Between Giants

by Prit Buttar

  These chilling sentences mean that between 22 June and 1 December, over 120,000 Lithuanian Jews had been killed. Jäger participated in some of the shootings himself, and ensured that all of his officers did so too. Those who showed reticence were threatened.22 Jäger himself appears to have been affected by these experiences. He told Heinz Jost, who succeeded Stahlecker as Jäger’s superior, that he couldn’t sleep, and was haunted by visions of dead women and children.23 None of these feelings seems to have interfered with his ability to continue with the killings. He remained in Lithuania for two years before being assigned a variety of administrative roles in Germany.

  Outside the large cities of Lithuania, special measures were taken to facilitate the killing of Jews. One example was the Rollkommando Hammann, a mobile killing squad of less than a dozen German officers and about a hundred Lithuanians, mainly members of Bronius Norkus’ Tautinio Darbo Apsaugos (‘National Security’) battalion. During the latter half of 1941, the Kommando was active in over 50 locations, in both Lithuania and southern Latvia, accounting for the deaths of over 9,000 Jews. The Jäger report describes in detail the preparations required for this unit to function:

  The implementation of such actions is primarily a question of organisation. The objective of systematically rendering every district free of Jews required thorough preparation of every individual task and investigation of the prevailing circumstances in the relevant district. Jews had to be assembled at one or more locations. On the basis of their number, locations for the required graves had to be identified and dug.24

  In Vilnius, the German authorities rapidly introduced a series of measures for Jews to wear identifying symbols, such as six-pointed stars and armbands. These were changed frequently in the early stages of the occupation, causing panic amongst the Jews as they struggled to find material of the appropriate colour. Jews began to be moved to designated buildings in mid-July as the first phase of the creation of a ghetto; the formal establishment of the ghetto occurred in September. 403rd Security Division and Einsatzkommando 9 both reported that they were working smoothly together, with the division stating that in August and September 1941 it executed 45 military commissars and 197 civilian communist officials; many of this latter group were Jews.25 The Einsatzkommando, which arrived on 2 July, executed 321 Jews between 4 and 8 July, and later achieved figures of 500 killings per day. By 19 July, it had accounted for over 7,600 individuals.26 Wolfgang Ditfurth, commander of 403rd Security Division, reported in mid-July that he had reduced rations to the Jewish part of the population by 50 per cent. He was aware of the shootings carried out by the Einsatzkommando and its Lithuanian auxiliaries, but requested that these were carried out in locations out of sight of his men.27

  The experiences of the child Mascha Rolnikaite and her family in Vilnius are in many ways typical of Jews caught up in the German takeover. She was nearly 14 years old when the Germans arrived in Vilnius. She was the daughter of a Jewish couple; her father was a lawyer, who worked for the Soviet authorities. As the Red Army began to leave the city, he left his family to organise transport for them to leave. The family waited in vain for him to return, and watched the first German troops arrive. The following day, they learned that the new authorities had ordered shops and restaurants to reopen, but restaurants and cafes had to display a sign stating that entry of Jews was forbidden. When Rolnikaite attempted to return to school to collect documents that her mother thought would be important, she was shocked when a Lithuanian boy confronted her:

  ‘What do you want here? Go, back the way you came!’

  I asked him to let me past. But he snatched my cap from my head.

  ‘Get away! And stop plaguing our school!’28

  She feared the reaction of her teacher, but to her relief, he helped her recover her documents, and even accompanied her on her way home.

  Perella Esterowicz was slightly younger than Mascha Rolnikaite, the only child of the local representative of the Hungarian firm Tungsram, as well as western battery and tyre manufacturers. Growing up in Vilnius in the 1930s, when the city was under Polish control, she remembered seeing anti-Semitic graffiti even as a small child. After the city was assigned to Lithuania by the Soviet Union, her father lost contact with his foreign suppliers, but established a new business. The communist authorities nationalised this the following year after the Soviet annexation of Lithuania, and as a ‘bourgeois’ family, the Esterowiczes had to give up a large part of their luxurious apartment. Despite being unemployed, her father managed to avoid deportation to Siberia, though her aunt and uncle only escaped by fleeing their house when the NKVD came to arrest them. Tragically, their escape indirectly led to their deaths; the Germans shot her uncle within a few weeks of their arrival, and her aunt died in the ghetto in 1943.

  As German troops approached Vilnius, the communist official who had taken possession of the bulk of the Esterowicz apartment fled to the east. Perella’s father was arrested on suspicion of signalling to Soviet aircraft by leaving his apartment light burning at night, and suddenly found himself facing a hostile group of German officials. When they realised he could speak excellent German, and that he had been a customer in a coffee house in Berlin where one of the Germans had worked, he was released. A Polish garage-owner, who had been Esterowicz’s customer before the war, provided him with a document showing that he worked in the Polish garage which was now helping repair Wehrmacht vehicles, thus protecting him from further arrest.29

  News spread by word of mouth through the Jewish community of attacks and pogroms. Soon, the Rolnikaite house was searched for radios and other forbidden items. There were repeated searches, and all items in the house were recorded in an inventory – except the best furniture, which was immediately removed. Jewish families were warned that if they attempted to sell any of their furniture, they would face severe punishment, even death. They were required to hand over all jewellery and cash in excess of 30 Reichsmarks. Later, there was a demand that all Jews pay an additional large sum of cash or face immediate arrest. This was almost impossible for many, who had already been robbed or had handed over their valuables; to the relief of the Rolnikaite family, Mascha’s schoolteacher, Hendrikas Jonaitis, appeared at their house and gave her mother the required cash. Like a substantial minority of Lithuanians, he was prepared to risk his own life to help protect others.30

  Restrictions continued to increase in both number and severity. Shortly after Rolnikaite’s 14th birthday, a month after the invasion had begun, Jews were forbidden from walking on pavements. The day before the Vilnius ghetto was established, Rolnikaite ventured out on the streets in search of Jonaitis, her schoolteacher, without the obligatory insignia of a Jew. He looked after her overnight, but the following day, when she attempted to return to her family, she found that the ghetto had been established, with barbed wire across the streets. There were actually two ghettos, a small one and a large one, separated by a single road. Rolnikaite entered one of the ghettos, and when she couldn’t find her family, succeeded in crossing to the other; she was fortunate that she recognised one of the guards as the schoolboy who had attempted to turn her away from her school, and managed to persuade him to let her pass. It was several days before the family was reunited in the crowded ghetto.31

  Ghetto life was difficult in the extreme. Mascha Rolnikaite, her mother, and her three siblings had to sleep in a room with several others, squeezed into a space between two beds; there were barely enough beds for the elderly and children. The Esterowicz family was lucky, in that they had been driven from their apartment when the ghetto was first established, and being amongst the first arrivals, were able to secure a room for themselves and their extended family. As more and more people were crammed into the ghetto, the family was forced to allow others to join them, and their room, measuring 6ft by 24ft became home to 26.32

  Most of the day-to-day running of the ghetto was in the hands of the Judenrat (Jewish council) and the ghetto police, which was headed by Jacob Gens, a former officer
of the Lithuanian army. Both the ghetto police and the Judenrat were answerable to Standartenführer Franz Murer, who had been appointed Vilnius Commissar for Jewish Matters. Soon, those who had work were moved to one ghetto, while those without work were herded together into the smaller ghetto. There were repeated ‘actions’, a euphemism for the forcible round-up of a variable number of Jews, who were then taken away and executed. Various categories were selected – the infirm, the elderly, those without work. On other occasions, people were simply herded together regardless of their status. There was a pretence by the authorities that the infirm and elderly were being taken elsewhere so that they could receive better care, but those left behind had little doubt that they would never see their loved ones again. Rolnikaite described a typical ‘action’:

  Once more an action. Not a big one, but an action nevertheless.

  During the night, a taciturn troop of Lithuanian soldiers quietly slipped into the ghetto. They had instructed the ghetto police to remain at their posts while they themselves sought out predetermined addresses that each had been assigned.

  They woke people quietly and politely and ordered them to take warm clothing with them, and waited as they dressed and packed their things.

  The people only realised their situation when they reached the ghetto gate where they were to be loaded into trucks …

  It turned out that Murer had ordered new victims from Gens. Gens therefore prepared a list of members of the so-called underworld – people who he saw as misfits or who had annoyed the ghetto police – and gave their addresses to the executioners.33

  Samuel Esterowicz, Perella’s father, working for his Polish acquaintance in the vehicle repair workshop, witnessed a body of ghetto inhabitants being marched away for execution:

  In front of the windows of our workshop the Lithuanian police were driving down the street to the Lukiškės Prison a multitude of Jews from the second [small] ghetto – men, women and children. In the passing crowd I recognised some of my acquaintances. The scene of these innocent people, my fellow Jews, being driven to their deaths shocked me to the depth of my soul – this became even more poignant when I realised that the Polish workers in the workshop looked at this horrible injustice not with sorrow but with yells of joy and satisfaction. ‘Look,’ they were jumping with joy, ‘the Jews are taken to be killed.’

  The exhibition of anti-Semitism was no great surprise for me. But what horrified me while I watched the delighted Polish workers was the depth of their hatred for us – it united all the surrounding nationalities and members of social classes. The Polish partisans, members of the AK [‘Armia Krajowa’, the Polish resistance army supported by the Western Powers] acted in accordance with this mood of the surrounding population. Though organized for the underground struggle against the Germans, mostly the AK was hunting the Jews who were hiding in the forest. Since they consisted mostly of local people, the Polish partisans were excellently oriented in the localities in which they operated and thus represented a greater peril for the Jews who tried to find refuge in the dense forest than did the Germans who did not dare to penetrate deep into the forest. The Lithuanians were exceptionally active in the matter of our annihilation.34

  The implication that the AK was involved in killing Jews is a controversial one. The resistance army fought against all it regarded as occupiers of Poland, including on occasion pro-Soviet partisans. Given that many of the pro-Soviet partisans were Jewish, it is likely that some Jews were killed by the AK, though it is equally likely that this was a result of activity that was not anti-Semitic per se. Esterowicz commented that anti-Semitism, while widespread amongst the local population, was by no means universal, and many locals quietly helped the Jews by providing food whenever they could. Nor were all Germans anti-Semitic:

  One … was a German soldier named Berger who had been assigned to our automobile repair worshop and with whom I became friendly. Berger exclaimed while watching the Jews being driven to their deaths: ‘What this scum perpetrate here in the name of the German nation – centuries will not suffice for us to cleanse ourselves!’ Upon returning from home leave Berger related an occurrence which demonstrated that the Nazi government hid the truth from the broad masses of their population. Hearing about the horrors committed by her fellow Germans in Lithuania, Berger’s wife at first decided that he must have lost his mind – the tales seemed so monstrous and improbable.35

  Those that remained in the ghettos after each ‘action’ struggled to find enough food to survive. Rolnikaite’s family was lucky. Her mother and elder sister worked as seamstresses, earning a pittance but enough to augment their hopelessly inadequate rations, and Hendrikas Jonaitis continued to risk his own life to give them food whenever he could, either through the barbed wire or if he encountered family members being marched to or from their place of work.

  Many of the shootings of Jews from Vilnius occurred in the town of Paneriai, about six miles south-west of the centre of the city. Following their strategy in Poland, the Germans moved first to decapitate Jewish society, not least because it was believed that these leading individuals might form the centre of any resistance movement. Accordingly, on 9 July, Einsatzkommando 9 instructed its subordinate Lithuanian police units to draw up a list of the most prominent Jews in Vilnius, particularly the intelligentsia, those involved in politics, and the wealthy.36 Three days later, Kazimierz Sakowicz, a Pole who recorded many of the events at Paneriai, saw about 300 well-dressed male Jews brought to the killing ground, and recognised some of them as prominent Jewish commercial figures.37 At first, the killings were mainly Jewish men. It was only in August that the range of victims was extended to include women and children.

  A German soldier who worked in a transport column witnessed some of the killings:

  I positioned myself about 6–8 metres from the entrance to the pit. An armed civilian stood on either side of the entrance. The watch detail brought the people in small groups to the gravel pit. At the edge of the pit was a grave, where the Jews had to go. The grave was in the shape of a cross … as it was a dry sandy area, the grave was reinforced with planks. In groups, the Jews were brought to the pit. We could clearly see members of the watch detail who were at the edges of the pit striking down with whips … a firing squad of 10 men stood about 6–8 metres from the pit … the shots were fired in salvos, so that the people fell into the grave behind them together.38

  One of those taken to Paneriai for execution was the 19-year-old Ita Straż. She was dragged to a pit that was already full of bodies, and when a salvo of shots rang out, she fell forward onto the dead, even though she had not been hit by any bullets. More bodies fell on her as further executions followed, and shots were then fired into the pit to kill any who had survived. One such shot passed through her hand, but she managed to remain silent. She waited until dark, and then escaped, walking barefoot over what seemed like an endless sea of dead.39

  Lithuanians involved in the shootings at Paneriai were mainly from the Ypatingasis būrys (‘special squads’), recruited from local volunteers. They were commanded by Hauptscharführer (equivalent to an army rank of Oberfeldwebel or staff sergeant) Martin Weiss, an officer in the German security police. He had a reputation for cruelty; when he supervised the executions at Paneriai, he frequently made victims lie for hours – in some cases, for more than a day – on the bodies of those executed before them, before they were shot themselves. He often beat Jews at the ghetto gate if they were not displaying their six-pointed stars in the approved fashion, and personally conducted beatings of anyone caught trying to smuggle extra food into the ghetto. On one occasion, he shot a would-be food smuggler – the man had a few potatoes and a small piece of fish – on the spot. Even by the standards of the SS, he had a bad reputation. There was an incident in which a Jew had been imprisoned in the Lukiškės Prison in Vilnius, and was due to be released back to the ghetto; his jailors waited until Weiss was on leave before they released the man, knowing that Weiss would have simply shot the pris
oner instead. The jailors also warned the man to make sure that he didn’t run into Weiss again.40

  The personnel of Einsatzkommando 3 reported in January 1942 that the shootings had been conducted in such a manner that they had barely been noticed, and that the general population, including the remaining Jews, believed that those taken to Paneriai had been resettled.41 The testimony of locals, particularly from Paneriai, suggests that they were all too aware of the killings, but were careful not to speak out. Within the Vilnius ghetto, Jews only became aware of the true nature of Paneriai towards the end of 1941, due to the activities of the local resistance movement. In the Vilnius ghetto, the resistance group used a cellar under the so-called hospital. The Judenrat played no part in the resistance – its members believed that by cooperating with the Germans and providing labour, they would be able to save at least some of those in the ghetto. Active resistance came mainly from younger members of the Jewish community, particularly those who were Zionists before the arrival of the Germans. Some of these had succeeded in avoiding internment in the ghetto by having documentation that disguised their Jewish background, and, at first in isolation, they began to develop networks. A Jewish girl, Tamara Katz, survived the shootings at Paneriai and, after digging her way out of a mass grave, reached Vilnius where she was sheltered by the underground. She told them about the events at Paneriai, and not long after, the group was able to get a message into the ghetto: