The ‘preparations’ to which Goering referred on July 31 were to involve a dozen countries, many of which, like Hungary and Italy, had not turned against their Jews in any murderous way; in others of which, like France, Belgium, Holland and Norway, the Jews, despite discrimination and some executions, were not being physically destroyed. Even in German-occupied Poland, where several thousand Jews were dying of hunger each month in Warsaw and Lodz, two million and more Jews were alive, struggling to maintain their morale until Germany should be defeated.
Goering’s letter of July 31 made it clear that something drastic was in preparation, albeit at an early phase: a ‘complete solution’, unexplained, yet comprehensive. Meanwhile, in the East, there was to be no respite in the savage, daily slaughter. ‘It may be safely assumed’, Heydrich informed Himmler on August 1, ‘that in the future there will be no more Jews in the annexed Eastern Territories….’59
There was no pause in the daily killings and there was to be no pause. On July 29 forty mental patients were seized in Lodz, and deported: driven away in a covered truck to an unknown destination. They were in fact shot by the Nazis in a nearby forest. The Ghetto Chronicle noted, on July 31: ‘The patients resisted in many cases.’ But the chroniclers had no idea of the fate of the deportees once they had been taken out of the ghetto.60
Occasionally, a postcard from a Jew in German-occupied Poland reached the West. But any messages other than purely personal ones had to be skilfully disguised. On July 23 one such postcard was sent from a Jew in Radzymin to his brother in Brooklyn. Referring to three Jewish Holy days—the solemn fast day of Yom Kippur, the festival of Purim, when Jewish children dress up in colourful costumes, and the festival of Tabernacles, or Sukkot, during which Jews build a booth of trellis and greenery, the message read: ‘We are eating as on Yom Kippur, clothed as at Purim, and dwelling as at Sukkot.’61
At Ponar, outside Vilna, the shootings had continued without respite. A Polish journalist, W. Sakowicz, who lived at Ponar, and who was himself killed during the last days of German rule in Vilna, noted in his diary:
1941. July 27, Sunday. Shooting is carried on nearly everyday. Will it go on for ever?
The executioners began selling the clothes of the killed. Other garments are crammed into sacks in a barn at the highway and taken to town.
People say that about five thousand persons have been killed in the course of this month. It is quite possible, for about two hundred to three hundred people are being driven up here nearly every day. And nobody ever returns….
1941. July 30, Friday. About one hundred and fifty persons shot. Most of them were elderly people. The executioners complained of being very tired of their ‘work’, of having aching shoulders from shooting. That is the reason for not finishing the wounded off, so that they are buried half alive.
August 2, Monday. Shooting of big batches has started once again. Today about four thousand people were driven up…. shot by eighty executioners. All drunk. The fence was guarded by a hundred soldiers and policemen.
This time terrible tortures before shooting. Nobody buried the murdered. The people were driven straight into the pit, the corpses were trampled upon. Many a wounded writhed with pain. Nobody finished them off.62
Such executions were now a daily occurrence throughout German-occupied Russia. No town, no village, no hamlet was spared the search for Jews to be driven out of their houses, stripped, driven with guns and whips to the pits, and shot. In the Volhynian village of Misosz a German cameraman recorded the last moments of a group of women and children being led to their execution.63
On August 1, in Kishinev, more than a thousand Jews were shot. That same day, at Ukmerge, ‘254 Jews and 42 Jewesses’ were among those murdered by Lieutenant Hamann’s Einsatzkommando. On August 2, in Kovno, Hamann listed his victims as ‘170 Jewish men, 1 USA Jew, 1 USA Jewish woman, 33 Jewish women, 4 Lithuanian communists’.64 On August 3, from Czernowitz, the local Einsatzgruppe reported the execution of 682 Jews, out of 1,200 arrested. They had been shot, the report added, ‘in collaboration with the Rumanian police’. At Kotin, ‘150 Jews and Communists were liquidated’. At Mitau ‘the 1,550 Jews who still remained’ had been ‘removed’ from the population, ‘without any exception’.65 That same day, at Stanislawow, several hundred Jewish doctors, lawyers and other professionals were rounded up and shot, among them the forty-one-year-old Dr Boleslaw Fell, who had practised in Warsaw before the war; Ernestyna Fach, a graduate of the University of Nantes; and her sister, Dr Klara Fach.66 On August 4, First Lieutenant Hamann’s squad murdered 326 Jews, 41 Jewesses, 5 Russian and 4 Lithuanian Communists at Panevezys. On August 5, at Rasainiai, he noted the murder of ‘213 Jewish men and 66 Jewish women’.67 That same day, in its summary of past executions, the Berlin ‘Situation Report’ noted the killings of 1,726 Jews in Lvov, 128 in Brest-Litovsk, and 941 in Bialystok.68
These random samples, for five consecutive days, show a total of some 7,800 Jews murdered. They do not include several dozen equally terrible episodes elsewhere in the East during those same five days, or the hundreds of Jews shot on each of those five days on the continuing death marches from Bessarabia towards the River Dniester, during which time Jews also died each day in the Bessarabian transit camp at Edineti.69
In Dvinsk, a ghetto had been set up at the end of July in the suburb of Griva. ‘Thousands upon thousands of people,’ Maja Zarch later recalled, ‘with hardly any sanitary facilities, no food; with only one or two taps for water.’ The overcrowding was almost unbearable, its horrors augmented by a summer heat wave. But in the first week of August relief was offered. According to a German announcement, all old and sick Jews would be taken to a less uncomfortable place. ‘Within minutes’, Maja Zarch recalled, ‘there were so many volunteers that queues were being formed. Any place, they thought, could only be better than this.’
A few days later, a similar offer to be resettled elsewhere was made to all parents with small children. Once more, Maja Zarch witnessed the sequel:
This time again, the flood of people who wanted to go was enormous. Even people who did not have children tried to get in. Everyone who wanted to go was taken. In a day or two, strange rumours started to filter through. Someone heard from non-Jews who lived out of town that for a day and a night shooting took place at a certain place where no one was allowed to go. Slowly the picture emerged—there were definitely fresh mass graves! But even then people would not believe it. It cannot happen! How could innocent children be shot? For what purpose?70
13
* * *
‘A crime without a name’
As the Einsatzkommando units advanced, several hundred Jewish communities, mostly those in villages and small towns, were destroyed completely. At the same time, Jews in the larger towns and cities were forced, after the initial killings, into closed ghettos. Each ghetto was ordered to set up a Jewish Council, which received from day to day the German demands, and which was made responsible for the regulation and maintenance of daily life within the ghetto.
To safeguard what could be safeguarded, the Jews needed the best Jewish Councils, and the best Council Chairmen, they could find. In Kovno, on 5 August 1941, no Jewish leader had been willing to accept the position of Chairman: to be the vehicle of German wishes, whims and cruelty. But someone was needed, and Dr Elchanan Elkes, a doctor, and a leading Zionist, who had already declined the position, was appealed to in these words:
The Jewish community of Kovno stands on the brink of destruction. Our daughters are being raped, and our sons executed. Death appears at our windows. Fellow Jews! The German oppressor demands that we appoint an Oberjude, but what we need is a faithful community leader. In this historic hour, the most appropriate candidate among us is Dr Elkes. Therefore, we appeal to you, Dr Elkes: In the eyes of the German criminals you will fill the position of Oberjude, but to us you will be the community leader.
We are aware of the fact that the position demands responsibility and is fraught with dangers nev
er before encountered by Jews. Nevertheless, to stand at the helm of our community is both a great duty and a command of the Almighty Himself in this fateful hour. We shall be with you to the end, until the day of redemption when we leave this ghetto—which is in itself an exile within an exile—and you lead us from slavery to freedom in our Holy Land.
And now, we beg you: Assume, without fear, the position as our leader, for those who perform a holy mission shall meet no evil thanks to the prayers of many. Amen.1
‘If this be the situation,’ Elkes replied, ‘and you think that it is my duty to accept the post, then I shall do.’ Three young lawyers then went up to Elkes and said to him: ‘Dr Elkes, we shall help you in whatever way we can.’ One of those three lawyers, Abraham Golub, later recalled Elkes’s qualities: ‘Never in the Kovno ghetto was a Jew handed over at the request of the Gestapo—such a thing was unheard of.’2 Dr Elkes was also to give active help to Jews in the ghetto who wished to train in the use of arms, to escape to the partisans, and to provide the partisans with equipment.3
Members of the Jewish Councils throughout the newly conquered areas reacted in different ways to the German demands, and threats. In August 1941, in the village of Kamien Koszyrski, the Chairman of the Jewish Council, Shmuel Verble, was ordered to deliver a list of eighty names. He did so, unaware of the purpose of the list. But when, after handing it over, he learned that the Germans intended to kill all those on the list, he went at once to the local German police post and asked to be included. His request was accepted. He was shot last: the eighty-first victim.4
The Jewish Council in Gliniany, headed by Aaron Hochberg, ‘defended our people’, so Salomon Speiser recalled, ‘to the very day when they themselves fell victim to the murderers’.5 In the Volhynian town of Miedzyrzec, the Chairman of the Jewish Council, Abraham Shvetz, committed suicide after the Germans ordered him to deliver a hundred, or according to another version, two hundred and fifty young and healthy Jews, ostensibly for labour in Kiev.6
Following a similar order to deliver a large group of able-bodied Jews for forced labour outside Rowne, Jacob Sucharczuk appealed to his fellow Council members not to submit any lists at all. When he was overruled, he went home and committed suicide. Some time later, when the Chairman of the Jewish Council at Rowne, Dr Bergman, was ordered to deliver a number of Jews for resettlement, he said he would deliver only himself and his family. Shortly afterwards, he too committed suicide.7
German reports make it clear that the Jews were not without resources of their own. ‘Jews continue to display hostile behaviour,’ one Einsatzkommando reported on August 9. ‘They sabotage German orders, especially where they are strong in numbers.’ But the fire power of the Germans was overwhelming: against machine guns, rifles and grenades, unarmed men had no means of successful resistance, or of protecting their women and children. The Einsatzkommando report of August 9 listed 510 Jews killed most recently in Brest-Litovsk and 296 in Bialystok. It added that Ukrainian militia commandos ‘have persons shot if they do not please them, as was done before’.8
As the Einsatzkommando units moved on to new towns and villages, the surviving Jews in the newly established ghettos were subject to the full rigour of segregation. On August 15 Hinrich Lohse, the Reich Commissar for the newly designated Eastern Territories of the Ostland region, covering what had earlier been Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and White Russia, issued a directive ordering all Jews to be registered; to wear two yellow badges, one on the chest, one on the back; not to walk on the pavements, not to use public transport, not to visit parks, playgrounds, theatres, cinemas, libraries or museums; not to own cars or radio sets. All Jewish property outside the designated ghetto area was to be confiscated. The ghetto was to be cut off physically from the rest of the town, its food supplies to be restricted to food that was ‘surplus’ to local needs. All able-bodied Jews were to be subject to forced labour.9
By August 15, the day of Lohse’s directive, the twenty-six thousand surviving Jews of Kovno had been forcibly removed from their homes throughout the city, to a small suburb, Viliampole, in which, henceforth, they were to be confined. Each person was allowed only three square feet of living space. Dr Grinberg later recalled:
Three square feet! But we ignore the lack of space, the dirt, and squalour and try to be content having our wives and children with us. We do not know how we are going to feed ourselves or our family, how we are going to clothe ourselves, how we are going to find warmth. We soon learn, though, to forget the future, to think about the present day only. We become hardhearted, for false illusions will only make us more bitter in the end. Our sole hope was that the most difficult part was now over, and that here in the ghetto we would be able to carry on some sort of existence. Around the ghetto a fence of barbed wire is built. A guard with fixed bayonets is stationed. We are imprisoned!
One now believes that the devil would be satisfied after you have thrown into his greedy throat silver, gold, wedding rings, furs, fabrics, and linen. It is calm one day, and perhaps the crisis has passed. Now that we were poor, they should leave us in peace. But, in keeping with Nazi policy, this was not the case. The new orders are: that our ten cows are to be delivered to the authorities, our children remaining without milk. That all valuables remaining should be delivered voluntarily. This is done, for we want to display our good will, we do not want to provoke the devil—we want to save our lives!10
Another survivor of the Kovno ghetto, Aharon Peretz, has confirmed that the creation of the ghetto was seen at first as a security against further pogroms.11
The daily murder of Jews in hundreds of smaller localities continued, unaffected by the establishment of ghettos in the larger towns and cities. On August 15, the day of confinement and apparent safety for the twenty-six thousand Jews in Kovno, six hundred Jews in Stawiski, near Bialystok, were taken to the nearby woods, and shot.12 Only sixty remained alive, as forced labourers. That same day, at Rokiskis, a two-day massacre began, in which 3,200 Jews were shot: men, women and children, together with ‘5 Lithuanian Communists, 1 Pole, 1 partisan’.13 On the second day of the Rokiskis killings, an official report drawn up in Berlin dwelt upon the attitude of the Catholic Church in Lithuania. Bishop Brisgys, the report stated, ‘has forbidden clergymen to help Jews in any form whatsoever. He rejected several Jewish delegations who, approaching him personally, asked for intervention with the German authorities. He will not admit any Jews at all in future.’14
On August 17, at Khmelnik in the Ukraine, three hundred of the ‘most healthy’ men were assembled. The pretext, Maria Rubinstein later recalled, ‘was that there was a need for workers. All were killed. It was known almost at once, because some people heard shots. My father was among them.’ So Grigory Rubinstein met his death, leaving in the ghetto his wife Polina, and seven sons and daughters, the youngest Dina, only a year old.15
The Einsatzkommando justified their murders by tales of growing Jewish resistance, including the activities of special ‘destruction’ battalions of the Red Army whose task was to carry out sabotage behind the German lines. A ‘great number’ of Jews had been found in these battalions, among them many Jewish women.16 Even outside these battalions, another report stated, ‘the insubordinations of the Jews increases’, so much so that repair work had been stopped on the Kowel—Luck road. At Lida, the local brewery ‘was burnt down by Jews’.17
To prevent any show of Jewish resistance, the Germans resorted to massive reprisals. After a single German policeman had been shot dead in an ambush near Pinsk, the Einsatzkommando unit in the area reported that, ‘as a reprisal, 4,500 Jews were liquidated’.18 Jewish acts of defiance, however hopeless, were continuous. An Einsatzkommando report of August 22 tells of Jews in a town on the line of the German advance towards Kiev, giving ‘fire signals’ to the Red Army ‘even after the town had been occupied by German troops’. In this same town, one Jew had set fire to his house when he learned that it had been requisitioned by the German army, while another ‘managed to tell a Germ
an soldier that a box containing gunpowder that had been found, was harmless and not inflammable. A soldier who joined them smoking a cigarette suffered severe burns.’19
Jewish defiance took many forms. At Kedainiai, on August 28, an Einsatzkommando unit drove more than two thousand Jews, among them 710 men, 767 women and 599 children, into a ditch. Suddenly, a Jewish butcher jumped up, seized one of the German soldiers, dragged him into the ditch, and sank his teeth into the German’s throat with a fatal bite. All two thousand Jews, including the butcher, were then shot.
At nearby Kelme, where the Jews had been forced to dig the ditch in which they were to be shot, the local rabbi, Rabbi Daniel, asked the German commander for permission to speak to his congregation. Permission was granted, on condition that the rabbi would be brief. He spoke softly and unhurriedly, telling his congregation of the significance of the Jewish religious precept of Kiddush Ha-Shem, Hebrew for ‘the sanctification of the Name of God’, a term used in Jewish tradition for martyrdom. After a while, the German officer interrupted. The time had come to finish. ‘Fellow Jews!’ Rabbi Daniel called out. ‘The moment has come when we have to fulfil the precept of sanctification of the Name which I just spoke about. I request only one thing of you: let us not panic; let us accept our fate willingly and lovingly.’ Rabbi Daniel then turned to the German commander with the words: ‘I have finished; you may begin now.’
When news of the destruction of the Jews of Kedainiai and Kelme reached the Jews of Kovno, Rabbi Shapiro of Kovno was asked by his troubled congregation which of the two reactions, that of Rabbi Daniel or that of the butcher, he thought to be more laudable. ‘In my opinion’, he replied, ‘they were equally noble.’ The farewell sermon of Rabbi Daniel ‘was the most fitting form of behaviour for him; on the other hand, the Jew who bit the German’s throat also fulfilled the precept of sanctification of the Name.’ Rabbi Daniel had glorified God’s name by spiritual devotion, the butcher by way of a physical act. ‘I am certain’, Rabbi Shapiro added, ‘that under certain circumstances Rabbi Daniel could also have done the same as the butcher.’20
The Holocaust Page 20
