Part II
Providing Legitimacy for Murdering Civilians
Even though the members of the Einsatzgruppen were recruited from the Security Police, the Security Services (SD), the Gestapo, the Criminal police (Kripo), the uniformed police or Order Police (Ordnungspolizei), the Waffen SS and conscripts unfit for frontline duty, they recognized the necessity of explaining to these men why Jewish women and children had to executed. The reasons included “strong suspicion” of having committed arson and were found in the forest where German soldiers had been killed and were murdered as part of a “Wehrmacht pacification action. Twenty-eight Jewish women were shot for being “extremely obstinate” and for not wearing the Jewish badge, notes historian Ronald Headland.
When those commanding the troops fired on innocent women, children and the elderly were lawyers, their academic status is certain to have influenced average soldiers, asserts German historian Benno Müller-Hill. For example, when Max Thomas, who had medical and psychiatric degrees, instructed his men to shoot civilians, how could it be illegal or immoral? (Benno Müller-Hill, op.cit. 67-68). The soldiers were informed that the conquered countries were to become part of the Reich, and that the same policies that operate in Germany would be instituted in these new areas as well.
It is important to note that generally women, children and the elderly were not murdered immediately after the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, but were separated from the rest of the population and imprisoned. Only men of draft age were initially shot. Between the end of July and the beginning of August 1941 was when the women, children and the aged were murdered. The executions were portrayed as “cleansing operations” (Sduberungsaktionen), enabling them to be justified as reprisals for active resistance against the German military in accordance with Heydrich’s “secret orders-liberally interpreted to eliminate ‘elements hostile to the Reich.’” This included “saboteurs, [communist] functionaries, and the representatives of Bolshevism, who also comprised the Jews,” declares Nazi war crimes prosecutor Alfred Streim.
Methods of Execution as Reported in the Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals (NMT)
Paul Blobel, the commanding officer of Sonderkommando 4a of Einsatzgruppen C operating in Ukraine, stated that his Sonderkommando murdered approximately 10,000 and 15,000 people, and described one execution he personally directed. He said there were 700 to 1,000 individuals involved in his unit, which he divided into squads of 30 men each. Then, the mass graves were prepared:
“Out of the total number of the persons designated for the execution, 15 men were led in each case to the brink of the mass grave where they had to kneel down, their faces turned toward the grave. At that time, clothes and valuables were not yet collected. Later on this was changed. When the men were ready for the execution, one of my leaders who was in charge of this execution squad gave the order to shoot. Since they were kneeling on the brink of the mass grave, the victims fell, as a rule, at once into the mass grave. I have always used rather large execution squads, since I declined to use men who were specialists for shots in the neck [Genickschussspezialisten]. Each squad shot for about one hour and was then replaced. The persons who still had to be shot were assembled near the place of the execution and were guarded by members of those squads, which at that moment did not take part in the executions.”
Blobel affirmed that his firing squad always targeted the heads of the victims. If the victim was not hit, a member of the firing squad approached within three paces and fired again. The author of the NMT report stated, “The scene of the victim watching the head hunter approaching with his rifle and shooting at him at three paces represents a horror for which there is no language.”
In some cases, the dead did not fall immediately into the graves, forcing the Einsatzgruppen to complete the burial themselves. To prevent the soldiers from having to exert themselves, the Jews were told to enter the ditch or grave, while they were still alive. A member of the SS explained the process: “The people were executed by a shot in the neck. The corpses were buried in a large tank ditch. The candidates for execution were already standing or kneeling in the ditch. One group had scarcely been shot before the next came and laid themselves on the corpses there.”
Although some executions were conducted with little or no ceremony, some murderers insisted on announcing the names of those being transported to their deaths before having them loaded onto the trucks. The methods used to execute the Jews differed according to the Einsatzgruppen commander. Some had Jews lined up kneeling or standing at the rim of the grave, facing the grave. Others had the Jews with their backs to the grave. One perpetrator explained how “the Jews lined up at the edge of the edge of the ditch and, as they fell, another row stepped into position so that, file after file, the bodies dropped into the pit onto the bleeding corpses beneath.”
A physician was hardly ever present at the executions. The squad leader had to determine if the Jews were dead before burying them. If they did not move, they were considered deceased. Since most of the bodies were “huddled and contorted, scattered and stacked in a trench at least six feet deep,” such perfunctory inspections were simply inadequate.
Conditions sometimes required creative and original improvisation for the executioners to murder their victims. “On the occasion of an exhumation in Minsk, in November 1943, Obersturmfuehrer Heuser arrived with a Kommando of Latvians. They brought eight Jews, men and women, with them. The Latvians guarded the Jews, while Harter and Heuser erected a funeral pyre with their own hands. The Jews were bound, put on the pile alive, drenched with gasoline and burned.”
Wherever method they employed in executing the Jews, the Germans considered their approach “honorable,” and “always done in a humane and military manner,” according to the author of the NMT report. “Defendant after defendant emphasized before the Tribunal that the requirements of militariness and humaneness were meticulously met in all executions.” One defendant said at times, “the manner in which the executions were carried out caused excitement and disobedience among the victims, so that the Kommandos were forced to restore order by means of violence,” which meant, the author said, “the victims were beaten. Undoubtedly always, of course, in a humane and military manner.”
At the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1946, historian Lucy Dawidowicz said Ohlendorf recounted how the unit assigned to murder the Jews “would enter a village or town and order the most prominent Jewish citizens to call together all Jews for the purpose of ‘resettlement.’ They were requested to hand over their valuables to the leader of the unit, and shortly before the execution to surrender their outer clothing. The men, women and children were led to a place and transported to the place of executions, which in most cases [was] located next to a more deeply excavated anti-tank ditch, in trucks. Then they were shot, kneeling or standing, and the corpses thrown into the ditch. I never permitted the shooting of individuals, but ordered that several of the men shoot at the same time to avoid direct responsibility.”
Later, the Einsatzgruppen would enlist the assistance of the Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Letts and the White Russians. “By exploiting” their “accumulated hatred for the Soviets, the Germans harnessed the violent energies of these willing collaborators to round up and kill Jews,” asserted Dawidowicz. In Vilna and Kovno, Lithuanians actively hunted for Jewish males on the streets. When found, they were forcefully taken away, ostensibly for work. In Lwów, Germans and Ukrainians would search for Jews from house to house, and immediately shoot them.
Dr. Alex Grobman is the senior resident scholar at the John C. Danforth Society, a member of the Council of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East and on the advisory board of the National Christian Leadership Conference of Israel (NCLCI). He has an MA and PhD in contemporary Jewish history from The Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
