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The SS Einsatzgruppen
Source of this page: http://www.datasync.com/~davidg59/einsatz.html
The SS Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen action: mother and child victims during mass shooting
near Ivangorod, Ukraine (1942)
LAST UPDATE: Feb. 5, 2000
PREFACE
Following are two eyewitness accounts of aktions against Russian
Jews during Operation Barbarosa (the invasion of Russia by
Germany) by the Einsatzgruppen ("special action
groups"). Many people today who know "the average amount"
of information about the Holocaust have little or sometimes no knowledge
of this truly horrible program that the Germans initiated in the first
half of WWII. Herding 1,000's of Jewish non-combatants, i.e., men, women
and children - whole families - to mass burial pits and graves to be
shot one by one in the presence of other victims likewise waiting to be
shot was something that must have been utterly horrible. So horrible
that it is nearly unbelievable today. In fact, the Germans themselves
found the "process" too horrible (and too "manual")
and eventually abandoned the project. At any rate, the death camps
became accepted as the true working "Final Solution" (Endlosung).
Just as the secrecy that surrounded the death camps became eventually
known to the world, so too did the actions of these death squads.
ORGANIZATION OF THE EINSATZGRUPPEN
The Einsatzgruppen were formed as a special action group
to function behind the advancing German Army (Wermacht) to
immediately deal with the region's non-combatants. The function they
were to perform was two-fold: (1) to implement the Nazi agenda of
"cleansing" these regions of Jews and (2) to establish and
secure immediate political order by liquidating all persons perceived as
enemies of the Reich. These non-Jewish "enemies" were
political functionaries, communists, intellectuals and other such
influential people of any former regime. Anyone who could stir public
sentiment against the Nazi agenda could very well consider themselves an
enemy of the Reich. As the Wermacht would mobilize to press on, the
Einsatzgruppen squads would roll-in to handle these non-combatants and
mass shootings of Jews were their specialty.
Established by SD Reinhard Heydrich, the Einsatzgruppen and it's
susidiary Einsatzkommandos first appeared in Czechoslovakia some
time after May 1939 under the order to "secure" political life
and also any useful economic enterprises. Actions were limited and the
group was essentially disbanded after a period of time.
With the invasion of Poland in Sept. 1939, the Einsatzgruppen was
re-formed into 5 kommandos. Atrocities were numerous as the
squads performed their mission of rounding up Jews, aristocrats,
professionals and clergy.
It was during the planning of the invasion of Russia (Operation
Barbarossa)that the Einsatzgruppen became truly organized. The
group was placed under the auspices of the Race and Resettlement Office
of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt or RSHA (Reich Central Security
Office) and would now take an active role in the Holocaust as we today
know it. There were 4 of these units created and were composed of about
3,500 SS personnel totally. Group A was assigned to the Baltic States;
Group B: Moscow and surrounding areas; Group C: Kiev and surrounding
areas; Group D: Ukraine. Within each of these groups were around 1000
persons composed of about 350 Waffen-SS, 150 in the motor pool, 100
Gestapo members, 100 auxiliary policemen, 130 with the Ordungsplizei, 30
or so from the SD and another 50 or so from the Kripo.
At 4:11 am on June 22, Operation Barbarossa was launched. This would be
Germany's "lightning war" into Russia which caused the world
to once again, as Hitler declared, "..hold it's breath...".
And it did. This time, the Einsatzgruppen were prepared to
perform their task to the utmost.
Working with the army, police battalions, local police (at times) and
with regular non-Jewish locals (usually eager to help), the Jews in
areas behind the front lines were treacherously rounded up and forced to
gather and "register" at pre-determined assembly points -
typically the town's market square. From there, they were herded and/or
force-marched to natural ravines, pre-dug pits or wooded areas and
summarily shot, regardless of age or sex, en masse.
Of special note are some of the infamous massacres where very high
numbers of Jews were exterminated. Some of the actions lasted only a day
or two, sometimes up to a week or more. These are some of the larger aktions:
7,000 in Lvov, 15,000 in Rovno, 14,000 in Kharkov....and then the most
infamous: the massacre at Babi Yar Ravine (outside Kiev) where 35,000
where shot in 2 days. The members of the killing unit had to work in
shifts to complete the task. In all, it is estimated that 1.5 million
were killed by these shooting squads.
THOUGHTS ON GERMANY'S PERSPECTIVE
From Germany's wicked perspective, it was the natural order of things to
begin genocidal actions against the Jews by simply engaging in mass
shootings. When Russia was invaded, the opportunity arose to begin these
actions in areas that were isolated.The logic was that, yes, Germany
already had it's own Jews and those of Poland, France, Belgium etc. and
the questions of how to eliminate them were still burning.
With Russia and the East, it was different. These areas were more shut
off from the rest of the world. It was already predetermined in
Germany's grand plan that the Russians were to become the slaves of the
Germans and would eventually be ground down by attrition while Russia
became part of Germany's liebensrum (living space). However it
was determined that Russia's Jewry would be killed on the spot.
Since the ground was still smoldering as the the Wermacht pressed
Eastward, it seemed logical exterminate the Jews with a "special
killing army" following behind the Wermacht. What seemed like a
good plan to the Germans was, however somewhat problematic.
First, it was all too public. Townspeople watched with both
horror and satisfaction (a strange mixture of emotions). Wermacht
soldiers drove up and many gasped with disbelief, some even officially
protesting these actions to their superiors. Photos, which were
forbidden to be taken, kept appearing in private collections. People
would not keep quiet about it, as well. Rumors spread of the "mass
shootings in the East" all the way to Berlin and France. Such
wholesale slaughter had to be kept out of the public eye - a difficult
thing to accomplish.
Secondly, from the German perspective, the shootings exacted a
psychological toll from the perpetrators often to a high degree. The
perpetrators also found the process tedious, laborious,
"messy" and offensive. The psychological stress to those doing
the shootings was in most cases, immense and only the most drunken and
brutal members of the squads could seem to accomplish the task with any
zeal. Complaints from officers stated that the SS men were being ruined
for the rest of their lives. It is hard enough to manually slaughter
livestock day after day. However to slaughter people, to shoot
hundreds of crying children and pleading mothers, begging for their
lives...well this was even too much for the elite SS.
It was because of these two precepts that the Einsatsgruppen were
finally seen as inefficient. Yet even though the program of killing Jews
in the East by mass shooting failed as a "Final Solution", it
successfully dealt witht the "Jewish Question" in the East
long enough for the Germans to put together the master-plan (set in
motion during the Wansee
Conference in Jan. 1942) of using extermination camps and railroads
to effectively orchestrate the Holocaust in it's truest form. This
"form" I perceive exists in basically (3) steps which in
effect, successfully concealed the Holocaust even from the victims
(until the last moment):
Ghettoization: "Staging areas" for gathering &
isolating Jews so that they could be effectively transported to killing
centers.
Transportation: Efficiently transport intended victims en
masse to the extermination sites by rail.
Extermination: Gassing at the death camps.
In this way, the genocide of the Jews was kept out of the public eye.
Most Germans knew something "bad" was happening, but not many
knew exactly how it was being done (Germany's public was focussed
on the war). Knowing "a little" about what was going on in the
camps in Poland made many Germans live with a sort of duality:
realizing that something terrible was happening to the Jews, but unable
and probably for most, undesiring to do anything about it. Anti-Semitism
was dominant in Germany during this time. In any event, those Germans
who did sympathize with the Jews were too frightened to do anything -
even speaking sympathetically about it would be like inviting the
Gestapo for a visit. Even Germans knew the Gestapo and it's inhumane
edicts.. were nothing to toy with.
This "New Germany" - under Nazi control was working for the
day when she would render Europe - and even the world Judenrein
(Jew-free) - and this world, where so much anti-Semitism existed, would
certainly turn their eyes away and allow it....and it nearly happened.
The Einsatzgruppen program exemplifies, in my opinion, that
Germany's agenda for dealing with the "Jewish Question" was
not totally outlined beforehand, but was an evolution via
trial-and-error or the response to prevailing conditions. Conditions
which culminated with such monstrous monuments to
man's-inhumanity-to-man, the death camps of Sobibir, Belzec, Madjenek,
Treblinka and Auschwitz.
Had the Germans not lost the war, the building of another, let's say, Auschwitz
II might have been adequate to actually carry out the Final
Solution. Then, I am sure, the Slavs would have been next, the Poles,
the French,...and then...who knows? You and me? Are we all survivors,
then?
THOUGHTS ON THE VICTIMS
It goes without saying what the victims must have endured...the utter
despair and horror they embraced in the face of such cruelty and death
are depths of human emotion we probably will never descend into or
comprehend. Imagine being ordered to strip naked, then to march down
into a mass grave or to be made to run naked towards "shooting
pits" in groups...often hurridly...being hurried to be murdered
with your naked, crying children running beside you... surely there are
few things on this Earth more inhumane or terrible. What terror did the
children endure? How can it be put into words? It cannot. The last
moments of the children at the shooting pits is too sacred to even try
to put into words.
This picture says it all. In the process of undressing, this
girl waits with her family to be shot.
She has not the will to even look as her picture is taken. In total
resignation,
her face looks downwards as she leans against her mother.
Leipaja, Latvia. Dec. 1941
The Jews were made to submit to being murdered - there was no
escape. Those who tried were shot. Imagine knowing that your non-Jewish
"friends" back in the city, town or village where you lived in
all your life had become collaborators - or even perpetrators
themselves. Then imagine, in the few moments prior to your turn, at the
edge of the pit the images that prevail. At the pit, you witness what
few people on this earth have truly seen and lived to tell of: the
actual mechanism of human slaughter perpetrated on one people by another
people. In these final moments, you see your people, along with their
children slaughtered within the presence of each other.
If you have the guts, hit
this link and see the numbers...this is EK 3's (Einsatzkommando
3's) report of actions in Lithuania. Remember, as you scan the numbers
which are tallied as per men, women, children, etc....that these were
innocent human beings shot individually at the edge of or while standing
in pits, with full knowledge of their own slaughter laying bare before
their eyes. I sometimes think that instead of being "the most
advanced form of life" on Earth, we must actually be the most
advanced form of death.
EINSATZGRUPPEN-STYLED EXTERMINATION IN YOUR LIFE-TIME
Yes, in the 1990's: Srebrenica (Bosnia) and Kosovo are proof that
the "It'll never happen again!" rhetoric...is just plain
naivety. How dare anyone walk around and say "It will never happen
again". Their naivety plainly shows. IT HAS HAPPENED and the world
community was unable to come up with any means of stopping it. Just like
during the Holocaust. We are the "bystanders" who do nothing
yet clamor for justice after the fact. An example is during the last
week of April, 1999: approximately 100 men and boys were separated from
their families as they tried to flee the Serbs. The Serbs detained the
refugee column, separated the men and boys out and then forced the
column to move on. The victims were last seen by their families kneeling
in a field with their hands on their heads. As soon as the column was
out of sight, the shootings began. Subsequent refugee columns were
witness to the aftermath: every man and boy had been executed and their
bodies were left in the field.
Einsatzgruppen-styled executions also occurred in Srebrenica
(July 1995) except on a larger scale: nearly 3,000 Muslim men and boys
were executed. They were rounded up and brought to a soccer complex.
With machine guns, they were shot within the soccer complex in groups of
about 25 or so all day and all night...our spy satellites have the
pictures. The photos show the complex crowded with people, then the next
day, emptied - and what appears to be mass graves near the woods
adjacent to the complex. The confirmation came from a lone survivor who
crawled out of the mass of corpses. He lived to tell the story...any
historical precedents? Look at this picture:
Jewish men and boys await their extermination in an athletic field
near Lomazy in August 18, 1942. They were marched from this place for
about 1000 yds (into the woods) where 50 or so Jews had been forced to
dig a large pit earlier in the day. 1600 Jews were shot this day and
details of them being tortured and brutalized while being murdered are
documented. The pit filled with water (being below the waterline) and
many died from suffocation and drowning as the heap of bodies above them
forced them downwards.
Read on with me as we go back 55 years, when there was no precedent for
this type of extermination:
EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS
This first testimony is by Rivka
Yosselevscka in a war crimes tribunal court. For ease of presenting
her testimony, I am eliminating questions and comments of the court
itself. She lived in Zagrodski and the Einsatzgruppen commandos
arrived in the summer of 1942. All Jews were rounded up, a roster was
drawn up and the families were loaded onto trucks. Since there were
around 500 families, many could not get on so they were told to run
behind the trucks....
...I had my daughter in my arms and ran after the truck. There
were mothers who had 2 or 3 children and held them in their arms -
running after the truck. We ran all the way. There were those who fell -
we were not allowed to help them rise. They were shot right there,
wherever they fell. When we reached the destination, the people from the
truck were already down and undressed - all lined up. All of my family
was there. This was some 3 km from our village. There was a kind of
hillock. At the foot of this little hill, there was a dugout. We were
ordered to stand at the top of the hillock and the 4 devils shot us -
each one separately. They were SS men - the 4 of them....
When I came to the place, we saw people naked lined up. But we were
still hoping that this was only torture. Maybe there is hope - hope of
living. One could not leave the line, but I wished to see. Is there
anyone down below? I turned my head and saw that some 3 or 4 rows were
already killed - on the ground. There were some 12 people amongst the
dead. I also want to mention that my child said while we were lined up
in the ghetto, she said, "Mother, why did you make me wear the
Shabbat dress? We are being taken to be shot!". And when we stood
near the dugout, near the grave, she said, "Mother, why are we
waiting? Let's run!" Some of the young people tried to run, but
they were caught immediately, and they were shot right there. It was
difficult to hold on to the children. We took all children not ours, and
we carried - we were anxious to get it all over - the suffering of the
children was difficult. We all trudged along to come nearer to the place
and to come nearer to the end of the torture of the children. The
children were taking leave of their parents, and parents of their elder
people. We were driven...we were already undressed, the clothes were
removed; and taken away. Our father did not want to undress. He remained
in his underwear. We were driven up to the grave...when it came our
turn, our father was beaten. We prayed, we begged with my father to
undress, but he would not undress, he wanted to keep his underclothes.
He did not want to stand naked. Then they tore the clothing off the old
man and he was shot. I saw it with my own eyes. Then they took my mother
and shot her, too...and then there was my grandmother, my father's
mother, standing there, she was eighty years old and she had two
children in her arms; and then there was my father's sister. She also
had children in her arms and she was shot on the spot with the babies in
her arms..
Finally my turn came. There was my younger sister - and she wanted to
leave. She prayed with the Germans, she asked to run - naked, she went
up to the Germans with one of her friends, they were embracing each
other. He looked into her eyes and shot the 2 of them. They fell
together in their embrace, the two young girls - my sister and her young
friend. Then my 2nd sister was shot and then my turn did come. We turned
towards the grave and then he turned around and asked, "Whom shall
I shoot 1st?" We were already facing the grave. The Germans asked,
"Who do you want me to shot 1st?" I did not answer. I felt him
take the child from my arms. The child cried out and was shot
immediately. And then he aimed at me. First, he held onto my hair and
turned my head around. I stayed standing. I heard a shot, but I
continued to stand and then he turned my head again and he aimed the
revolver at me and ordered me to watch and then turned my head around
and shot at me. Then I fell to the ground into the pit amongst the
bodies- but I felt nothing. The moment I did feel, I felt a sort of
heaviness...and then I thought "maybe I'm not alive anymore - but I
feel something after I've died". I thought I was dead, that this
was the feeling that comes after death. Then I felt that I was choking;
people falling over me. I tried to move, and felt that I was alive and
that I could rise. I was strangling. I heard the shots and I was praying
for another bullet to put an end to my suffering, but I continued to
move about. I felt that I was choking, strangling, but I tried to save
myself - to find some air to breathe, and then I felt that I was
climbing towards the top of the grave above the bodies. I rose and I
felt bodies pulling at me with their hands, biting at my legs, pulling
me down, down. And yet, with my last strength, I came up on top of the
grave, and when I did, I did not know the place, so many dead bodies
were lying all over, dead people; I wanted to see the end of this
stretch of dead bodies, but I could not. It was impossible. They were
lying, all dying; suffering; not all of them dead, but in their last
sufferings; naked; shot, but not dead. Children crying
"Mother" & "Father"; I could not stand on my
feet....the Germans were gone. There was nobody there. No one standing
up. I was naked, covered with blood, dirty from the other bodies - with
the excrement from other bodies which was poured on me....I was wounded
in the head...I have a scar to this day from the shot by the
Germans...and yet somehow, I did come out of the grave. This was
something I thought I would never live to recount.
I was searching among the dead for my little girl and I cried for her -
Merkele was her name - "Merkele!" There were children crying
"Mother!", "Father!" - but they were smeared with
blood and one could not recognize the children. I cried for my daughter.
From afar, I saw 2 women standing - I went up to them. They did not know
me. I didn't know them, and then I said who I was, then they said,
"So you survived!"...and there was another woman crying,
"Pull me out from amongst the corpses! I am alive! Help!" We
were thinking how we could escape from the place. The cries of the
woman, "Help! Pull me out of the corpses!" We pulled her out.
her name was Mikla Rosenberg. We removed the corpses and the dying
people who held onto her and continued to bite. She asked us to take her
out, to free her, but we didn't have the strength - and thus we were
there all night, fighting for our lives, listening to the cries and
screams - then all of a sudden, we saw Germans, mounted Germans - we did
not notice them coming in because of the screams and the shouting from
the bodies around us. The Germans ordered that all the corpses be heaped
together into one big heap and with shovels they were heaped together,
all of the corpses, amongst them many still alive.- children running
about the place. I saw them. I saw the children. They were running after
me, hanging onto me. Then I sat down in the field and remained sitting
with the children around me - the children who got up from the heap of
corpses. Then Germans came and were going around the place.
We were ordered to collect all the children, but they did not approach
me and I sat there watching how they collected the children. They gave a
few shots and the children were dead - they did not need many shots -
the children were almost dead, and this Rosenberg woman pleaded with the
Germans to be spared, but they shot her. They all left - the Germans and
the non-Jews from around the place. They removed the machine guns and
they took the trucks. I saw that they all left, and the four of us - we
went onto the grave - praying to fall into the grave -even alive,
envying those who were dead already and thinking "What to do
now?". I was praying for death to come, I was praying for the grave
to open up and to swallow me alive. Blood was spurting from the grave in
many places - like a well of water. When I pass a spring now - I
remember the blood which spurted from the ground - from the grave. I was
digging with my fingernails, trying to join the dead in that grave. I
dug with my fingernails, but the grave would not open - I did not have
enough strength. I cried out to my mother, to my father "Why did
they not kill me? What was my sin? I have no one to go to!". I saw
them all being killed. Why was I spared? Why was I not killed?...I
remained there, stretched out on the grave, 3 days and 3 nights...
Pictures of Genocide
Photo 1: Einsatzkommandos lining women & children after
having them undress. Notice pregnant woman to the right. No one, not
even infants & children were spared. The extreme antisemitism of the
German's dictated the doctrine that Jewish women and children must be
destroyed because they represented the future of European Jewry. This
action took place on the outskirts of the Mizoc Ghetto on October 14,
1942
Photo 2: Afterwards. After being made to lie down, each person
was shot in the neck at the base of the head. Notice adults shielding
their children. During roundups, any Jew unable for any reason not to
show up in the market place or designated assembly area was shot onsite.
Any Jew found after a roundup action was immediately shot In the
beginning, graves were not even dug, natural pits and depressions in the
earth were used and the burial detail was left for the locals to handle.
Most non-Jewish locals were anti-Semitic to the point that they helped
the Germans. Anti-semitism had reached a boiling-point in Europe, and no
where was it worse than in Germany, Poland, the Ukraine & Lithuania.
The following account of Einstazgruppen aktions during the
liquidation of the Dubno ghetto (Ukraine) was given by Hermann Graebe, a
German civilian engineer, who witnessed the event:
On Oct. 5, 1942, when I visited a building office at Dubno, my
foreman, H. Moennikes, told me that in the vicinity of the site, Jews
from Dubno had been shot in 3 large pits, each about 30 meters long and
3 meters deep. About 1500 persons had been killed daily. All of the 5000
Jews who had been living in Dubno before the pogrom were to be
liquidated. As the shootings had taken place in his presence, he was
still much upset...
Moenikkes and I went directly to the pits. Nobody bothered us. Now I
heard rifle shots in quick succession, from behind one of the earth
mounds. The people who had got off of the trucks - men, women and
children of all ages - had to undress upon the order of an SS man who
carried a riding whip. They had to put down their clothes in fixed
places, sorted according to shoes, top-clothing and underclothes, I saw
a heap of shoes - about 800 to 1000 pairs, great piles of underlinen and
clothing. Without screaming or weeping, these people undressed, stood
around in family groups, kissed each other, said farewells and waited
for a sign from another SS man, who stood near the pit, also with a whip
in his hand.
During the 15 minutes that I stood near the pit, I heard no complaint or
plea for mercy. I watched a family of about 8 persons, a man and woman,
both about 50, with their children of about 1, 8 & 10 and 2 grown-up
daughters of about 20 & 24. An old woman with snow-white hair was
holding the 1 yr old child in her arms and singing to it and tickling
it. The child was cooing with delight. The couple was looking on with
tears in their eyes. The father was holding the hand of a boy about 10
yrs old and speaking to him softly; the boy was fighting his tears. The
father pointed towards the sky, stroked his head and seemed to explain
something to him. At that moment, the SS man at the pits shouted
something to his comrade. The latter counted off about 20 persons and
instructed them to go behind the earth mound. Among them was the family
which I mentioned.
I well-remember a girl, slim and with black hair who, as she passed
close to me, pointed to herself and said "Twenty-three!". I
walked around the mound and found myself confronted by a tremendous
grave. People were closely wedged together and lying on top of each
other so that only their heads were visible. Nearly all had blood
running over their shoulders from their heads. Some of the people shot
were still moving. Some were lifting their arms and turning their heads
to show that they were still alive. The pit was already 2/3 full. I
estimated that it already contained about 1000 people. I looked for the
man who did the shooting. He was an SS man who sat at the edge of the
narrow end of the pit, his feet dangling into the pit. he had a tommy-gun
on his knees and he was smoking a cigarette. The people, completely
naked, went down some steps which were cut in the clay wall of the pit
and clambered over the heads of the people lying there, to the place
where the SS man directed. They laid down in front to the dead or
injured people, some caressed those who were still alive and spoke to
them in a low voice. Then I heard a series of shots.
I looked into the pit and saw that the bodies were twitching or the
heads, lying already motionless on top of the bodies that lay before
them. Blood was running from their necks. I was surprised that I was not
ordered away, but I saw that there were 2 or 3 postmen in uniform
nearby. The next batch was approaching already. They went down in the
pit, lined themselves up against the previous victims and were shot.
When I walked back around the mound, I noticed another truckload of
people which had just arrived. This time it included sick and infirm
people. An old, very thin woman with terribly thin legs was undressed by
others who were already naked while 2 people held her up. The woman
appeared to be paralyzed, the naked people carried the woman around the
mound. I left with Moennikes and drove in my car to Dubno.
On the morning of the next day, when I again visited the site, I saw
about 30 naked people lying near the pit - about 30 to 50m away from it.
Some of them were still alive; they looked straight in front of them
with a fixed stare and seemed to notice neither the chilliness of the
morning nor the workers of my firm who stood around. A girl of about 20
spoke to me and asked me to give her clothes and help her escape. At
that moment we heard a fast car approach and I noticed that it was an SS
detail. I moved away to my site. 10 minutes later we heard shots from
the pit. The Jews still alive had been ordered to throw the corpses into
the pit - then they themselves had to lie in this to be shot in the
neck.
Thanks to my neice, Laura Wright for her assistance with this text.
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