#11: Einsatzgruppen
Four SS Einsatzgruppen, of 3,000 men each, followed in the wake of the German armies that invaded the Soviet Union. Their mission was to insure the security of the operational zone; that is, to prevent resistance by civilians. These were police of a very special nature, given an additional task by their chief, Reinhard Heydrich. They were to round up and liquidate not only Bolshevik leaders but all Jews, as well as gypsies, "Asiatic inferiors" and "useless eaters," such as the deranged and incurably sick.
To supervise this mass killing, Heydrich and Himmler had been inspired to select officers who, for the most part, were professional men. They included a Protestant pastor, a physician, a professional opera singer and numerous lawyers. The majority were intellectuals in their early thirties and it might be supposed such men were unsuited for this work. On the contrary, they brought to the brutal task their considerable skills and training and became, despite qualms, efficient executioners.
The majority of the victims were Jews. They had no idea of Hitler's "racial cleansing" program since few German anti-Semitic atrocities were reported in the Soviet press. Consequently, many Jews welcomed the Germans as liberators and were easily trapped by the Special Groups. "Contrary to the opinion of the National Socialists that the Jews were a highly organized group," testified Obergruppenfuhrer von dem Bach-Zelewski, the senior SS and police commander for Central Russia, the appalling fact was that they were taken completely by surprise. It gave the lie to the old anti-Semitic myth that the Jews were conspiring to dominate the world and were thus highly organized. "Never before has a people gone as unsuspectingly to its disaster. Nothing was prepared. Absolutely nothing."
Some Jews had fled with retreating Red Army units, but most simply stayed in their homes. "The Jews were remarkably ill-informed about our attitude toward them," reported a German agent. "They believe we shall leave them in peace if they mind their own business and work diligently."At first, the killer squads prevailed upon local anti-Semites to start the murders, so that, in the words of an official Einsatzgruppen report, "direction by the German authorities could not be found out." The SS referred to such actions as "self-cleansing." During one self-cleansing in Kovno, Lithuania, reported a German officer, local sympathizers "did away with more than 1,500 Jews, setting fire to several synagogues or destroying them by other means and burning down a Jewish dwelling district consisting of about 60 houses. During the following nights, 2,300 Jews were eliminated in a similar way."
Once the locals had tired of murder, the Germans stepped in to finish the job and the exterminations proceeded with cool calculation. It was a tidy, businesslike operation; and the reports were couched in the arid language of bureaucracy as if the executioners were dealing with cabbages, not human beings. The methodical work of the killing units was rarely marred by resistance.
"Strange is the calmness with which the delinquents allow themselves to be shot," reported one commander, "and that goes for non-Jews as well as Jews. Their fear of death appears to have been blunted by a kind of indifference which has been created in the course of twenty years of Soviet rule."
Heydrich's most awkward problem was coping with the psychological effects on the exterminators. Some enlisted men had nervous breakdowns or took to drinking, and a number of officers suffered from serious stomach and intestinal ailments. Others took to their task with excess enthusiasm and sadistically beat the prisoners in violation of Himmler's orders to exterminate as humanely as possible.
He himself was witness to the demoralizing effect of daily murder. On a visit to Minsk in the summer of 1941, he asked the commander of Einsatzgruppe B to shoot a hundred prisoners so he could observe the actual liquidation. As the firing squad raised rifles, he noticed one young man was blonde and blue-eyed, the hallmark of the true Teuton, and did not belong in this group. Himmler asked if he was a Jew. He was. Both parents? Yes. Did he have any antecedents who were not Jewish? No. Himmler stamped his foot. "Then I cannot help you."
The squad fired, but Himmler -- who had come to watch -- stared at the ground. He shuffled nervously. Then came a second volley. Again he promptly averted his eyes. Glancing up, he saw that two women still writhed. "Don't torture these women!" he shouted. "Get on with it, shoot quickly!" This was the opportunity Bach-Zelewski was hoping for. He asked Himmler to note how deeply shaken the firing squad was. "They are finished for the rest of their lives!" the SS man said. "What kind of followers are we creating by these things? Either neurotics or brutes!"
Himmler impulsively ordered everyone to gather around so he could make a speech. Theirs was a disgusting task, he said, but as good Germans they should not enjoy doing it. Their conscience, however, should be in no way affected because they are soldiers who had to carry out every order without question. He alone, before God and the Fuhrer, bore the terrible responsibility for what had to be done. Surely they had noticed that this bloody work was odious to him and moved him to the depths of his soul. But he, too, was obeying the highest law by doing his duty.
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In addition to open-air shootings, the Einsatzgruppen also made use of "gas vans" manufactured by the Saurer Corporation of Berlin. Like most of the stationary gas chambers of the T-4 program, the vans killed by carbon monoxide, but being mobile, they saved the trouble of building permanent installations and transporting the victims to a distant death site. Otto Ohlendorf, commander of Einsatzgruppe D, which eventually killed more than 90,000 Jews, explained that the vans "looked like closed trucks and were so constructed that at the start of the motor the gas was conducted into the van causing death in 10 to 15 minutes." The vans varied in size, with capacities ranging from 15 to 25 persons.
Ohlendorf did not care for the vans, however, because often the victims urinated or defecated in their death throes, "leaving the corpses lying in filth." His men, Ohlendorf said, "complained to me about headaches that appear after each unloading."
Dr. August Becker, an SS lieutenant and the inventor of the vans, considered himself a humanitarian, and in order to eliminate the victims' suffering as well as the resultant filth, he ordered a change in technique of administering the carbon monoxidie. The valves were to be opened slowly instead of all at once, so that "prisoners fall asleep peacefully." The inventor was elated with the results: "Distorted faces and excretions such as could be seen before are no longer noticed."
Even with the improvements, the vans were inadequate for mass murders on the scale that Himmler envisioned, and most of the Einsatzgruppen victims were transported to the nearest feasible execution site. There they were herded into antitank ditches or bomb craters. Then they were shot, normally in groups. In some cases, the victims were forced to kneel at the edge of the pit, then were shot individually by guards carrying pistols. Such executioners were known as the Genickschussspezialisten, or neck-shooting specialists.
On January 31, 1942, Frank Stahlecker, commander of Einsatzgruppe A, sent Himmler an ornate map marking his dozens of executions with tiny coffins. Stahlecker's report showed that his group had already eliminated 136,421 Jews in Lithuania alone, with killings elsewhere that added up to a grand total of 229,052.
To the south, Einsatzgruppe C under Brigadier General Otto Rasch managed to eliminate 95,000 people by December of 1941. Included in those figures were more than 75,000 Jews killed in the Kiev area in a two-week bloodbath that began in the town of Uman and ended at a ravine outside of Kiev at a place known as Old Woman's Gully -- in Russian, Babi Yar.
Ohlendorf did not care for the vans, however, because often the victims urinated or defecated in their death throes, "leaving the corpses lying in filth." His men, Ohlendorf said, "complained to me about headaches that appear after each unloading."
Dr. August Becker, an SS lieutenant and the inventor of the vans, considered himself a humanitarian, and in order to eliminate the victims' suffering as well as the resultant filth, he ordered a change in technique of administering the carbon monoxidie. The valves were to be opened slowly instead of all at once, so that "prisoners fall asleep peacefully." The inventor was elated with the results: "Distorted faces and excretions such as could be seen before are no longer noticed."
Even with the improvements, the vans were inadequate for mass murders on the scale that Himmler envisioned, and most of the Einsatzgruppen victims were transported to the nearest feasible execution site. There they were herded into antitank ditches or bomb craters. Then they were shot, normally in groups. In some cases, the victims were forced to kneel at the edge of the pit, then were shot individually by guards carrying pistols. Such executioners were known as the Genickschussspezialisten, or neck-shooting specialists.
On January 31, 1942, Frank Stahlecker, commander of Einsatzgruppe A, sent Himmler an ornate map marking his dozens of executions with tiny coffins. Stahlecker's report showed that his group had already eliminated 136,421 Jews in Lithuania alone, with killings elsewhere that added up to a grand total of 229,052.
To the south, Einsatzgruppe C under Brigadier General Otto Rasch managed to eliminate 95,000 people by December of 1941. Included in those figures were more than 75,000 Jews killed in the Kiev area in a two-week bloodbath that began in the town of Uman and ended at a ravine outside of Kiev at a place known as Old Woman's Gully -- in Russian, Babi Yar.
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The massacre started on September 16 with the posting of an innocuous document that said: "For the purpose of preparing an exact census of the Jewish population in the town of Uman and its subdistrict, all Jews, of all ages, must appear on the day appointed here-under at the respective places of registration. Persons failing to comply with this order will be punished most severely."
When the Jews had reported for the "census," they were marched off to a site near the Uman airport, where long ditches had been excavated. Erwin Bingel, a regular Army officer who was on hand to secure the region's transportation facilities, later described what happened next:
"When the people had crowded into the square in front of the airport, a few trucks drove up from the direction of the town. From these vehicles, a troop of field police alighted and were immediately led aside. A number of tables were then unloaded from one of the trucks and placed in a line. Meanwhile, a few more trucks with Ukrainian militiamen had work tools with them and one of the trucks also carried chloride of lime."
The Ukrainian militiamen dumped the chloride of lime, used to cause the rapid decomposition of corpses, next to the ditches. Then, Bingel recalled, "a number of Junkers-52 transport planes landed at the airport. Out of these stepped several units of SS soldiers who march up to the field-police unit, subsequently taking up positions alongside it."
With those Einsatzkommandos in place, said Bingel, the killing began. "One row of Jews were ordered to move forward and were then allocated to different tables where they had to undress completely and hand over everything they wore or carried. Some still carried jewelry, which they had to put on the table. Then, having taken off all their clothes, they were made to stand in line in front of the ditches, irrespective of their sex. The Kommandos then marched in line behind.
"With automatic pistols these men moved down the line with such zealous intent that one could have supposed this activity to have been their lifework."
No one was overlooked. "Even women carrying children two or three weeks old, sucking at their breasts, were not spared this horrible ordeal. Nor were mothers spared the terrible sight of their children being gripped by their little legs and put to death with one stroke of the pistol butt or club, thereafter to be thrown on the heap of human bodies in the ditch, some of which were not quite dead. Not before the mothers had been exposed to this worst of all tortures did they receive the bullet that released them from this sight."
Row after row of Jews went to their death. "The air resounded with the cries of the children and the tortured," until finally, at 5 p.m., nine hours after the slaughter had begun, "the square lay deserted in deadly desolation and only some dogs, attracted by the scent of blood in the air, were roving the site. The shots were still ringing in our ears. The whole thing might have seemed to me to be a terrifying nightmare but for the sparsely covered ditches which gleamed at us accusingly." In all, the men of Einsatzgruppe C put to death an estimated 24,000 Jews at Uman that day. The killing continued at Babi Yar two weeks later, and there 33,771 people by actual count went to their doom.
But open-air killings were not an entirely satisfactory method of extermination to the SS commanders. For one thing, too many people were privy to the executions -- not just a few hundred Einsatzkommandos but also the scores of local militiamen who had been employed to cover up the long, deep common graves. Moreover, the regular soldiers and airmen on duty at the airport and the inhabitants of the surrounding area could not be prevented from learning of the event from the incessant rattle of pistols, rifles and submachine guns. Then too, the executions put a great strain on the killer squads as we have seen. And despite the Kommandos' marksmanship, the method was not wholly efficient, and the moans and the shrieks of the wounded were unnerving.
Eventually, key SS commanders concluded that a much better mode of extermination was the stationary gas chamber, followed by cremation of the corpses in such ovens as the mental-patient program had developed. In secluded killing centers, small highly trained staffs could conduct the executions in relative secrecy, with an efficiency that seemed likely to make for savings in the long run. The physical remains would be slight.
In accord with this conclusion, the SS installed crematoriums in many existing concentration camps and gas chambers in six model death camps that would incorporate all the latest technology.
When the Jews had reported for the "census," they were marched off to a site near the Uman airport, where long ditches had been excavated. Erwin Bingel, a regular Army officer who was on hand to secure the region's transportation facilities, later described what happened next:
"When the people had crowded into the square in front of the airport, a few trucks drove up from the direction of the town. From these vehicles, a troop of field police alighted and were immediately led aside. A number of tables were then unloaded from one of the trucks and placed in a line. Meanwhile, a few more trucks with Ukrainian militiamen had work tools with them and one of the trucks also carried chloride of lime."
The Ukrainian militiamen dumped the chloride of lime, used to cause the rapid decomposition of corpses, next to the ditches. Then, Bingel recalled, "a number of Junkers-52 transport planes landed at the airport. Out of these stepped several units of SS soldiers who march up to the field-police unit, subsequently taking up positions alongside it."
With those Einsatzkommandos in place, said Bingel, the killing began. "One row of Jews were ordered to move forward and were then allocated to different tables where they had to undress completely and hand over everything they wore or carried. Some still carried jewelry, which they had to put on the table. Then, having taken off all their clothes, they were made to stand in line in front of the ditches, irrespective of their sex. The Kommandos then marched in line behind.
"With automatic pistols these men moved down the line with such zealous intent that one could have supposed this activity to have been their lifework."
No one was overlooked. "Even women carrying children two or three weeks old, sucking at their breasts, were not spared this horrible ordeal. Nor were mothers spared the terrible sight of their children being gripped by their little legs and put to death with one stroke of the pistol butt or club, thereafter to be thrown on the heap of human bodies in the ditch, some of which were not quite dead. Not before the mothers had been exposed to this worst of all tortures did they receive the bullet that released them from this sight."
Row after row of Jews went to their death. "The air resounded with the cries of the children and the tortured," until finally, at 5 p.m., nine hours after the slaughter had begun, "the square lay deserted in deadly desolation and only some dogs, attracted by the scent of blood in the air, were roving the site. The shots were still ringing in our ears. The whole thing might have seemed to me to be a terrifying nightmare but for the sparsely covered ditches which gleamed at us accusingly." In all, the men of Einsatzgruppe C put to death an estimated 24,000 Jews at Uman that day. The killing continued at Babi Yar two weeks later, and there 33,771 people by actual count went to their doom.
But open-air killings were not an entirely satisfactory method of extermination to the SS commanders. For one thing, too many people were privy to the executions -- not just a few hundred Einsatzkommandos but also the scores of local militiamen who had been employed to cover up the long, deep common graves. Moreover, the regular soldiers and airmen on duty at the airport and the inhabitants of the surrounding area could not be prevented from learning of the event from the incessant rattle of pistols, rifles and submachine guns. Then too, the executions put a great strain on the killer squads as we have seen. And despite the Kommandos' marksmanship, the method was not wholly efficient, and the moans and the shrieks of the wounded were unnerving.
Eventually, key SS commanders concluded that a much better mode of extermination was the stationary gas chamber, followed by cremation of the corpses in such ovens as the mental-patient program had developed. In secluded killing centers, small highly trained staffs could conduct the executions in relative secrecy, with an efficiency that seemed likely to make for savings in the long run. The physical remains would be slight.
In accord with this conclusion, the SS installed crematoriums in many existing concentration camps and gas chambers in six model death camps that would incorporate all the latest technology.
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