Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews

by Peter Longerich

  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

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  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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  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.

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  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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  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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  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