The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry, 1932-1945
By Leni Yahil
PART III - HOLOCAUST
Chapter 10 - The Final Solution: The First Stage - Einsatzgruppen
(Section 1 of 3)
Preliminary Thoughts
We do not know for sure when Hitler finally made up his mind to
exterminate
the Jews in order to "solve" the Jewish problem. It may be assumed that he
considered such a prospect from the beginning of his political career, as
suggested by many of his utterances and by his well-known comments in Main
Kampf that during World War I thousands of Jews should have been gassed.
But at that time, and for many years thereafter, this aspiration was
certainly no more than a vision for the distant future. Nor do we know of
any statement by Hitler at the time of the conquest of Poland that
indicates he perceived the concentration of the Jews in ghettos as a
preparatory stage for systematic mass extermination, although he and his
henchmen apparently hoped to decimate the Jewish population through poor
and hazardous living conditions. However, as the historian Andreas
Hillgruber has succinctly stated. Hitler thought it both essential and
possible to link up the military campaign against Russia with the
liquidation of the Jews. The directives issued to the heads of the army
and
the SS in March 1941 were probably accompanied by verbal orders to include
the Jewish population in the planned extermination operations. It was
self-evident that the task would be entrusted to Heinrich Himmler's
cohorts. (1) Since the very beginning of the Polish campaign. Himmler had
been in charge of implementing the racist plans, and it was he who
masterminded the exchanges of populations and the de****tations.
The Madagascar Plan
The solution that Himmler envisaged for the Jews in the summer of 1940 was
mass migration overseas. (2) This idea, linked to the so-called Madagascar
Plan, proposed to banish the Jews of Europe to an island off the east
coast
of Africa. Cited in anti-Semitic literature since the 1880s, the scheme to
settle this island in the Indian Ocean with the surplus East European
population had again been aired in the 1920s and 1930s. The possibility
was
broached in 1937 in the context of the Polish government's desire to
reduce
the dimensions of its Jewish problem. It was then discussed in
international forums and was investigated by a special committee, in which
Jews also participated. Eventually, it was concluded that the scheme was
impractical. Later, the Nazis displayed interest in the idea, too, and in
March 1938 Heydrich instructed Eichmann to examine the matter. After the
conquest of France and after the failure of the Lublin Reservation, the
idea was raised again; thus, the German Foreign Ministry and the RSHA
began
to draw up detailed plans. Hitler appeared to favor the scheme and
referred
to it several times in the summer of 1940. (3)
Eichmann dedicated himself to this new-old scheme with his usual diligence
and thoroughness, perceiving it as a desirable solution to the complex
Jewish problem. In August 1940 he submitted a comprehensive fourteen-page
memorandum, describing the island and proposing that four million Jews
from
the Reich and the occupied countries be settled there. They would live in
a
kind of ghetto under the supervision of the Security Police (Sipo).
Western
Jewry would fund the operation "as reparations for the damage caused to
the
Third Reich by the Jews in the economic sphere and as a result of the
Versailles treaty." (4) Government offices continued to toy with the idea
long after Hitler had abandoned it, and it later served as camouflage for
the extermination program. Even after it had been officially shelved and
while the extermination operations were proceeding apace, Hitler continued
to use it as a smokescreen.
Planning and Organization
In May 1940 Himmler was still of the opinion that entire nations should
not
be exterminated. However, he changed his mind by March 1941 when Hitler
propounded his objectives in the planned war against Russia. That same
month, at a meeting with several senior SS officers, Himmler explained
that
the die was cast: they were about to attack Russia. He informed these
officers of the "special tasks" that would be entrusted to the SS units,
the SD, and the police. "Without remorse, cruel war will develop between
nations; in its course, twenty to thirty million Slavs and Jews will
perish
because of war activities and food shortages." (5) Oral directives were
issued by Heydrich to the Einsatzgruppen while they were being trained for
their tasks. (6) It is well known that Hitler apparently did not issue
written orders on the "Final Solution." Heydrich, however, received an
ordinance from Herman Goering on July 31, 1941:
In completion of the task which was entrusted to you in the Edict dated
January 24, 1939, of solving the Jewish question by means of emigration or
evacuation in the most convenient way possible, given the present
conditions. I herewith charge you with making all necessary preparations
with regard to organizational, practical, and financial aspects for an
overall solution [Gesammtloesung] of the Jewish question in the German
sphere of influence in Europe. Insofar as competencies of other central
organizations are affected, these are to be involved. I further charge you
with submitting to me promptly an overall plan of the preliminary
organizational, practical and financial measures for the execution of the
intended final solution [Endloesung] of the Jewish question. (7)
According to Eichmann, it was he who drafted the letter that Heydrich then
submitted to Goering for his signature. (8) As in numerous other National
Socialist procedures, the directive did not launch a completely new
initiative but rather bestowed sanction on an operation that was already
under way and had to be officially implemented by the various government
agencies. The directive refers to an "overall solution" and the final
clause even mentions a "final solution." We may, then, assume that by the
end of July 1941 a clear-cut decision had been taken to exploit the
conquered territories in order to solve the Jewish problem throughout
Europe in the spirit proclaimed by Hitler time and again. Hence, it is
also
reasonable to assume that Heydrich would require the cooperation of other
administrative bodies in the operation, for example, the Foreign Ministry
or the Ministry of Trans****t, and to this end required explicit
authorization. For the first time, we encounter here, in an official
do***ent, the phrase "the final solution of the Jewish question." As we
know, this phrase served to disguise the intention to wipe out the Jewish
population of Europe and, if possible, throughout the world. Not by
chance,
the two aspects emphasized in the directive were totality and finality.
Killing Operations
The millions of Jews with whom the Germans had come into contact in
occupied Poland were now augmented by close to four million more in the
newly occupied territories. They included more than two million in the
Soviet Union, (9) over a quarter of a million in the Baltic states, and a
million in the areas that had formerly belonged to Poland. We have seen
that in Poland the Germans failed to achieve the comprehensive solutions
to
which they had aspired. A large pro****tion of the Jewish community held
fast despite persecution, overcrowding in the ghettos, and malnutrition;
the process of natural mortality was less rapid than the Germans had
hoped.
Now they concluded that they could no longer rely on natural factors, and
therefore had to do the job themselves, particularly since the plans for
reservations in Poland and Madagascar had proved unworkable.
The vast area stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea was divided
into four areas, with one Einsatzgruppe in each. They were known as groups
A, B, C, and D, and each was commanded by an officer from the RSHA; each
group was composed of several commando units, and most of their commanders
were professional SS and Gestapo officers. Each of the Einsatzgruppen was
attached to an army corps and, in accordance with prior agreement, acted
in
collaboration with it. As they advanced almost simultaneously with the
fighting force, the speed of the military progress the first few months
enabled the Einsatzgruppen to work swiftly. (10) The units moved
systematically from place to place, assembling the Jews, conveying them
outside towns and villages, and murdering them beside antitank trenches or
pits dug especially for this purpose. The victims were ordered to strip
and
to stand in groups by the pit where they were shot by automatic weapons,
the dead and dying falling into the mass graves. Sometimes the victims
were
even forced to lie down in the pit in neat lines, head to toe alternately,
and (here they were executed row by row by what the SS called the sardine
method. Finally, the pits were covered with earth. Rivers of blood flowed
and the earth sometimes heaved and trembled for days afterward.
The Order Police (ORPO) look part in the operations under the command of
the Higher SS and Police Leaders (HSSPF) and their local collaborators.
Bui. to the surprise even of the SS, the army cooperated of its own
volition, and in certain areas army units played a very active role in
mass
murder. According to the preliminary planning, the local population was
expected to collaborate. At first this method proved successful, but the
readiness of the local population did not reach the dimensions the Germans
had anticipated. More successful was the activation of local auxiliary
police units under German command. The first wave of murders came to an
end
around the beginning of winter, and it is estimated that by then more than
seven hundred thousand Jews had been murdered in these actions: at least
four hundred thousand of them in Soviet Russia, close to two hundred
thousand in the Baltic states, and the remainder in the areas that had
belonged to Poland before the war. (11)
For propaganda purposes the Germans constantly claimed that the Jews were
the main organizers of the partisan movement and hence must be
exterminated, an argument that was first broached by Hitler at the
planning
session of July 16, 1941. Stalin had just called for partisan activity
behind the enemy lines, and Hitler welcomed this statement as providing
him
with a pretext for German terror in the occupied areas (see chap. 9). In
reality, at this time the partisan movement was tiny and unorganized and
did not constitute a real threat to the German army. The claim that it was
being run by the Jews was certainly baseless. In many cases the mass
murders were described as retaliation for the killing of German soldiers
supposedly carried out by Jews, the ratio being 1:100.
The commanding officer of Einsatzgruppe A. Franz W. Stahlecker, sent a
detailed re****t on January 31, 1942, about activities in the Baltic
countries and White Russia, covering the period from July 23 to October
15,
1941. According to this re****t the overall number murdered was 135,567.
Among them, the known numbers of Jews killed are 80,311 in Lithuania,
30,025 in Latvia, 474 in Estonia, and 7,620 in White Russia; to this
should
be added 5,500 Jews killed in pogroms and 5,502 killed in the Tilsil
(Sovetsk) sector and near the border with East Prussia. There were
undoubtedly also an unknown number of Jews among the 3,387 "communists"
and
748 mental patients mentioned in the re****t. (12)
According to a re****t submitted by Einsatzgruppe B, 45,467 were killed up
to mid-November 1941, within its area of operation, that is. White Russia.
(13) Owing to the slower advance of the army in the south, operations
began
there later According to a re****t dated November 3, 1941, there were
80,000
Jews killed in the Ukraine, a large pro****tion of them (namely 34,000) in
Kiev. The Kiev Operation - the Babi Yar slaughter - was one of the
bloodiest and most notorious of all. The Einsatzgruppen units reached the
city between September 19 and 25, 1941. At this time, Russian sappers set
off two explosions, the second one destroying the German headquarters and
a
large part of the city center, 25,000 people were left homeless. In
retaliation, the German authorities demanded resettlement of the Jews and
called on them to assemble on September 29 for transfer. The 30,000 Jews
who assembled were taken to the forest and slaughtered over the course of
two days. According to the German re****t, "there were no incidents." It
also emphasizes that "thanks to the outstandingly efficient organization."
the Jews believed up to the last moment that they were being taken to
their
new homes. The local population - it is further re****ted - believed the
story and were gratified by it. Only post factum did the truth emerge. The
Germans boasted of having solved the housing problem by evacuating a
suitable number of apartments - that is, by exterminating approximately
35,000 Jews. (14) Before the German occupation, 175,000 Jews had lived in
the city; thus the victims accounted for only part of the Jewish
community,
which had comprised both local residents and refugees. A large percentage
of these Jews had made their escape before the Germans arrived. Most of
the
victims were the old, the sick, and women and children who had been left
behind. (15)
The Soviet evacuation of the Ukraine was more organized and workers,
including Jews, were evacuated with their factories. Thus, for example, a
re****t from Einsatzgruppe D, dated November 19, 1941, states that of the
100,000 Jews in Dnepropetrovsk, 70,000 fled before the Germans arrived; of
those remaining, 1,000 were shot on the spot. (16)
Sometimes, economic considerations were brought up, as witness a re****t
sent on December 2, 1941, by the representative of the Industrial
Armaments
Department of the Supreme Command (OKW) in the Ukraine to General Georg
Thomas, who headed the department. The Jewish population of the Ukraine
was
mainly urban, the re****t explained, and often constituted more than 50
percent of the population of a town. These Jews "carried out almost all
the
work in the skilled trades, and even provided part of the labor for small-
and medium-sized industries." The murder operations in the Ukraine were
vaster in scope than anywhere else in the Soviet Union, but as the re****t
states, "no consideration was given to the interests of the economy." (17)
Marshal Walther von Reichenau, supreme commander of the Sixth Army in the
southern army corps, was one of the high-ranking officers who
wholeheartedly sup****ted National Socialism and Hitler personally. On
October 10, 1941. he issued an order in which he noted that vague concepts
were still rife as to how soldiers were to conduct themselves. "The main
objective of this campaign against the Jewish-Bolshevik system is to
totally destroy the potential for power and lo extirpate Asiatic influence
on European cultural life." He went on to explain that consequently German
soldiers were faced with tasks above and beyond the conventional framework
of conduct of warfare. "The soldier must fully understand the need for
severe but just atonement of the Jewish subhumans." There follows the
customary argument that all partisan activities behind the front were
organized by the Jews, and the soldiers were exhorted to refrain from
treating the partisans as "decent soldiers." Only total cruelty could
guarantee the safety of the army and ensure victory. "Only thus can we
carry out our historic task and once and for all liberate the German
people
from the Jewish-Asiatic danger." (18)
Hitler was enthusiastic about the marshal's directive and ordered that it
be distributed among all the army units; thus it also reached Field
Marshal
Erich von Manstein, the supreme commander of the Eleventh Army, which was
operating in the Crimean Peninsula. At his trial before a British military
tribunal in Hamburg, von Manstein claimed that he had known nothing of the
extermination of Jews, notwithstanding the fact that he personally signed
an order on November 20, 1941, reiterating von Reichenau's statement. (19)
Ghettos and Decrees
Before the occupation, there were some 2.5 million Jews in the Baltic
states and those pans of Russia conquered by the Germans. Between 1
million
and 1.5 million managed to escape, particularly from the original Russian
areas. (20) By the beginning of winter, the Einsatzgruppen had managed to
exterminate only about two-thirds of the remaining Jews. This was partly
because of economic constraints, that is, the need for skilled laborers,
and that the number of people who were engaged in these murderous
activities were insufficient to cover the entire area. It also became
necessary to deal with the Jewish population by concentrating the Jews in
central ghettos and organizing them into forced labor units. The Germans
now applied the lessons learned in occupied Poland. In many places,
particularly the Baltic states, the Jews were rapidly herded into ghettos,
but the intention now was not to keep them there, but to trans****t them
directly to their deaths. Frequently, for example, in Riga, the population
was divided in advance into two ghettos; the inmates of one were earmarked
for immediate extermination, whereas the others were exploited as a labor
force before being sent to their deaths. In Ludmir in the Volhynia
District, a two-section ghetto was set up in April 1942. By that time the
Jews already knew what awaited them, and they referred to the ghetto where
the skilled workers were concentrated as "the ghetto of life" and to the
other that housed "nonproductive" elements - women, children, and the old
and sick - as "the ghetto of the dead." Some of these ghettos existed for
very brief periods: sometimes months, sometimes only a few weeks. (21)
In order to round up the Jews for liquidation purposes, the Germans, in
addition to employing brute force, used various stratagems, explaining
that
the Jews must enter ghettos for their own safety. In places (e.g.,
Lithuania and Latvia) where they had succeeded in inciting the local
population to conduct pogroms, this argument proved particularly
effective.
The Reichskommissar of the Ostland, Hinrich Lohse, soon issued a series of
directives that included most of the known prohibitions. First, the Jews
were ordered to wear the yellow badge; they were forbidden to use public
trans****t, to enter public places, to study in schools, to own radios, and
so on. Their property was confiscated and they were banned from engaging
in
commerce and exploited as forced laborers. Judenrate were established and
ordered to conduct a census. This procedure was followed, with minor
changes, throughout almost all of the occupied areas. (22)
In the Ukraine the army itself dealt with the problem of the ghettos. On
August 28, 1941, an ordinance was issued "on the establishment of
ghettos."
(23) In those places where ghettos had not yet been liquidated, mostly
because of the need for manpower, the Einsatzgruppen together with the
police searched for Jews who had hidden or fled to the forests. They also
apprehended those who were not wearing their yellow badges, a crime
usually
punished by death. All these activities were accompanied by looting,
including millions of rubles (as in Poland) extracted as fines imposed on
the Jewish community.
In Poland the Germans had utilized the experience ac***ulated in
anti-Jewish activities conducted over the years in Germany and Austria,
carrying it to even greater extremes. Now they utilized their Polish
experience in Russia, adding the "final stage" of direct extermination.
This time the task was completed within a few weeks. One of the lessons of
the Polish experience was that population movement (i.e., de****tation)
without a clear-cut objective was no solution. Thus, it was decided that
the Jewish population should be seized on the spot or else incarcerated in
ghettos to prevent their escape - and then liquidated on the spot. Once
the
Jews were no longer mobile, the Einsatzgruppen moved from place to place
engaged in their task of extermination.
The economic and organizational problems were compounded by additional
difficulties. Not infrequently witnesses to the murders were shocked at
the
sights they saw. Moreover, there were indications that the organized
slaughter was beginning to affect the SS perpetrators. Himmler himself,
when present near Minsk at a mass execution, found it hard to stand this
test. In a speech he later delivered to the men who had done the work, he
admitted that he was "repelled by this bloody job," but he emphasized that
he. too, was merely obeying a supreme law and doing his duty. On the same
occasion, Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, who was in charge of the district,
emphasized how shaken the men were. They were "finished," he said, for the
rest of their lives and would become either neurotics or savages. (24)
These experiences indicated that it was essential to find other ways to
carry out the task.
One of the methods chosen to cir***vent the need to involve German
soldiers
in direct acts of killing was the introduction of gas vans (S-Wagen,
S=spezial). A hermetically sealed compartment was mounted on the vehicle
and the exhaust gases of the van were pumped in through rubber pipes. Up
to
sixty people - sometimes more - were jammed into the compartment. The
victims were told that they were being trans****ted to some other location
for resettlement. The entire operation took fifteen minutes. (25) However,
this method did not solve the problem. Numerous hitches occurred and
during
the rainy season it was impossible to use the vehicles on the muddy roads.
Nor was this method any easier from the psychological point of view. The
sight of the contorted corpses was so terrible that SS troops usually
preferred the previous method of killing. However, despite these
reservations, it was apparently decided that the new method had proved
itself effective. A re****t to the officer in charge at the RSHA, dated
June
5, 1942. says, "Since December 1941, for example, 97,000 have been
processed [sic!] in the three vehicles in operation without any
malfunctions in the vehicles." (26)
On the basis of this re****t, ten additional vehicles were ordered and
several technical improvements were introduced in the hope of facilitating
the processing of the cargo (Ladung). About thirty gas vans were
apparently
in use, especially in the southern regions and in Minsk. They represented
the transition to killing by gas in the extermination camps.
Annals of the Jews in the Occupied Russian Territories
The Former Polish Areas
In the areas handed over to the Soviet Union in 1939, the Jews welcomed
the
Russians since they feared the Germans. But they soon realized that their
new rulers did not intend to protect them and improve their condition. All
Jewish community institutions were shut down and the activities of social,
cultural, and political organizations were banned. The private assets of
Jews and non-Jews were confiscated, and their businesses and industrial
concerns were taken over by the state. Hundreds, thousands, and even tens
of thousands of the more than three hundred thousand Jews who had fled
Poland during the occupation were now clustered in a number of towns,
particularly Bialystok and Lwow. Some of these refugees were evacuated
immediately by the Russians to the interior of Russia and to distant
regions. The great majority rejected the alternative held out to them,
namely, to accept Soviet nationality, which would have obliged the younger
men to enlist in the Red Army. They feared being banned in perpetuity from
leaving the Soviet Union and returning to their homes in Poland. In the
summer of 1940, the Russians launched an additional evacuation scheme that
also affected those sections of the indigenous population who, because of
their public or economic status, did not appear suitable to the Communist
regime.
Lwow
Eastern Galicia was densely settled with Jews, more than a million in
number. The district capital, Lwow, had the third largest Jewish community
in Poland after Warsaw and Lodz. Before the war, the Jewish population had
numbered 110,000, one-third of the total population of the city. Under
Russian rule, tens of thousands of Polish and Jewish refugees streamed
into
the city and its population was doubled. Some of the Jews continued their
odyssey or moved to nearby towns. When the Germans occupied the city,
150,000 to 160,000 refugees remained. (27) Just as the Jews had earlier
welcomed the entry of the Russians, the nationalist Ukrainians now eagerly
awaited the Germans, convinced that together with the eastern Ukraine,
they
would now be able to establish an independent Ukrainian government. The
Germans, however, planned otherwise. The leader of the Ukrainian movement,
Stefan Bandera, and several of his associates were arrested, and he was
incarcerated in a concentration camp, from which he emerged only after the
war. The Germans also separated eastern and western Ukraine
administratively by declaring, on August 1, 1941, Eastern Galicia the
fifth
region under the jurisdiction of the governor of the Generalgouvernement,
Hans Frank. Henceforth, the rules and regulations operating in the
Generalgouvernement were applicable to the Jews of Eastern Galicia.
In the period between the German occupation of the region and its
annexation under the command of Dr. Otto Rasch, encouraged the Ukrainians
to give free rein to their disappointment and frustration by conducting
pogroms against the Jews. Charges were leveled against the Jews of having
committed atrocities against Ukrainians during the Russian occupation.
(28)
Of those arrested on this charge, some were executed in prisons and in the
forests outside Lwow; the remainder were taken to prison cells stained
with
Jewish blood and were forced to clean the traces of the murders. Then they
were executed. The pogroms raged throughout July, claiming thousands of
victims. The Ukrainians also rounded up Jews for forced labor - none
returned. The killing was accompanied by looting.
One of the Jewish dignitaries, Rabbi Yeheskel Levin, tried to solicit the
aid of Catholic Metropolitan Andreas Sheptitsky. who did issue a call to
the Ukrainians to refrain from murdering Jews - without noticeable effect.
He also invited the rabbi to take refuge in his residence until quiet was
restored, but Rabbi Levin refused to abandon his flock. On emerging from
the metropolitan's residence, he was seized by rioters and later murdered
in prison. (29)
At this time, the Germans tried to set up a Judenrat composed of the
leaders of the city's Jewish community, but most of the candidates
approached, refused to accept. The Judenrat was eventually appointed on
the
basis of a list of Jewish intellectuals and public figures. The heads of
the Judenrat were replaced in rapid succession, one alone dying a natural
death. The slaughter spread throughout Eastern Galicia. and only in the
southern area, captured initially by the Hungarians, were mass murders
prevented at the outset. (30)
Bialystok
The Germans reached Bialystok on June 26, 1941. Part of the Jewish quarter
was burned down immediately: at least one thousand people died when the
synagogue in which they had been locked was set afire. The pogroms lasted
until mid-July, and another sixty-three hundred people, many of them young
men. lost their lives. Here, too, the Germans utilized the methods that
had
been used at the beginning of the Polish occupation, and hundreds of
intellectuals were among the first victims. On August 1941, the ghetto was
set up and run by the Judenrat, which had been established on the orders
of
the Germans at the end of July. The Judenrat was composed of people who
had
been active in community affairs before the war and who had maintained
their authority despite the abolition of all Jewish institutions by the
Russians. It was headed by Rabbi Gedalia Rosenman. but the dominant figure
was Ephraim Barash. an engineer who had served before the war as secretary
of the Jewish community.
As noted earlier, Bialystok and the surrounding area were annexed to East
Prussia, and the entire district thus came under the rule of
Reichskommissar Erich Koch. As a friend of Martin Bormann, who was by then
the all-powerful figure in Hitler's staff, Koch managed to gain himself
independent standing. Even Alfred Rosenberg, who, in theory, was his
superior, was unable to curb him. (31) Thanks to its annexation to East
Prussia, however, a civil administration was set up in Bialystok. The
German administration - interested in exploiting Jewish labor as well as
Jewish skills in crafts and industry - turned to Lodz in the spring of
1942
to learn from the arrangements made there, just as the Germans in Warsaw
had done before them. Because of the special form of its administration
and
because of the Judenrat activities, in general, and its actual leader
Ephraim Barash, in particular, the Bialystok ghetto survived for a
relatively long period; its liquidation only began in 1943.
>From the outset it was evident that the Judenrat intended to conduct its
work systematically. At its first meeting on August 2, 1941, it
established
thirteen departments, including labor, welfare, health and sanitation,
finance and economics, and supplies and housing. At its next meeting, on
the following day, the functions in the various departments were divided
up
among the Judenrat members, and a fourteenth department, industry, was
established. (32) A week later, people who engaged in a wide range of
trades were asked to register at the Judenrat. (33) Some workshops and
factories were in German hands; others were run by the Judenrat or the
owner****p was private. Most were within the area of the ghetto, but some
people also worked outside.
Initially, the Germans tried to divide the ghetto in two, and Barash did
not delude himself as to their intention. At a Judenrat meeting on
November
8, 1941, he said, "It may be assumed that a program will emerge from this
... the crux of which is to eliminate all those Bialystok Jews who have no
occupations. The danger is great and this is a great catastrophe. We are
trying, on the one hand, to win concessions and on the other - to delay."
According to his *****sment, the number of skilled workers involved was
fifteen hundred together with their families, a total of six thousand. At
that time, there were fifty thousand people in the ghetto, Barash
succeeded
in averting the decree. (34)
The situation in the small towns and villages scattered throughout the
district was worse than in Bialystok itself, and many people sought
shelter
in the town. The refugee problem was of great concern to the Judenrat
because it was necessary to find housing, to supply food, and to integrate
the refugees into the life of the ghetto. In September and October 1941,
the Germans demanded the evacuation of the surplus population from
Bialystok in order to assemble them in the small town of Pruzany near the
border of what was then the eastern Ukraine. From there it was convenient
for the Germans to trans****t them over the border for extermination. The
Judenrat aware of this fact and ordered to prepare lists as a basis for
the
evacuation, decided not to include in these lists skilled workers of any
kind, members of the Judenrat and Judenrat clerks, Jewish police
personnel,
and firemen. The Judenrat has been charged with "basing the lists on the
criterion of rescuing the intelligentsia, the middle class, the privileged
and those with influence or money." (35) Most of those evacuated in
September/October were from the poorer class or refugees. In the past
4,000
Jews had lived at Pruzany; now the number swelled to 12,000 from thirty
towns and villages in the district, apart from Bialystok. They were
crammed
into a ghetto set up while the de****tation was in progress. The Judenrat
considered itself responsible for the evacuees and announced that it was
necessary to make provisions for the 1,000 families from Bialystok who
were
in need of heating, food, building materials, beds, and clothing. The
outlay was estimated at RM 370,000. Barash summed up the concessions he
had
won from the Germans: instead of 55 pounds of gold, only 13 pounds had
been
handed over; instead of 5 million roubles, only 2.5 million had been paid;
instead of being located in a poor quarter, the ghetto had been set up in
a
better area. The demand for 10 million additional roubles had been
withdrawn. No more than 4,500 people had been evacuated to Pruzany instead
of the 13,000 the Germans had demanded. The order to submit a list of
intellectuals had been rescinded. (36) The Judenrat later succeeded in
bringing some of the evacuees back to Bialystok.
Barash believed that the key to the survival of the ghetto was stepping up
production. On March 1, 1942, he said, "As you know, the focus of our
activity, which may be our salvation, is the rapidly developing industry."
(37) It was re****ted at the same meeting that about eighteen hundred
workers were employed in ghetto industry. There were saddle-making,
tailoring, and glass-poli****ng workshops as well as shoemakers and the
knitwear industry. At the end of March 1942 an exhibition of products was
held outside the ghetto and five hundred items were placed on show "which
make a stunning impression, like in prewar times." It was described as "a
rich and variegated display of human artifacts and military items,
displayed and laid out with delicate artistic taste." Responding to the
criticism voiced in the ghetto, Barash said, "I would like to declare that
we have one sole objective: to preserve ourselves until the war is over"
and he cited the methods he was employing to this end:
a. 100 percent compliance with orders;
b. proving useful - this will provide those who champion us [reference is
to the Germans] with material that can be used to our advantage;
c. conduct that will satisfy the German authorities in the manner in which
Jews behave in their Dias****a lives (38)
On June 29, 1942, at a small-scale celebration held to mark the
anniversary
of the founding of the Judenrat, Barash said, "There is nobody who could
describe what has happened to us, what we survived during these past 365
days - no artist, no writer, no painter. We can scarcely believe it
ourselves, and I think nobody will believe it in the future .. it is lucky
that we cannot foresee the future, for if we could, we would not have
lived
and reached the present stage."
He went on speaking of the achievements and im****tance of industry and did
not forget to mention other spheres of activity: an educational network,
vocational schools, social welfare and hospitals "of a scope severalfold
that of similar institutions before the war," and concern for improving
nutrition by planting vegetable plots. Finally, he defined the situation
of
the Judenrat:
After all, we are hostages, held responsible for everything that happens
in
the ghetto. And you have seen what that means in other cities. The
devotion, heart and soul, cannot be described in words. If we survive,
whole books will have to be written about it..
And he concluded:
In truth, there is no place for optimism in the ghetto, but when I
consider
the road along which we have come, and our burdens, then I am sure that we
will take the Bialystok ghetto through to a happy end. (39)
The Bialystok ghetto was not sealed as hermetically as that of Lodz. More
significant, perhaps, is the fact that by the summer of 1941, the dangers
facing the Jews were clearer than they had been in Lodz in 1939. The
systematic extermination activities of the Germans in the Soviet regions
in
1941/1942 were known in Bialystok. We have seen that Barash specified
three
rules for conduct. At the time he spoke, in late June 1942, he had
apparently not yet grasped that the implications of his first rule (i.e.,
full compliance with German orders) would be so drastic. The second rule
(i.e., the need to remain useful) was based on the belief that the local
German administration would decide the fate of the ghetto Jews and that
they had an interest in Jewish labor, hence, they would "champion" the
Jews. This belief, rather hope, was erroneous. Barash saw no alternative
but to live from one day to the next and to attempt to mitigate the
harshness of the decrees.
Volhynia District: The First Stage
The Volhynia District was annexed to the Ukrainian District, and
Generalkommissar Erich Koch chose the capital, Rovno. as his headquarters.
The greater part of the town's mixed population were Ukrainians; the
remainder were Russians, Jews, Czechs, and Poles. In 1939 the number of
Jews was estimated at 28,000. The town first tasted war when it was bombed
by the Germans on September 14, 1939, but three days later the Red Army
entered. The Russians ruled with a heavy hand, and all those they
considered of suspicious appearance or dubious occupation were arrested.
These included Jewish activists, particularly Zionists and Bundists. many
of whom were immediately de****ted to Siberia. Store owners were de****ted
from Rovno or forced to open their shops, and they hastened to sell off
their stocks without having any op****tunity to replenish them or to use
their money. People were mobilized for various forced labor tasks,
including building a new road. The work regime was most arduous and any
absenteeism or tardiness was punished by lengthy imprisonment. Trials were
frequently rigged with the help of false witnesses who accused the
defendants of plotting against the regime. The wages the authorities fixed
did not suffice even for subsistence.
[END OF SECTION 1/3 OF CHAPTER 10]
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