carrying out these murders received a new order: now it was on principle no
longer necessary to discriminate between men and women and the murder of
children was permitted.
In the following days, too, the number of women shot by Einsatzkommando 3
sometimes reached the same level as the number of men, in some cases even
significantly higher. The large number of children murdered points to the
Extension of Shootings to Whole Jewish Population
231
likelihood that the transition had now taken place to the indiscriminate shooting
of Jews of any age and both sexes. Accounts in the Jäger report include, among
other items, ‘Panevėžys, 23 August: 1,312 Jewish men, 4,602 Jewish women,
1,609 Jewish children; Zarasai, 26 August: 767 Jewish men, 1,113 Jewish women,
687 Jewish children; Utena and Molėtai, 29 August 1941: 582 Jewish men, 1,731
Jewish women, 1,469 Jewish children; Mariampolė, 1 September 1941: 1,763
Jewish men, 1,812 Jewish women, 1,404 Jewish children.’ On 2 September,
Einsatzkommando 3 also reported the shooting of women and children from
Vilna: ‘Apart from 864 Jewish men, 2,019 women and 817 children were shot. ’106
In Daugavpils in Latvia, a sub-unit of Einsatzkommando 3 shot more than 9,000
Jews, among them a large number of women and children in several ‘operations’
between 13 July and 21 August, with the support of Latvian forces. 107
Einsatzkommando 2, which was stationed in Latvia, had liquidated almost
18,000 Jews by September or had had them shot by Latvian auxiliaries. 108 The high number of victims points to the possibility that this commando had also
begun shooting women and children.
By the end of July and the beginning of August, Einsatzkommando Tilsit,
which was operating in the border areas, had begun systematically extending
the shootings beyond the group of men of military age. Members of the
commandos returned to places that had already been ravaged but where
surviving Jewish family members had been imprisoned by the Lithuanian
‘order patrol’. Thus, with the support of Lithuanians, at least 100 to 200 Jews
(women, old men, and children) were shot in Jurbarkas (Georgenburg) and
Virbalis at the end of July and the beginning of August; in Gargždai
(Garsden) in August and September at least 100 women, children, and elderly
men were shot. The District Court of Ulm that was later charged with
examining these activities found more such executions had taken place
continuing into September. 109
In contrast to Einsatzgruppen B and C this huge increase in the number of
murder victims in the area under Einsatzgruppe A was not attributable to the
deployment of a brigade of the Waffen-SS. Higher SS and Police Commander
Hans-Adolf Prützmann evidently did not deploy the 2nd SS Brigade that had
been put at his disposal for a short time in September for the shooting of
Jews. He had sufficient indigenous auxiliary units available, in addition to the
Einsatzgruppen, who were more than prepared to undertake these murders.
In the same period in which the murders were extended to include women
and children and the numbers of those killed rose in leaps and bounds a
remarkable controversy sprang up between the civilian authority that had
just taken over and Einsatzgruppe A. It concerned the future of ‘anti-Jewish
policy’ and because of the deeply entrenched positions that were taken it
merits further attention here.
232
Mass Executions in Occupied Soviet Zones, 1941
The August 1941 Controversy in the Reich Commissariat
Ostland about Future ‘Guidelines for the Treatment of Jews’
On 2 August 1941 the Reichskommissar for the Ostland (the Baltic States and
White Russia), Hinrich Lohse, sent the administration of the Higher SS and Police
Commander for Riga a draft of provisional guidelines for the treatment of Jews in
his area of responsibility that he planned to issue a few days later. This draft
corresponded in substance to the oral instructions Lohse had already issued to his
staff in the speech he made on taking over the post on 27 July in Kaunas. 110
Amongst other things, it made provision for the seizure of the Jews within the
Reich Commissariat, for marking them out with the Star of David, for implement-
ing bans on their exercising any profession, for bans on their use of certain
facilities, and for regulations concerning registration and handing over accumu-
lated Jewish wealth. The ‘flat land’, that is, the countryside, was to be ‘cleansed of
Jews’, ghettos were to be formed, and forced labour gangs were to be set up. 111
Higher SS and Police Commander Prützmann, the leader of Einsatzgruppe A
and the head of the Security Police, Stahlecker, both responded to these sugges-
tions with great alarm, 112 since from their perspective they represented a challenge to their division of responsibilities and were not in accordance with the situation
as they saw it.
Stahlecker drew up a paper on Lohse’s draft in which he explained his position
thus: ‘The measures proposed in the draft for dealing with the Jewish problem
do not conform with the orders given by Einsatzgruppe A of the Security Police
and the SD for the treatment of Jews in the Eastland. Nor have the new
possibilities that exist in the Eastland for clearing up the Jewish problem been
taken into account. The Reichskommissar is evidently seeking a temporary
solution to the Jewish problem in the Eastland that corresponds to the situation
that has been established in the General Government. On the one hand, he fails
to take account of the changes in the situation brought about by the effects of the
Eastern campaign, and on the other, he avoids confronting the radical possibil-
ities for dealing with the Jewish problem, which have emerged for the first time
in the Eastland.’113 One difference between the Eastland and the General Government, he said, was the need there to use the Jews as part of the labour force.
‘These necessities have not been manifest in the area under the Reichskommis-
sar for the Eastland with the exception of the question of skilled craftsmen in a
very few towns and are hardly likely to present themselves in the future. . . .
Perspectives derived from the need to use the Jews for labour will simply not be
relevant for the most part in the Eastland.’ And in addition, the Jews in the
Eastland, in contrast to the General Government, are ‘mostly supporters of
Bolshevism’ and would contribute in no small measure to creating agitation.
Extension of Shootings to Whole Jewish Population
233
After making further criticisms of the measures proposed in the provisional
guidelines, Stahlecker explained how he saw the solution to the ‘Jewish problem’
in the Reich Commissariat Eastland. If it was ‘already’ necessary to proceed with
‘resettlement from the flat lands into the cities’, Stahlecker claimed, this had to be
implemented ‘across the board and in the following manner’: ‘Across the broad
areas of the Eastland certain districts will be set aside for Jewish reservations as
required. . . . In the Jewish reservations male and female Jews will be housed
separately. Boys will remain with their m
others until they reach puberty. The
Jews can immediately be set to perform gainful work within the Jewish reserva-
tions. . . . If there is a workforce available over and above this, the Jews can be
deployed in chain-gangs for road-building even outside the reservations. If the
cleansing of Europe of all the Jews has not by then become official policy other
possibilities for work can be created at a later date by setting up technical and
industrial enterprises within the Jewish reservations. Housing and food will only
be approved in the Jewish reservations to the extent that it is absolutely necessary
to maintain their ability to work.’114 All Jews who were needed outside the sealed
‘reservation’ would have to be housed in closed camps. All Jews would also have to
be visibly identified as such.
At the end of his response Stahlecker summarized the ‘advantages’ of his
approach: ‘an almost 100 per cent immediate cleansing of the whole of the
Eastland of Jews, preventing Jews from multiplying, possibilities for the most
ruthless exploitation of Jewish labour, a significant easing of the later transporta-
tion of Jews into a Jewish reservation outside Europe’. Finally, he suggested that
‘before a fundamental set of instructions is published, we need to discuss all these
questions in detail face to face, especially as the draft directly affects fundamental
orders to the Security Police received from higher up which cannot be discussed in
writing’. 115
How is this document to be assessed? There is an obvious contradiction
between the mass executions that were taking place at the same time in Lithuania
and the ‘solution’ suggested here. At first sight a conjecture proposed by Christopher
Browning looks plausible, namely that this is a ‘cover story’ put together for
the civilian administration by the Einsatzgruppe in order to disguise the decision
to murder all the Jews in the ‘Eastland’ that had already been taken. 116 Two days before writing this document on 6 August 1941, but after making an
application to the Reich Security Head Office on 21 July for the approval of a
concentration camp in Riga under the auspices of the Security Police, Stahlecker
had received permission to set up a detainee camp as an ‘extended police
prison’. 117 The plan for a large camp in the Riga area was pursued by the Security Police over the coming months despite the fact that the shootings were being
extended. These constant efforts, and the fact that in Riga (as in Minsk) prepar-
ations for setting up a ghetto had already been begun in July, 118 can be read as an indication that at the end of July or early in August even Einsatzgruppe A was not
234
Mass Executions in Occupied Soviet Zones, 1941
assuming that they would be able to murder the entire Jewish population of Latvia in a
series of mass executions, despite the fact that liquidations had at that point just been extended to women and children. Instead they were focusing on an intermediate
solution for the survivors of the first wave of murders, having been informed at first
hand of the latest status of the ‘Jewish question’ by Himmler’s visit to Riga on 30
July. 119
The explanations given to Lohse by Stahlecker are in accordance with the
‘guidelines’ issued by the Reich Security Head Office in the summer of 1941 (the
exact date is not certain). 120 These instructions assumed that ‘the Jewish question would be solved for the whole of Europe by the end of the war at the latest’.
‘Preparatory part-measures’ that were to be carried out included ‘moving [the
Jews] to ghettos and separating the sexes’ and in particular the ‘complete and
unrelenting utilization of Jewish labour’. ‘Reprisal measures’ against local populations
were to be tolerated, but in contrast mass executions by Einsatzkommandos under
the Reich Security Head Office were not mentioned in the guidelines—they were
regulated by orders transmitted only orally.
The contradiction between the reality of mass executions and the image created
by the ‘guidelines’ issued by the Reich Security Head Office and the explanations
given by Stahlecker at the beginning of August can be explained if one assumes
that in the latter two documents what is being described is only the fate planned
for the Jews of the Baltic states who had not fallen victim to the first wave of mass
executions and who were initially intended to live under the German occupation
administration until the end of the war and the ultimate decision on the ‘Final
Solution’. The Einsatzgruppe staff reacted with such alarm to Lohse’s initiative not
because they feared that Lohse wanted to hold back the mass murder of the Jews
in the Baltic states that was taking place literally before his very eyes—the Reichs-
kommissar did not intend this, and could not have achieved it—but quite simply
because they thought it raised issues about who would be responsible for the
treatment of the surviving Jews. The debate between the Einsatzgruppen and the
Security Police on the one hand and the civilian administration on the other is
therefore comprehensible only if one remembers that those involved all assumed
that by the time Lohse’s planned ‘guidelines’ were implemented the majority of
the Jews in the Baltic states would already have been murdered.
The extension of the shootings in Einsatzgruppe A’s area to women and
children cannot therefore be seen as proof that a decision had already been
taken to murder all the Jews in the area under the control of the Einsatzgruppe.
Given the vast number of those already murdered in August, the Einsatzgruppe
would easily have been in a position to carry out such a far-reaching programme
of murders within a few months, but in fact it did not seem to wish to pursue such
a line. The final decision to annihilate each and every one of the Jews living in the
Baltic states had, in the view of those concerned, not yet been taken. The
controversy between Stahlecker and Lohse of summer 1941 demonstrates that
Extension of Shootings to Whole Jewish Population
235
the murder of the Jews in the occupied Eastern areas cannot be understood as the
implementation of a single order issued by the National Socialist hierarchy. It was
a process that went through a series of different phases and in which the mid-level
protagonists possessed considerable room for manoeuvre.
When Reichskommissar Lohse sent the draft for his planned ‘Provisional
Guidelines for the Treatment of Jews in the Reich Commissariat’ to the Reich
Ministry for the East on 13 August he had added an introduction to the text, which
was otherwise unaltered. This addition was a safeguard against accusations that he
was infringing upon areas for which the Security Police was responsible: ‘With
reference to the definitive solution to the Jewish question in the area of Reich
Commissariat Eastland, the instructions given in my speech on 27 July 1941 in
Kaunas will apply. 121 Where further measures have been taken in carrying out these oral instructions of mine, especially those taken by the Security Police, they
are not covered by the following guidelines. These provisional guidelines are only
intended to ensure minimum measures to be taken by Commissars General or
> Area Commissars if, and only if, further measures with respect to a definitive
solution to the Jewish question are not possible.’ On 18 August Lohse sent a signed
copy of these guidelines to the Commissars General. 122
Continuation of the Mass Executions in the Autumn of 1941
As Einsatzkommando 3 continued its series of murders in Lithuania in the flat
land in September 1941, it was single-handedly responsible for the deaths of some
25,000 Jews. After one swathe of country after another had thereby been rendered
‘free of Jews’, 123 the commando turned to the step-by-step murder of the people who had been corralled in the ghettos set up in the main cities. These murder
operations were primarily directed at those who were assessed as incapable of
work; the surviving specialist workforce and their dependents were repeatedly
scrutinized for their ‘capacity for work’ and gradually murdered in ‘operation’
after ‘operation’.
In the autumn of 1941 a new phase of Jewish persecution began in Lithuania and
the other areas of the Reich Commissariat, the second wave of murders that aimed
ultimately at the systematic annihilation of all the Jews (with the exception of a
limited and continually reduced number of those able to work). The Germans no
longer assumed, as they had in August, that the ‘Final Solution’ to the Jewish
question would be postponed until after the war, and in consequence they did not
focus on medium-term solutions such as housing Jewish men and women separ-
ately. Instead, in autumn 1941 the total destruction of the Jews was, from the
perspective of those responsible, a goal that could be achieved according to plan
within a very short time.
In Kaunas, where a ghetto had been set up in the middle of August, more than
1,608 men, women, and children (‘ill or suspected of being infectious’) were
236
Mass Executions in Occupied Soviet Zones, 1941
murdered on 26 September; on 4 October another 1,845 people were murdered on
the pretext of a ‘punishment operation’; on 29 October after a large-scale filtration
operation 9,200 people were shot (‘cleansing the ghetto of superfluous Jews’). 124
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