people murdered. 226 After that the murder detachment returned its attention once more to the District Commissariat of Pinsk. On 24 and 25 September, during
the liquidation of the ghetto of Yanov, between 1,500 and 2,000 people were
Extermination on a European Scale, 1942
351
murdered. At around the same time in Drohotshin (in the neighbouring District
Commissariat of Kobrin) between 1,500 and 2,000 people were also killed. Then
the members of the Pinsk SD station set about wiping out the ghetto in Pinsk itself
with the help of units of the Order Police. This mass murder lasted from
29 October until 1 November and involved at least 16,200 victims.
There is a written order from Himmler to HSSPF Prützmann about this
massacre, dated 27 October 1942: ‘On the basis of the reports I have received,
the ghetto in Pinsk should be seen as the headquarters of the entire bandit
movement in the Pripet Marshes. I therefore recommend, despite the existence
of economic concerns, that the ghetto in Pinsk be immediately dealt with and
destroyed. A thousand male workers should, if the action allows it, be handed over
to the Wehrmacht to make wooden huts. But the work of these 1,000 workers may
only take place in a closed and heavily guarded camp. If this guard cannot be
guaranteed, these 1,000 are also to be exterminated.’227
In the district of Antoniny (also in the General Commissariat of Volhynia-
Podolia), the German civil administration had interned the population that was fit
for work, over 300 people, in forced labour camps in Orlincy and Antoniny in
October 1941. At the beginning of 1942, in three places, small ghettos for Jews who
were not fit for work were set up. These people were murdered in July 1942 by
members of the KdS post Staro-Konstantinov, as were those Jews fit for work who
were still alive in autumn 1942. 228 For the district of Kamentsk-Podolsk there is a report from the SD out-station there, issued at the beginning of August, which
stated that 1,204 victims had been recently killed during two actions in three
villages in Rayon Dunayevtse. 229
In August, in the District Commissariat of Kremenec (Kreminanec), members
of the KdS out-station, with the help of the District Commissariat, the Gendarm-
erie, Ukrainian volunteers, and the police battalion 102 murdered the Jews still
living in the ghettos. Between 10 August and early September 1942 the ghetto in
Kremenec, which was set up early in 1942, was liquidated, with 8,000–12,000
people murdered. Over the next few months 1,500 ‘work-Jews’ who were excluded
from the action were also shot. 230 This was followed on 13 August by the murders of 238 Jews from Berezhy as well as 1,000–2,000 people from the ghetto of
Potschajew (Pochayev). During the three days that followed, 5,000 Jews from
the ghetto of Wischnewez (Wisnowiec) were murdered, and on 14 August and the
days that followed the Jews of Schumsk (Szumsk) were massacred leaving around
2,000–3,000 people dead. 231
The ghetto of Sarny, built in April 1942, into which the Jews from the towns of
the surrounding district had been driven, was cleared on 25 August, and the Jews
put in a camp. On 28 August all the Jews from the camp along with about 200
Gypsies were shot next to prepared pits. Figures for the victims vary between
10,000 and 17,000. On 20 August, the ghetto of Rafalovka was encircled by
Ukrainian militias, who took some 3,000 Jews out of the ghetto on 29 August
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Extermination of the European Jew, 1942–1945
and had them shot by the same firing squad that had previously been active in
Sarny. 232
In the district of Kobryn, at a date that can no longer be precisely estab-
lished, between 11,000 and 14,500 Jews from Kobryn Bereza-Kartuska, Antopol,
Drogitschin (Drogichin), and other towns were shot. Some of the people were
deported in railway trains to the vicinity of the town of Bronnaja (Bronnaya)
Gora, where a shooting facility had been set up. 233 In Ljudvipol (Sosnovoye) in the District Commissariat of Kostopol 1,500 Jews from the ghetto there, which
had been set up in April 1942, were shot in August or September (possibly on
14 September). 234 In Vladimir-Volynsky 13,500 people were murdered at the beginning of September, and with the dissolution of the ghetto of Dubno on
5 October about 3,000. 235 In the liquidation of the ghetto of Lubomil in October 1942 about 8,000 people died. 236
In the massacre in Brest-Litovsk on 15 October 1942, in which the local SD out-
station, the gendarmerie, a police unit, and various other police agencies took part,
at least 10,000–15,000 people were killed. 237 In September, in the District Commissariat of Brest at least 5,000 people had already been killed in several ghettos and
camps. 238 In the liquidation of the ghettos of Sdolbunov, Misocz, and Ostrog, all immediately to the south of Rovno, over 2,000 people in all were murdered on 13, 14,
and 15 October. 239 In the District Commissariat of Dunajewzy (Dunayevtsy), according to a Soviet Commission report, a total of 5,000 Jews are supposed to
have been shot in the spring and autumn of 1942. 240
In November the SS and the occupying administration extended the murder
actions to the north, into White Russian Polesia, and again to the south. After the
last Jewish forced labourers had been murdered in Luck on 12 December, the
workers in Podolia suffered the same fate: 4,000 people fell victim to the murders
in Kamenetsk-Podolsk in November 1942, and a similar number in Starokonstan-
tinov on 29 December 1942. Not only did the civil administration provide
the crucial impulse for total extermination at short notice, but the District
Commissars also played a considerable part in the organization of the individual
massacres. 241
For the Ukraine, therefore, we have the following overall picture: altogether,
between May and December 1942, some 150,000 Jews fell victim to the massacres
carried out by the police and the civil administration in Volhynia between
May and December 1942, and in Podolia just to the south at least 35,000.
There were also several thousand victims in the General Commissariat of
Shitomir (Zhitomir). At the end of 1942, only a few thousand Jewish skilled
workers remained alive. 242
By mid-October 1942 the district of Bialystok, which was not part of the General
Government, but was under the control of the Governor of the Province of East
Prussia and Reichskommissar of the Ukraine, Erich Koch, and formed a bridge
between the two territories, had been caught up in the systematic extermination.
Extermination on a European Scale, 1942
353
After an initial deportation of 3,300 people from the ghetto of Ciechanowiec to
Treblinka on 15 October, the majority of the Jews of the district had been rounded
up into five large collection camps at the beginning of November (Kielbasin,
Volkovysk, Zambrov, Boguze, and one more near Bialystok), while ghettos con-
tinued to exist only in Bialystok, Grodno, Pruzany, Sokolka, and Krynki. In the
months of November, December, and January (interrupted by a transport mora-
torium from mid-December until mid-January) more than 80,000 people were
transported mainly to Treblinka, some also to Auschwitz, and murdered there.
Finally, at the begi
nning of February, some 10,000 people from the Bialystok
ghetto, which had hitherto been spared, were deported to Treblinka, after more
far-reaching plans for the deportation of 30,000 people which Himmler had
already approved in December, had proved to be impracticable. In mid-February,
a similar ‘action’ occurred in Grodno, with more than 4,000 victims who were
deported to Treblinka. 243
The HSSPF Russia South, Hans-Adolf Prützmann, reported to Himmler on
26 December 1942 that following the ‘anti-Partisan campaign’ between 1 September
and 1 December 1942 a total of 363,211 ‘Jews had been executed’ within his area of
responsibility, which included Ukraine and Bialystok. On 29 December Himmler
passed on the report to Hitler, who took note of it. 244
Unlike the situation in Poland, where the inhabitants of the ghettos in 1942
reacted in a largely ‘passive’ way to the ‘actions’, the second wave of massacres
in the occupied Soviet territories encountered considerable organized and
largely armed resistance. In many places resistance groups formed against the
occupying forces, even though the chances of success were extremely poor. They
had hardly any firearms, so that the resistance fighters often only had home-
made incendiary materials, knives, and tools that had been converted into
weapons. It was also extraordinarily difficult for the resistance groups in the
individual ghettos, isolated from one another, to receive information about the
overall picture, and it was impossible to develop a unified resistance strategy. It
also proved extraordinarily difficult for the resistance fighters to win support
within the ghetto population. It was not just the fact that the extraordinarily bad
living conditions meant that any remaining energy was absorbed by the daily
fight for survival, but above all the fear that any acts of resistance would be
avenged with collective reprisal against the general population of the ghetto.
There was also the often hostile attitude of the non-Jewish indigenous popula-
tion and the difficulties involved in making contact with non-Jewish resistance
groups, let alone receiving support from such groups. In other words, the
resisters knew from the outset that their rebellion had little prospect of success.
But the fact that resistance could exist on a considerable scale in spite of this can
be explained above all by the fact that few illusions about the brutality of the
German occupying forces could still exist among those who had survived the
first wave of murders in the summer and autumn of 1941. 245
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Extermination of the European Jew, 1942–1945
The pattern of these resistance activities was, in spite of the isolation of the
ghettos, always the same: small resistance groups organized a few weapons and
prepared to confront a new German ‘action’. In part, these preparations were also
backed by the Jewish council and the Jewish police, in part they occurred without
their support or even against their will.
In fact this resistance tactic was applied in a large number of ghettos: resistance
groups attacked the German police and native auxiliary forces as they made their
way into the ghetto, and set the ghetto itself on fire. Shielded by the flames, the
inhabitants of the ghetto attempted a mass break-out; this always cost a large
number of Jewish people their lives. Apart from such mass break-outs, fleeing
secretly into the forests, individually or in groups, presented the most significant
opportunity to escape mass murder; as such it also represented a form of resist-
ance against the German policy of extermination. Overall, only a small minority
managed to escape into the forests, where few in turn survived.
Apart from such organized, violent acts of resistance, and flight, there were
many other forms of individual resistance: ghetto-dwellers refused to follow
instructions from the Germans, tried to hide in their houses or to barricade
them up; in many cases spontaneous attacks by individuals on policemen have
also been demonstrated. 246 Shalom Cholawsky and Shmuel Spector have reconstructed individual acts of resistance for White Russia and Volhynia. Spector has
assembled figures for twenty-seven towns in Volhynia for which, in the period
between May and September 1942, the mass flight of several hundred or several
thousand people is documented in each place, particularly in the towns of
Dubrovitsa, Rokitno, Tuchin, and Luck as well as in the camps of Poleska and
Kostopol. In Tuchin the resistance group set up by the head of the Jewish council
set fire to the ghetto and carried out an armed resistance for several days; there
were similar revolts in several other places. 247 Spector estimates that mass escapes were successful in another twenty places, and gives the overall figure for people
who sought to escape being murdered through flight or by building hiding-places
(so-called ‘bunkers’) as 47,500, or a quarter of the total Jewish population of
Volhynia at the start of 1942. In spite of this considerable degree of resistance
and flight, the forests gave the fleeing Jews little protection; by far the majority
of escapees died as a consequence of the completely inadequate living conditions,
or were tracked down and killed by the occupiers or by indigenous forces.
Cholawsky’s findings for western Belarus, a territory that had belonged to
Poland until 1939 and was occupied by the Soviet Union from 1939 until 1941,
are as follows: in Neswiecz (Nesvizh) on 21 July 1942 a Jewish resistance group
responded with organized armed resistance to an attempt by German occupying
forces to carry out a selection; the ghetto was set on fire and some fighters
managed to escape into the forests. 248 The following day another resistance group in Kletsk managed to resist a German ‘action’ along similar lines. 249 In Lakhva, at the beginning of September, a similar act of resistance against the
Extermination on a European Scale, 1942
355
planned liquidation of the ghetto was followed by a successful mass break-out. 250
Cholawsky also assembled information on over a dozen Belarus towns which
show that underground groups there were attempting in a similar way to respond
to the German ‘actions’ with organized resistance and mass break-outs, which
were in many cases successful, and in other cases failed for various reasons. 251
Finally, in a series of other Belarus towns groups of ghetto-dwellers managed to
escape to the forests. 252
A resistance group had also formed in the town of Slonim, Polish until 1939,
then occupied by the Soviets, and incorporated since August 1941 into the German
General District of Belarus. In June 1942 it opened fire on the marching SS and
police and killed five Germans. Other Jewish resistance fighters from the territory
of Slonim, who had joined the partisans to form an autonomous fighting group,
took part in an attack on the occupying troops in Kosovo near Slonim, which
prevented the planned liquidation of the ghetto there. 253
The resistance group which had formed in Baranowicze, also in western
Belarus, was on the other hand taken by surprise by the German ‘action’ at the
end of September/beginning of October 1942, and was unable to launch the<
br />
planned revolt; several dozen resistance fighters managed to escape into the
forests. 254
In Minsk, on former Soviet territory, a resistance group was already forming in
August 1941, which concentrated on getting the greatest possible number of
ghetto-dwellers suitable for partisan warfare into the forests. Over the years up
to 10,000 people were taken out of the ghetto in small groups; about 5,000
survived. This was only made possible by the close collaboration with the resist-
ance movement in the city of Minsk as well as with Soviet partisan units operating
in the area of Minsk, and because of general support by the indigenous popula-
tion, in which anti-Semitism was not very widespread. 255
The number of Jews who escaped into the forests throughout the whole
territory of Belarus is estimated at between 30,000 and 50,000 people, or
between 6 and 10 per cent of the whole Jewish population that had remained
in place. 256
The resistance actions were unable to prevent the mass murders, but they did
contribute to the fact that thousands of Jewish people survived, albeit mostly in
terrible conditions, and they did serve a significant symbolic purpose: a consid-
erable proportion of the Jewish population resisted their murderers or avoided
mass murder through flight. The fact that at least some of the victims were capable
of reacting actively to the German policy of extermination was not only of great
significance for the self-perception of the victims, but also had consequences for
the perpetrators: they had to acknowledge that they could not massacre defence-
less people without encountering resistance and putting themselves in danger.
Dozens of German policemen and their indigenous helpers lost their lives as a
result of acts of resistance, and tracking down escaped Jews absorbed considerable
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Extermination of the European Jew, 1942–1945
resources of the occupying forces. In reality, then, it became apparent that the
omnipotent delusion of the calculable total extermination of an entire population
group could not be carried out without consequences. It became spasmodically
apparent that the reaction of the victims was able to set limits on the actions of the
Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews Page 63
