A- A+

POGROMS OF JEWS IN THE EAST

ENDLÖSUNG—DIRECT EXTERMINATION STAGE

POGROMS OF JEWS IN THE EAST

It seems that very helpful in carrying out of ‘the final solution to the Jewish question‘ in the East was the anti-Semitic attitude of local populations intensified by accusations of the collaboration of some Jews with the communist authorities during the Soviet occupation of these territories. Knowing that, special German police units provoked and organised pogroms, encouraging the local population to participate.

Anti-Jewish incidents started immediately after the German invasion of the USSR. In June and July 1941 pogroms against the Jews occurred in many places in the Bialystok region, in Polesie, Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine. Taking advantage of the opportunities facilitated by the German invader, pogrom perpetrators cruelly mistreated the Jews. They were beaten and humiliated, and then brutally murdered, without regard for the victim’s age or sex. In some places Jews were burnt alive in synagogues or barns. The most brutal anti-Jewish excesses occurred in Kaunas in June and in Lviv in July 1941.

Telegram sent by Reinhard Heydrich on 29 June 1941 to Einsatzgruppen commanders, regarding ‘self-cleansing actions’ and the role they were to play in them:

…No obstacles should be placed on the self-cleansing desires of anti-Communist and anti-Jewish circles in occupied territories. Conversely, they should be fermented, without leaving traces of involvement, intensified if need be, and set on the right track in such a way that the local ‘self-defence circles’ will not be able to refer to any issued order or political promise. … Creating regular self-defence units under central command should initially be avoided; instead it would be advisable to provoke local pogroms in the above presented manner.

Source: Tomasz Szarota, U progu zagłady. Zajścia antyżydowskie i pogromy w okupowanej Europie. Warszawa, Paryż, Amsterdam, Antwerpia, Kowno, Warsaw, 2000, pp. 294–295.

Exercises:

What was the role of the Einsatzgruppen in so-called ‘self-cleansing actions’ in the East?
Why did the Germans avoid creating ‘regular self-defence units’ and keep their role in the provoking and organising of anti-Jewish actions secret?

Excerpt from an order issued by Reinhard Heydrich on 1 July 1941 to Einsatzgruppen commanders regarding the inclusion of Poles in anti-Jewish operations in occupied eastern Poland territories:

Order No. 2:

Poles inhabiting newly occupied Polish territories, on account of their experiences, should in particular have a both anti-Communist and anti-Jewish attitude.

It is therefore obvious that cleansing operations should first and foremost encompass Bolsheviks and Jews. The Polish intelligentsia, etc., may be dealt with later, unless of course in particular cases continued delay needs to be remedied with immediate measures.

It is also obvious that Poles with such attitudes should not initially be [openly] recruited in cleansing operations, especially because they are important as an instigating element (albeit only so far as local conditions permit) both with regard to the pogroms as well as [their roles as] informants.

The tactics I am proposing here naturally extend to all similar situations. …

Source: Andrzej Żbikowski, U genezy Jedwabnego. Żydzi na kresach Północno–Wschodniej II Rzeczypospolitej wrzesień 1939 – lipiec 1941, Warsaw, 2006, p. 169.

Exercises:

Consider why the Germans were convinced that Poles inhabiting eastern territories of the Second Polish Republic would have an anti-Communist and anti-Jewish stance.
How do you assess German tactics with regard to Poles and Jews in Eastern territories?

The account of Elena Kutorgiene–Buivydaite, eyewitness of the Pogrom of Jews in Kaunas, June 1941:

26 June 1941: 2 in the morning, when it was already starting to dawn, I heard an engine. I approached the window. In front of a grey, wooden house opposite my apartment, at No. 13 Kant Street (whose caretaker was one of the first to raise the Nazi flag), a truck had pulled up. Several people got out of it. First they knocked the door open, entered and turned on the hallway light… Next I heard the loud, heart-rending cry of a woman, expressing indescribable horror… It lasted for a few minutes, and then a male voice sounded, he was shouting in the Jewish language, he was pleading, hurriedly repeating some garbled words, always the same… all at once gunshots (three or four), and suddenly all became quiet … A male voice, in Lithuanian said: ‘Don’t shoot until I say’, then came the plaintive cry of children, perhaps two children. Again two gunshots and silence… This means that they had shot four innocent people…

After a while, again I heard some stifled cries, followed by three pistol shots. Within an hour they shot seven or eight people—professionally, fast and methodically. The sound of the gunshots gradually became more and more distant… Now I know what they really mean! The truck engine throbs loudly, but the city is silent, the police do not appear. The Germans allow for such loud cries in the city they have captured, in whose streets no one is allowed to move freely. It is clear that the murderers are acting with the permission and approval of their new masters. … My first reaction was an urge to run out and cry for help. But to whom? Who would come? Who would help?! I write these words so that they may be preserved… I believe that there will be a trial, I believe that this will be avenged and that the murderers will be convicted! Truth will prevail, evil shall be punished…

27 June … Throughout the day the patriotic, sadistic intoxication persists: with the permission and approval of the authorities, Jews are being tormented and murdered… All Lithuanians, with only a few exceptions, unite in their feelings of hatred towards the Jews, and especially the intelligentsia, who under Soviet rule did not go with the flow; because of their nationalist stance, they did not actively collaborate but instead had held on to their position as the Jewish intelligentsia; apart from that they had suffered materially, since the state had taken over their houses and capital. Now revenge is being meted out for endured anguish and humiliation …

Through the day, people with the demeanours of victors and armbands with Lithuanian national colours throng the streets, break into houses, and in broad daylight take out Jewish property, not distaining to take even the most worthless items of junk. It is like an epidemic, and explosion of greed… They are all armed with rifles…

Everywhere you see the national colours, or white armbands with the red cross. The medical service is to collect the bodies of the murdered Russians and Jews. From the laboratory window I was able to see how those ‘sisters’ prepared for the trips: screeching, laughing, vulgar flirting, crude jokes… Only one of the nurses, a simple, uneducated woman, with sadness reported that those executed were Red Army soldiers, and the Jews were being herded to be shot, holding shovels with which they were first to dig their own graves and as they did so they were made to sing ‘If tomorrow brings war…’ [a Red Army song]

…The city looks desolate. …Reports come in of all conceivable humiliations to which the Jews are subjected, they are forced to take out manure with their bare hands. I saw a group of captured Jews being made to carry shovels. In the evening a female patient… told me she had seen in the cemetery how Jews who had dug their own graves were killed with wooden scantlings. …

29 June… A sunny, hot day… The patients told me the that the Jews are being forced to remove waste with their bare hands, dig pits with small shovels and drink from the drains; they must lie down in rows and are then savagely beaten over the head with iron rods or scantlings (this happened in a garage on Vytautas Prospect beyond the cemetery); the killed were thrown onto trucks and driven away somewhere to be buried. All these actions were carried out by the Lithuanians. The Germans did not participate, they only stood by and watched. Some of the Germans took photos. Simple, poor people, peasant, were horrified, they cried for the Jews and sympathised with them…

Source: Tomasz Szarota, U progu zagłady. Zajścia antyżydowskie i pogromy w okupowanej Europie. Warszawa, Paryż, Amsterdam, Antwerpia, Kowno, Warsaw 2000, pp. 304–308.

Exercises:

On the basis of Elena Kutorgiene–Buivydaite’s account, describe the course of the Kaunas pogrom. Describe the behaviours of the Lithuanian inhabitants of Kaunas and the German soldiers, and also consider the roles they played.
Find out more about the reasons and forms of Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian and Ukrainian collaboration with the Germans during the Second World War. Consider why the level of collaboration was so high and assess what influence it had on the realisation of Germany’s anti-Jewish policy in the East.

The site after the execution. Bloody bodies of people lying in the square, behind them German soldiers standing in uniforms and civilians, men and women.

People kneeling and sitting on the ground in a fenced square.

A monument dedicated to the victims of the Jedwabne pogrom. A stone cuboid with an inscription: in memory of the Jews from Jedwabne and the surrounding area, men, women, children, co-owners of this land, murdered and burned alive here on July 10, 1941. Jedwabne July 10, 2001.

Pogrom of Jews in Kaunas

Pogrom of Jews in Lviv

Pogrom of Jews in Jedwabne

The massacre of Jews in Kaunas lasted four days (25/26–29 June 1941). It was inspired by Franz Stahlecker, the commander of Einsatzgruppe A, and carried out by local members and supporters of the Lithuanian Activist Front under the command of Algirdas Klimaitis. As a result, over three thousand Jews were murdered (2,500–3,800). The Kaunas Pogrom was the largest Second World War massacre of Jews with participation of Lithuanians.

Source: Bundesarchiv, B 162 Bild-04128

In the summer of 1941 Lviv became the scene of two pogroms of Jews. The first broke out on 30 June, after German units entered the city. It was associated with an earlier unsuccessful attempt to take over the city by Ukrainian nationalists and the Soviets returning to the city. On 28/29 June, just before their withdrawal from Lviv, the NKVD murdered over 7,000 political prisoners, mostly Poles and Ukrainians. Responsibility for these crimes was attributed to the Jews, so that immediately after the Wehrmacht entered the city, the Germans incited the Ukrainian population to seek revenge against the Jewish inhabitants. Then, after the declaration of Ukrainian independence, the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) distributed leaflets called on the murder of Jews, Poles and Communists, as they considered them to be enemies of the Ukrainian national interest. An enraged crowd cast into prison around 1,000 Jews and tormented them, carried out lynching. Jews were forced to exhume and wash the bodies of prisoners murdered by the Soviets. According to a Polish Union of Armed Struggle (ZWZ) situation report from July 1941, the imprisoned Jews were rushed through two columns of people armed with sticks or rocks in their hands. The pogrom reached its peak on 1 July, when individual German soldiers started joining in. The next day, fearing that the situation might slip out of control, the Germans decided to restore order to the city and started directly supervising the liquidation of the Jews. That same day Einsatzgruppe C stepped into action. It is estimated that by mid-July at least 4,000 Jews had been murdered in Lviv. A day after the first pogrom, on 4 July 1941, the Germans murdered dozens of the city’s Polish university lecturers and academics. The next anti-Jewish pogrom broke out on 25–27 July called by the inhabitants colloquially the ‘Petlura days’. This time the anti-Jewish operation was well-planned and prepared by the German authorities. But appointed to carry it out were Ukrainian nationalists beating robbing and murdering the Jews with German permission. The arresting of Jews was also physically carried out by a Ukrainian militia and fighting squads made of peasants from surrounding villages. During this pogrom around 2,000 Jews were murdered.*

Source: Eliyahu Jones, Żydzi Lwowa w czasie okupacji 1939–1945, Łódź, 1999, Oficyna Bibliofilów, pp. 52–53; Grzegorz Mazur, Jerzy Skwara, Jerzy Węgierski, Kronika 2350 dni wojny i okupacji Lwowa 1 IX 1939 – 5 II 1946, Katowice, 2007, Unia Katowice, pp. 218–219; Grzegorz Motyka: Ukraińska partyzantka 1942–1960, Warsawa, 2006, pp. 95–98.
Source: Lohamei HaGeta’ot (Ghetto Fighters’ House)

A wave of pogroms also swept through the Polesie region witnessing dozen incidents of the local population turning against Jews. The largest pogrom took place in Jedwabne on 10 July 1941. As a result, at least 350 Jews were murdered. A Polish Institute of National Remembrance investigation found that the pogrom was inspired by the Germans assisting also in its execution, but the actual executioners were Poles. According to historians, over twenty people from Jedwabne and surrounding villages were directly involved in the crime. As in the case of other pogroms, these people were agitated and encouraged by the Germans to settle scores with the Jews, collectively accused of collaborating with the Soviets. According to the testimonies of eyewitnesses, on the day of the pogrom a group of German Police and Security Forces functionaries arrived in Jedwabne and ordered the mayor to order all the town’s Jewish residents to assemble in the market square. Large crowd of Poles gathered around three hundred or so victims to observe as their Jewish neighbours were tormented, humiliated and beaten. A dozen or so Jewish men were selected and forced to demolish the town statue of Lenin. They were made to carry the rubble and sing ‘because of us war’, before taking it to the Jewish cemetery for ‘burial’. A procession carrying Lenin’s bust on poles initially walk around the market square several times. When they finally arrived at the Jewish cemetery, all of them were murdered. A few hours later the Polish executioners—perhaps under German instructions—marched all the remaining Jews from the square to a barn on the town outskirts. This barn was next set ablaze. At the same time armed groups combed through the town in search of the hiding Jews. All captured Jews were murdered. Jewish houses and shops were looted. All this happened with the consent and assistance of the German military police. Therefore, what happened in Jedwabne was the mass murder of the town’s Jewish inhabitants committed by Poles. As a result of the massacre, of the over 300 Jewish residents of Jedwabne, where Jews had lived for 400 years, only a handful survived. Only some managed to hide in surrounding fields, while others were saved by their Polish neighbours.

Source: Fotonews, licencja CC-BY-SA-3.0-PL