming campaign would not be prosecuted in the military courts, and thus would go unpunished. In a speech to his leading generals on 30 March 1941, Hitler described his envisioned war against

3780-450: The German regime when it arrived. Some who had collaborated with the Soviet regime sought to divert attention from themselves by naming Jews as collaborators and murdering them. In November 1941 Himmler was dissatisfied with the pace of the exterminations in Latvia, as he intended to move Jews from Germany into the area. He assigned SS- Obergruppenführer Jeckeln, one of the perpetrators of

3885-557: The Jews from the ghetto became known when on March 16 and 17, several vans returned to the ghetto carrying the personal property of the people who had been murdered. The clothing bore mudstains and signs of having been hastily removed. For example, stockings were still attached to garters. A detail was assigned to sort and clean these items, many of the items were recognized by name tags and other indicia of ownership. Jungfernhof concentration camp The Jungfernhof concentration camp ( Latvian : Jumpravmuižas koncentrācijas nometne )

3990-429: The Riga city police, battalion police, and ghetto guards. Around 1,500 able-bodied Jews would be spared execution so their slave labour could be exploited; a thousand men were relocated to a fenced-off area within the ghetto and 500 women were temporarily housed in a prison and later moved to a separate nearby ghetto, where they were put to work mending uniforms. Although Rumbula was on the rail line, Jeckeln decided that

4095-515: The Riga ghettos. Krause was a former Berlin police detective. His assistant was Max Gymnich , a Gestapo man from Cologne . Krause and Gymnich used dogs to help enforce their commands. A Latvian Jewish survivor called Joseph Berman, is recorded as stating the following about Gymnich: Gymnich personally selected the victims for deportation which meant certain death. Hence the name "Himmelsfahrtskommando -- Ascension Commando." He knew that they would never reach their alleged destination of Dünamünde or

4200-598: The SS, the Wehrmacht , and the Ordnungspolizei also shot civilians during the Polish campaign. Approximately 65,000 civilians were murdered by the end of 1939. In addition to leaders of Polish society, they murdered Jews, prostitutes, Romani people , and the mentally ill. Psychiatric patients in Poland were initially murdered by shooting, but by spring 1941 gas vans were widely used. Seven Einsatzgruppen of battalion strength (around 500 men) operated in Poland. Each

4305-470: The Soviet Union in 1940–1941). According to its own reports to Himmler, Einsatzgruppe A murdered almost 140,000 people in the five months following the 1941 German invasion: 136,421 Jews, 1,064 Communists, 653 people with mental illnesses, 56 partisans, 44 Poles, five Romani, and one Armenian were reported murdered between 22 June and 25 November 1941. Upon entering Kaunas , Lithuania, on 25 June 1941,

Dünamünde Action - Misplaced Pages Continue

4410-638: The Soviet Union. During the course of their operations, the Einsatzgruppen commanders received assistance from the Wehrmacht . Activities ranged from the murder of targeted groups of individuals named on carefully prepared lists, to joint citywide operations with SS Einsatzgruppen which lasted for two or more days, such as the massacres at Babi Yar , perpetrated by the Police Battalion 45 , and at Rumbula , by Battalion 22, reinforced by local Schutzmannschaften (auxiliary police). The SS brigades, wrote historian Christopher Browning , were "only

4515-503: The Soviet Union. General Franz Halder , the Army's Chief of Staff, described the speech: Struggle between two ideologies. Scathing evaluation of Bolshevism, equals antisocial criminality. Communism immense future danger ... This a fight to the finish. If we do not accept this, we shall beat the enemy, but in thirty years we shall again confront the Communist foe. We don't make war to preserve

4620-859: The camp remnants as a farm. This work commando existed for one year. The survivors were then sent to the Riga ghetto , which existed until November 1943. Of the approximately 4,000 people transported to Jungfernhof, only 148 persons survived. 56°53′32″N 24°11′53″E  /  56.8923055556°N 24.1981111111°E  / 56.8923055556; 24.1981111111 Einsatzgruppen Einsatzgruppen ( German: [ˈaɪnzatsˌɡʁʊpm̩] , lit.   ' deployment groups ' ; also ' task forces ') were Schutzstaffel (SS) paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass murder, primarily by shooting, during World War II (1939–1945) in German-occupied Europe . The Einsatzgruppen had an integral role in

4725-598: The central, provincial, and district committees of the Communist Party; extremist and radical Communist Party members; people's commissars ; and Jews in party and government posts. Open-ended instructions were given to execute "other radical elements (saboteurs, propagandists, snipers, assassins, agitators, etc.)." He instructed that any pogroms spontaneously initiated by the population of the occupied territories were to be quietly encouraged. On 8 July, Heydrich announced that all Jews were to be regarded as partisans, and gave

4830-408: The city centre, the victims encountered a barbed wire barrier and numerous Ukrainian police and German troops. Thirty or forty people at a time were told to leave their possessions and were escorted through a narrow passageway lined with soldiers brandishing clubs. Anyone who tried to escape was beaten. Soon the victims reached an open area, where they were forced to strip, and then were herded down into

4935-432: The city's Jewish population from 30,000 to 702 over the course of four days. The German Order Police and local collaborators provided the extra manpower needed to perform all the shootings. Haberer wrote that, as in the Baltic states, the Germans could not have murdered so many Jews so quickly without local help. He points out that the ratio of Order Police to auxiliaries was 1 to 10 in both Ukraine and Belarus. In rural areas

5040-401: The city, and others from throughout Schleswig-Holstein . Further transports came from Nuremberg with 1,008 persons and Vienna with 1,001. About 800 of the prisoners died in the winter of 1941 to 1942 of hunger, cold, typhus . The testimony of an eyewitness, that there was a gas van assigned to the camp, is no longer accepted and is treated as unsubstantiated. In March 1942 the camp

5145-456: The coming war of annihilation against " Judeo-Bolshevism ", his generals would have understood Hitler's call for the destruction of the Soviet Union as also comprising a call for the destruction of its Jewish population. The genocide was often described using euphemisms such as "special tasks" and "executive measures"; Einsatzgruppe victims were often described as having been shot while trying to escape. In May 1941, Heydrich verbally passed on

5250-676: The commandant if I too could be transferred to Dünamunde, but he refused me, because I was too good a worker. Among the murdered inmates of the concentration camp were the older rabbis and prominent citizens of Lübeck, Felix F. Carlebach, his sister-in-law, Resi Carlebach (née Graupe), as well as his uncle, Joseph Carlebach (b. 1883) with his wife Charlotte (b. 1900 née Preuss), and their three youngest children, Ruth (b. 1926), Noemi (b. 1927) and Sara (b. 1928). They were shot on 26 March 1942 in Biķernieki forest. The banker Simson Carlebach (1875-1942), brother of rabbi Joseph Carlebach, had already died in

5355-433: The corpses in a head-to-foot configuration. They too were killed by cross-fire from above. The procedure continued until the grave was full." The killers forced the victims to lie face down on the trench floor, or more often, on the bodies of the people who had just been shot. The people were not sprayed with bullets. Rather, to save ammunition, each person was shot just once, in the back of the head. Anyone not killed outright

SECTION 50

#1733085847716

5460-460: The corpses. Heidborn spent the next few days helping smooth out the "millions" of banknotes taken from the victims' possessions. The clothing was taken away, destined to be re-used by German citizens. Jeckeln's troops shot more than 100,000 Jews by the end of October. Einsatzgruppe A operated in Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia (the three Baltic countries which had been occupied by

5565-471: The course of being transported to the camp. The second oldest son of the nine children of Joseph Carlebach, Salomon (Shlomo Peter) Carlebach (b. 17 August 1925), survived because he had been included within a work commando. He later became a rabbi in New York. Salomon Carlebach reported in an interview on the moment that he saw his father for the last time: I knew that my blessed father in this moment knew, that

5670-409: The dead bodies from the van and burying them was a horrible ordeal. Prisoners or auxiliaries were often assigned to do this task so as to spare the SS men the trauma. Some of the early mass murders at extermination camps used carbon monoxide fumes produced by diesel engines, similar to the method used in gas vans, but by as early as September 1941 experiments were begun at Auschwitz using Zyklon B ,

5775-571: The direction of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler and the supervision of SS- Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich , the Einsatzgruppen operated in territories occupied by the Wehrmacht (German armed forces) following the invasion of Poland in September 1939 and the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. The Einsatzgruppen worked hand-in-hand with the Order Police battalions on

5880-499: The drive by the Nazi regime to remove so-called "undesirable" elements from the German population, from September to December 1939 the Einsatzgruppen and others took part in Aktion T4 , a program of systematic murder of persons with physical and mental disabilities and patients of psychiatric hospitals. Aktion T4 mainly took place from 1939 to 1941, but the murders continued until the end of

5985-441: The early days of the war. Initially the targets were adult Jewish men, but by August the net had been widened to include women, children, and the elderly—the entire Jewish population. Initially there was a semblance of legality given to the shootings, with trumped-up charges being read out (arson, sabotage, black marketeering, or refusal to work, for example) and victims being murdered by a firing squad. As this method proved too slow,

6090-475: The enemy ... Struggle against Russia: Extermination of Bolshevik Commissars and of the Communist intelligentsia ... Commissars and GPU personnel are criminals and must be treated as such. The struggle will differ from that in the west. In the east harshness now means mildness for the future. Though General Halder did not record any mention of Jews, German historian Andreas Hillgruber argued that because of Hitler's frequent contemporary statements about

6195-419: The exception of Einsatzgruppe A's Stahlecker, were of the opinion by the fall of 1941 that it was impossible to murder the entire Jewish population of the Soviet Union in one sweep, and thought the murders should stop. An Einsatzgruppe report dated 17 September advised that the Germans would be better off using any skilled Jews as labourers rather than shooting them. Also, in some areas poor weather and

6300-422: The existing familiar structures of society were destroyed. Historian Erich Haberer has suggested that many survived and made sense of the "totalitarian atomization" of society by seeking conformity with communism. As a result, by the time of the German invasion in 1941, many had come to see conformity with a totalitarian regime as socially acceptable behaviour; thus, people simply transferred their allegiance to

6405-462: The fish tinning factory at Bolderaa. Gymnich was Obersturmführer Krause's and later Untersturmführer Roschmann's driver. Altogether 20,057 Jews from the Reich were deported to Riga. By February 10, 1942, only 15,000 remained alive. Many had been simply murdered upon arrival; how this had occurred was not known to the people arriving on later transports. According to German ghetto survivor Gertrude Schneider,

SECTION 60

#1733085847716

6510-449: The forest, near the pits, where they were ordered to strip. The victims were driven into the prepared trenches, made to lie down, and shot in the head or the back of the neck by members of Jeckeln's bodyguard. Around 13,000 Jews from Riga were murdered at the pits that day, along with a thousand Jews from Berlin who had just arrived by train. On the second day of the operation, 8 December 1941, the remaining 10,000 Jews of Riga were murdered in

6615-642: The ghetto, including, as with the Rumbula massacre , many parents with small children. There was to be no resettlement of any kind. Instead the people were taken by motor transport to Biķernieki forest on the north side of Riga, where they were shot and buried in common unmarked graves. On March 26, 1942, the same ruse was perpetrated at Jungfernhof concentration camp against the older German Jews. The camp commander, Rudolf Seck , refused young people of working age permission to go with their parents. A total of 1,840 people were "resettled" from Jungfernhof that day, again to Biķernieki forest where they were also shot like

6720-555: The higher cadres of the Soviet state; and to instigate and encourage pogroms against Jewish populations. The men of the Einsatzgruppen were recruited from the SD, Gestapo, Kriminalpolizei (Kripo), Orpo, and Waffen-SS . Each Einsatzgruppe was under the operational control of the Higher SS Police Chiefs in its area of operations. In May 1941, General Wagner and SS- Brigadeführer Walter Schellenberg agreed that

6825-489: The implementation of the "special tasks". Following the Heydrich-Wagner agreement on 28 April 1941, Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch ordered that when Operation Barbarossa began, all German Army commanders were to immediately identify and register all Jews in occupied areas in the Soviet Union, and fully co-operate with the Einsatzgruppen . In further meetings held in June 1941 Himmler outlined to top SS leaders

6930-602: The implementation of the so-called " Final Solution to the Jewish question " ( Die Endlösung der Judenfrage ) in territories conquered by Nazi Germany, and were involved in the murder of much of the intelligentsia and cultural elite of Poland, including members of the Catholic priesthood . Almost all of the people they murdered were civilians, beginning with the intelligentsia and swiftly progressing to Soviet political commissars , Jews , and Romani people , as well as actual or alleged partisans throughout Eastern Europe. Under

7035-447: The inhabitants of the ghetto did not realize how many German Jews had been killed following deportation. They remained under the impression that deportation and forced labor were the worst things that were going to happen: Even from a historical perspective, the odds for the survivors did not seem too bad. As for the inmates of the German ghetto, they did not know that one-fourth of their number had already been exterminated. To them it

7140-445: The invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, the Einsatzgruppen 's main assignment was to kill civilians, as in Poland, but this time its targets specifically included Soviet Communist Party commissars and Jews. In a letter dated 2 July 1941 Heydrich communicated to his SS and Police Leaders that the Einsatzgruppen were to execute all senior and middle ranking Comintern officials; all senior and middle ranking members of

7245-453: The last hour had come and that he would be going to a certain death, even though he had said nothing. Naturally many of the people shared the belief that now they really would be brought to another camp, where conditions would be much better. On his personal story, Carlebach said "without a positive attitude no one had any chance of survival." 450 inmates were held back and formed into a work commando. They were intended to be used to disguise

7350-500: The local auxiliary police force. Each Einsatzgruppe was supplemented with Waffen-SS and Order Police battalions as well as support personnel such as drivers and radio operators. On average, the Order Police formations were larger and better armed, with heavy machine-gun detachments, which enabled them to carry out operations beyond the capability of the SS. Each death squad followed an assigned army group as they advanced into

7455-462: The mass murders. Historian Raul Hilberg estimates that between 1941 and 1945 the Einsatzgruppen , related agencies, and foreign auxiliary personnel murdered more than two million people, including 1.3 million of the 5.5 to 6 million Jews murdered during the Holocaust . After the close of World War II, 24 officers, including multiple commanding officers, of the Einsatzgruppen were prosecuted in

7560-457: The massacres. A pogrom in the Latvian capital Riga in early July 1941 killed 400 Jews. Latvian nationalist Viktors Arājs and his supporters undertook a campaign of arson against synagogues. On 2 July, Einsatzgruppe A commander Stahlecker appointed Arājs to head the Arajs Kommando , a Sonderkommando of about 300 men, mostly university students. Together, Einsatzgruppe A and

7665-596: The more than 20,000 Western Jews sent into Latvia, only some 800 lived through the deportation until liberation. This was the highest percentage of eradication in all of Europe. In late 1941, the Einsatzkommandos settled into headquarters in Kaunas, Riga, and Tallinn. Einsatzgruppe A grew less mobile and faced problems because of its small size. The Germans relied increasingly on the Latvian Arājs Kommando and similar groups to perform massacres of Jews. Such extensive and enthusiastic collaboration with

7770-533: The newly occupied territories. Pogroms, some of which were orchestrated by the Einsatzgruppen , broke out in Latvia , Lithuania , and Ukraine . Within the first few weeks of Operation Barbarossa, 10,000 Jews had been murdered in 40 pogroms, and by the end of 1941 some 60 pogroms had taken place, claiming as many as 24,000 victims. However, SS-Brigadeführer Franz Walter Stahlecker , commander of Einsatzgruppe A, reported to his superiors in mid-October that

7875-620: The order for all male Jews between the ages of 15 and 45 to be shot. On 17 July Heydrich ordered that the Einsatzgruppen were to murder all Jewish Red Army prisoners of war, plus all Red Army prisoners of war from Georgia and Central Asia, as they too might be Jews. Unlike in Germany, where the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 defined as Jewish anyone with at least three Jewish grandparents, the Einsatzgruppen defined as Jewish anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent; in either case, whether or not

7980-559: The order for these murders at a series of meetings in mid-August. The Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen  – lists of people to be murdered – had been drawn up by the SS as early as May 1939, using dossiers collected by the SD from 1936 forward. The Einsatzgruppen performed these murders with the support of the Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz , a paramilitary group consisting of ethnic Germans living in Poland during Operation Tannenberg . Members of

8085-732: The order to murder the Soviet Jews to the SiPo NCO School in Pretzsch , where the commanders of the reorganised Einsatzgruppen were being trained for Operation Barbarossa. In spring 1941, Heydrich and the First Quartermaster of the Wehrmacht Heer , General Eduard Wagner , successfully completed negotiations for co-operation between the Einsatzgruppen and the German Army to allow

8190-471: The person practised the religion was irrelevant. The unit was also assigned to exterminate Romani people and the mentally ill. It was common practice for the Einsatzgruppen to shoot hostages. As the invasion began, the Germans pursued the fleeing Red Army, leaving a security vacuum. Reports surfaced of Soviet guerrilla activity in the area, with local Jews immediately suspected of collaboration. Heydrich ordered his officers to incite anti-Jewish pogroms in

8295-463: The police, and the Gestapo . Heydrich placed SS- Obergruppenführer Werner Best in command, who assigned Hans-Joachim Tesmer  [ de ] to choose personnel for the task forces and their subgroups, called Einsatzkommandos , from among educated people with military experience and a strong ideological commitment to Nazism. Some had previously been members of paramilitary groups such as

8400-454: The primary method of mass-murder. The Einsatzgruppen remained active, however, and were put to work fighting partisans, particularly in Belarus. After the defeat at Stalingrad in February 1943, Himmler realised that Germany would likely lose the war, and ordered the formation of a special task force, Sonderaktion 1005 , under SS- Standartenführer Paul Blobel . The unit's assignment

8505-452: The problem. He told a colleague at one of the Ukrainian killing sites, 'Today we'll stack them like sardines.' Jeckeln called his solution Sardinenpackung (sardine packing). When this method was employed, the victims climbed into the grave and lay down on the bottom. Cross fire from above dispatched them. Then another batch of victims was ordered into the grave, positioning themselves on top of

8610-441: The proportion was 1 to 20. This meant that most Ukrainian and Belarusian Jews were murdered by fellow Ukrainians and Belarusians commanded by German officers rather than by Germans. The second wave of exterminations in the Soviet Union met with armed resistance in some areas, though the chance of success was poor. Weapons were typically primitive or home-made. Communications were impossible between ghettos in various cities, so there

8715-509: The ravine. People were forced to lie down in rows on top of the bodies of other victims, and they were shot in the back of the head or the neck by members of the execution squads. The murders continued for two days, claiming a total of 33,771 victims. Sand was shovelled and bulldozed over the bodies and the sides of the ravine were dynamited to bring down more material. Anton Heidborn, a member of Sonderkommando 4a, later testified that three days later that there were still people alive among

8820-531: The regime the costs of deporting the victims further east over the Urals. In other areas the invasion was so successful that the Einsatzgruppen had insufficient forces to immediately murder all the Jews in the conquered territories. A situation report from Einsatzgruppe C in September 1941 noted that not all Jews were members of the Bolshevist apparatus, and suggested that the total elimination of Jewry would have

8925-493: The regime's intention to reduce the population of the Soviet Union by 30 million people, not only through direct murder of those considered racially inferior , but by depriving the remainder of food and other necessities of life. For Operation Barbarossa, initially four Einsatzgruppen were created, each numbering 500–990 men to comprise a total force of 3,000. Einsatzgruppen A, B, and C were to be attached to Army Groups North , Centre , and South ; Einsatzgruppe D

9030-492: The residents of Kaunas were not spontaneously starting pogroms, and secret assistance by the Germans was required. A similar reticence was noted by Einsatzgruppe B in Russia and Belarus and Einsatzgruppe C in Ukraine; the further east the Einsatzgruppen travelled, the less likely the residents were to be prompted into murdering their Jewish neighbours. All four main Einsatzgruppen took part in mass shootings from

9135-503: The rest were shot. The largest mass shooting perpetrated by the Einsatzgruppen took place on 29 and 30 September 1941 at Babi Yar, a ravine northwest of Kyiv city center in Ukraine that had fallen to the Germans on 19 September. The perpetrators included a company of Waffen-SS attached to Einsatzgruppe C under Rasch, members of Sonderkommando 4a under SS- Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln , and some Ukrainian auxiliary police. The Jews of Kyiv were told to report to

9240-535: The same way. About a thousand were murdered on the streets of the city or on the way to the site, bringing the total number of victims for the two-day extermination to 25,000 people. For his part in organising the massacre, Jeckeln was promoted to Leader of the SS Upper Section, Ostland . Einsatzgruppe B, C, and D did not immediately follow Einsatzgruppe A's example in systematically murdering all Jews in their areas. The Einsatzgruppe commanders, with

9345-650: The task. Commander of Einsatzgruppe D, SS- Gruppenführer Otto Ohlendorf , particularly noted this propensity towards excess, and ordered that any man who was too eager to participate or too brutal should not perform any further executions. During a visit to Minsk in August 1941, Himmler witnessed an Einsatzgruppen mass execution first-hand and concluded that shooting Jews was too stressful for his men. By November he made arrangements for any SS men suffering ill health from having participated in executions to be provided with rest and mental health care. He also decided

9450-794: The thin cutting edge of German units that became involved in political and racial mass murder." Many Einsatzgruppe leaders were highly educated; for example, nine of seventeen leaders of Einsatzgruppe A held doctorate degrees. Three Einsatzgruppen were commanded by holders of doctorates, one of whom (SS- Gruppenführer Otto Rasch ) held a double doctorate. Additional Einsatzgruppen were created as additional territories were occupied. Einsatzgruppe E operated in Independent State of Croatia under three commanders, SS- Obersturmbannführer Ludwig Teichmann  [ de ] , SS- Standartenführer Günther Herrmann , and lastly SS- Standartenführer Wilhelm Fuchs . The unit

9555-408: The troops, and sometimes did not kill the victims quickly enough. Many of the troops found the massacres to be difficult if not impossible to perform. Some of the perpetrators suffered physical and mental health problems, and many turned to drink. As much as possible, the Einsatzgruppen leaders militarized the genocide. The historian Christian Ingrao notes an attempt was made to make the shootings

9660-424: The victims should travel on foot from Riga to the execution ground. Trucks and buses were arranged to carry children and the elderly. The victims were told that they were being relocated, and were advised to bring up to 20 kg (44 lb) of possessions. The first day of executions, 30 November 1941, began with the perpetrators rousing and assembling the victims at 4:00 am. The victims were moved in columns of

9765-457: The war. Initially the victims were shot by the Einsatzgruppen and others, but gas chambers were put into use by spring 1940. In response to Adolf Hitler 's plan to invade Poland on 1 September 1939, Heydrich re-formed the Einsatzgruppen to travel in the wake of the German armies. Membership at this point was drawn from the SS, the Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service; SD),

9870-464: Was an improvised concentration camp in Latvia , at the Mazjumprava Manor , near the Šķirotava Railway Station about three or four kilometers from Riga (now within the city territory). The camp was in operation from December 1941 through March 1942, and served as overflow housing for Jews from Germany and Austria, who had originally been intended for Minsk as a destination. The new destination,

9975-498: Was assigned to the 11th Army . The Einsatzgruppe for Special Purposes operated in eastern Poland starting in July 1941. The Einsatzgruppen were under the control of the RSHA, headed by Heydrich and later by his successor, SS- Obergruppenführer Ernst Kaltenbrunner . Heydrich gave them a mandate to secure the offices and papers of the Soviet state and Communist Party; to liquidate all

10080-400: Was clear that they had been "resettled" as forced laborers, and they were able to live with that idea. Accordingly, they hoped that their strength would last until the war was over; they settled down in the ghetto and began to regard it as their home. In March 1942, the Nazi authorities in Riga decided the German ghetto was getting too crowded and organized a massacre which has come to be called

10185-541: Was dissolved. As part of the Dünamünde Action under the false representation that they would be taken to an (actually nonexisting) camp in Dünamunde, where there would be better conditions and work assignments in a canning plant, between 1600 and 1700 inmates were taken to Biķernieki forest. There they were shot on 26 March 1942 and interred in mass graves, as previously Jews from the Riga Ghetto had been. Among those shot

10290-461: Was no way to create a unified strategy. Few in the ghetto leadership supported resistance for fear of reprisals on the ghetto residents. Mass break-outs were sometimes attempted, though survival in the forest was nearly impossible due to the lack of food and the fact that escapees were often tracked down and murdered. After a time, Himmler found that the killing methods used by the Einsatzgruppen were inefficient: they were costly, demoralising for

10395-520: Was simply buried alive when the pit was covered up. After the war, when a number of the Einsatzgruppen commanders were placed on trial before the Nuremberg Military Tribunal in the Einsatzgruppen case , the tribunal found that "one defendant did not exclude the possibility that an executee could only seem to be dead because of shock or temporary unconsciousness. In such cases it was inevitable he would be buried alive." What had happened to

10500-638: Was subdivided into five Einsatzkommandos located in Vinkovci , Sarajevo , Banja Luka , Knin , and Zagreb . Einsatzgruppe F worked with Army Group South. Einsatzgruppe G operated in Romania , Hungary , and Ukraine , commanded by SS- Standartenführer Josef Kreuzer  [ de ] . Einsatzgruppe H was assigned to Slovakia . Einsatzgruppen K and L, under SS- Oberführer Emanuel Schäfer and SS- Standartenführer Ludwig Hahn , worked alongside 5th and 6th Panzer Armies during

10605-419: Was subdivided into five Einsatzkommandos of company strength (around 100 men). Though they were formally under the command of the army, the Einsatzgruppen received their orders from Heydrich and for the most part acted independently of the army. Many senior army officers were only too glad to leave these genocidal actions to the task forces, as the murders violated the rules of warfare as set down in

10710-487: Was the camp elder Max Kleemann (b. 1887), a veteran of the Great War , who had been transported from Würzburg with his daughter Lore. Viktor Marx, from Württemberg, whose wife Marga and daughter Ruth were shot, reported: In the camp it was said that all the women and children should come away from Jungfernhof and go to Dünamunde, where there would be hospitals, schools, and massive stone buildings where they could live. I asked

10815-429: Was the only one which came to the "freed up" Riga ghetto, following the murder there of numerous Latvian Jews. The former estate of 200 hectares in size, had built on it a warehouse, three large barns, five small barracks and various cattle sheds. The partially falling down and unheatable buildings were unsuitable for the accommodation of several thousand people. There were no watchtowers or enclosing perimeter, rather

10920-645: Was to eventually remove all the Jews from Poland, but at this point their final destination had not yet been determined. Together, the Wehrmacht and the Einsatzgruppen also drove tens of thousands of Jews eastward into Soviet-controlled territory . On 13 March 1941, in the lead-up to Operation Barbarossa , the planned invasion of the Soviet Union, Hitler dictated his "Guidelines in Special Spheres re: Directive No. 21 (Operation Barbarossa)". Sub-paragraph B specified that Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler would be given "special tasks" on direct orders from

11025-666: Was to visit mass graves all along the Eastern Front to exhume bodies and burn them in an attempt to cover up the genocide. The task remained unfinished at the end of the war, and many mass graves remain unmarked and unexcavated. By 1944 the Red Army had begun to push the German forces out of Eastern Europe, and the Einsatzgruppen retreated alongside the Wehrmacht . By late 1944, most Einsatzgruppen personnel had been folded into Waffen-SS combat units or transferred to permanent death camps. Hilberg estimates that between 1941 and 1945

#715284