German invaders and Soviet Jews
According to the leadership of the Third Reich, the country was supposed to become racially clean. It should not have been “subhumans” - Jews, Slavs, “Gypsies”, etc. Therefore, the Jewish problem has become one of the important areas of work of punitive structures of the Reich. Initially, Jews were forced out of the country, forcing them to emigrate. To do this, various restrictive laws were introduced: Jews were deprived of German citizenship, the right to marry people of German origin, voting rights, service rights in state bodies (like other representatives of racially alien peoples), they were subject to high taxes, expropriated property. But this method could not completely solve the problem. Other countries tried to accept immigrants only if they had a certain capital.
After the outbreak of World War II, Jewish migration channels were blocked. In addition, soon most of Europe was under the control of Berlin. The Department of the Secret State Police (Gestapo), which was responsible for the Jewish question, made plans for the mass eviction of Jews from Europe. Previously, they decided to isolate the Jews in a ghetto on Polish territory, where they were brought from all over the empire. After the start of the war with the Soviet Union, this experience was extended to Soviet territory.
It should be noted that initially the military-political elite of the Reich did not plan the destruction of an entire people. The scale of the extermination of the Jews should not exceed the size of the liquidation of the population of other "subhumans". In the spring of 1941, on the eve of the attack on the USSR, Jews were equated with partisans, “communist instigators” and saboteurs. As a result, the Wehrmacht soldiers received the right to destroy them. At about the same time, the head of the General Directorate of Imperial Security (RSHA), Reinhard Heydrich, gave the command of the Einsatzgroup an oral order to exterminate all Jews, including those in the Communist Party. 2 July Heydrich softened the instruction - not all Jews were subject to extermination, but only party members engaged in civil service and radical elements (saboteurs, saboteurs, propagandists, etc.).
As a result, when the war began in the East, the killing of Jews became a favorite entertainment for the advancing German troops, as was the destruction of captured Soviet soldiers, violence against women. Pogroms, the destruction of synagogues, the killing of children, women, old people, adults, and bullying of them were commonplace in the Wehrmacht offensive.
The next wave of terror brought with them the Einsatz command of the SD. Their motive was not hatred, not a thirst for entertainment or profit, they did "work." Their actions against the Jews were fairly well regulated: only members of the Communist Party and “radical elements” were subject to liquidation. But in reality, the main principle underlying their activity is the ability to destroy anyone who seems suspicious, made any restriction a formality. Shot in batches of tens, hundreds of people. Executions have become commonplace. It must be said that they also shot Russians (including Little Russians and Belarusians), sought out and killed “loyal” to the Soviet authorities. From the SD readings, it is clear that at first the punishers shot the Jews more, but then the relationship between the Jews and representatives of other nationalities leveled off.
After the first wave of terror subsided, the process of “isolating” Soviet Jews began. People were driven into the ghetto. Those who were caught outside were immediately destroyed. Naturally, the process itself was accompanied by massive robbery and violence. Ghettos were created in large and medium cities. They represented fenced with barbed wire urban neighborhoods with double security: the German “order service” (internal security) created by the Germans and the local police (external). For the management of the ghetto, self-government bodies were established — Judenrates. The Jewish Council was responsible for the behavior of the Jews, their registration, accounting, resettlement, collection of contributions and other issues. For Jews, compulsory labor service was introduced, which covered people of both sexes at the age of 14-60. Among the Jews stood out "useful" - members of the "service of order", councils, workers, etc.
During this period, there was no talk about the total extermination of Jews. The Third Reich needed working hands. The question is that the Jews, like the Slavs, were recorded in the category of "subhumans", so it was considered useful to reduce their number. An interesting fact is that during this period the German command was not shy about destroying Soviet prisoners of war by thousands and hundreds of thousands, but preferred to entrust the cause of extermination of Jews to local Nazis. German intelligence services had old and well-established contacts with various kinds of anti-Soviet nationalist underground. The Nazis took into account perfectly well the fact that national separatists are completely controllable and hate “liquid Bolsheviks” (that is, Jews and Russians). 29 June 1941 of the year Heydrich, in one of the orders, gave instructions to quietly strengthen and guide the local anti-communist and anti-Jewish circles. It attached more importance to the fact that the population resorted to the most cruel measures against the Bolsheviks and Jews "independently."
Large-scale pogroms took in the Baltic States. As soon as the Nazi troops entered the territory of the Baltic republics, pogroms began there. Most of the people killed at the same time were killed not by the Germans, but by the local Nazis, who showed exceptional cruelty, sparing neither the elderly, nor women, nor children. Over one night on June 26, more than 1,5 thousand people were killed in Kaunas. After a few days, the number of Jews killed reached 4 thousand. In Riga, by the beginning of July, many synagogues were destroyed and 400 Jews were killed. According to the BD, there were difficulties in the extermination of Jews in Latvian territory at first. Thanks to the competent actions of the NKVD, before the war, they were able to deport a portion of local nationalists from Latvia. This created difficulties for the invaders to liquidate the Jews. True, the hitch was short. On July 4, members of the Latvian nationalist organization Perkonkrust (Thunder Cross) burned down Jews in a choral synagogue in Riga at 500. On the same day, the nationalists burned down and destroyed 20 synagogues and prayer houses.
In early July, 1941 was created by the Latvian Auxiliary Police Unit, Viktor Arajs. Sonderkomanda Araisa directly subordinated to the German SD in the Reichskommissariat Ostland and was engaged in the destruction of "subhumans - Jews, Russians, Gypsies, as well as the mentally ill. A detachment of up to 300 people destroyed thousands of people in the territory of Latvia to 26. In the summer and autumn of 1941, the members of the Sonja team of Arajs regularly traveled to the province to “hunt” on special buses painted in blue. They caught and killed Jews and communists, Gypsies. Only in Vilani on August 4, they destroyed about 400 Jews. The brutality of their actions was amazing even against the background of the atrocities of the Nazis. Jews were slaughtered to death with death, burned alive in synagogues, drowned, brutally killed in dwellings. Women were raped, abused, did not spare anyone, including young children.
Auxiliary police units from the Baltic nationalists took an active part not only in black deeds on the territory of the Baltic states, but also on the lands of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. At the end of October, the 12 Lithuanian police battalion arrived from Kaunas to the Belarusian Slutsk. His commander said that he had an order to “solve the Jewish question” in the city within two days. The objection of the German commandant about the speed of the operation, the need of a part of the Jews for production, the inexpediency of organizing a slaughter in front of the citizens, was ignored. According to the German commandant, the actions of the Lithuanian punishers “bordered on sadism.” A bloody massacre began in the city, mountains appeared on some streets from corpses, before killing people were severely beaten with “improvised means”, neither women nor children were spared. Along the way, there was a plunder of the population, and Russians and Belarusians suffered. Punishers broke into houses and enterprises where Jews lived and worked. People were beaten, killed, those who were not killed immediately were taken to the forest and shot. The German commandant was even forced to protect the property of the Reich from the dispersed punishers.
These actions allowed Berlin to draw several conclusions. The struggle against Jewry and communism made it possible to mobilize local nationalists, making them an instrument in the hands of the Reich. From nationalists, you can create auxiliary punitive units, very useful parts for the black work in the occupied territories. They know local conditions better, they act without sentiment. Local Nazis easily go to the action on the mass destruction of "subhumans", which relieves Germany of the blame for these actions. The creation of auxiliary units allows the release of part of the German troops for the front.
At the same time, Hitler's propagandists are stepping up the trend towards a radical solution to the "Jewish question." Jews are almost the main target of Nazi propaganda. The Nazis tried to split the Soviet people, to generate hatred for the "liquid-Bolshevik" Moscow. The occupied territory was flooded with leaflets, brochures, and anti-Jewish newspapers. Their essence was quite simple, it can be understood from these words: “Only a Jew can be a Bolshevik; For these bloodsuckers, there is nothing better if there is no one to stop them. Wherever you spit, there are only Jews around, in the city, in the village ... Even the smallest bloodsuckers had positions with great privileges. They lived in the best houses ... Real workers lived in small houses or barracks for livestock ... ”
Actions to eliminate the Jews were supposed to make propaganda against the “Zhidobolshevik” more relevant. Einsatzkommandy gradually began to move to the extermination of all Jews. In August, a punitive division entered into Belaya Tserkov '(Ukraine) - the Sonderkommando 4 of Paul Blombel. Their target was the Jews. If in July only men were shot, in August Jews were killed from 14 years and above. All Jews were driven into the camp yard, stripped naked and driven to the den, where they were kneeled down and shot. According to the memories of local residents: "There was a heart-rending cry and cry." After the adults were killed, after some thought, they decided to kill the children of 7-14 years. Only very small ones remained, they were locked away without food and water in a house on the outskirts. There was a question what to do with them. The command confirmed the order for their destruction. But even the butchers of the sondercommand refused to do this. Then they decided to entrust the "case" of the Ukrainian auxiliary police. The kids were shot in the woods.
The leadership of the Reich is gradually inclined to the decision on the total extermination of Jews in the occupied territories. According to the head of the "Jewish department" of the Gestapo Adolf Eichmann, his chief Heydrich told him that Hitler "ordered to physically destroy the Jews." Eichmann did not even immediately understand the essence of the matter, more recently his department was thinking about where to evict the Jews (there were even plans to deport them to Madagascar). Eichmann was sent to the East to see with his own eyes how the process is going. A senior Gestapo man who dealt with the problem of deportation and isolation of Jews, was so shocked when he saw the process of mass execution in Minsk that he felt bad: “The pit was full of corpses. She was full! ... It's terrible, what's going on there ... How can you just shoot at a woman and children like that? How is this possible? ... After all, it is impossible to do so ... People will either go insane, or become sadists, our own people. ”
European Jews were still going to be evicted from Europe. Only Soviet Jews were going to exterminate the polls. The action in Belaya Tserkov was a trial, the wholesale liquidation of Jews began everywhere. Neither the old men, nor women, nor children were spared, and the mixed families were also destroyed. September 19 fell Kiev, ten days later announcements appeared all over the city, in which Jews were ordered 29 September 1941 of the year to 8 in the morning to appear at the corner of Melnikovskaya and Dokhturovskaya with documents, money, valuables and warm clothes. People felt that they were waiting for eviction. Many were accompanied by Russian and Ukrainian relatives, friends, neighbors, since many families were mixed. Anti-tank and wire barriers with a passage guarded by the Germans and Ukrainian police blocked the street at the gathering place. Jews were allowed in groups on the other side, waiting, then letting new ones. When passing through the gate, documents, valuables, were taken from them, stripped. Only then people began to realize that they were not waiting for eviction, but something terrible. They heard shooting and screaming. People were led to a huge ravine - Babi Yar, and shot. People were killed until late in the evening, only on that day 33771 people were shot. The executions continued the next day, and later, a week later, a year. They killed not only Jews, but also communists, prisoners of war, Russians, Ukrainians, Gypsies. When the Soviet troops began to liberate Ukraine, the Nazis tried to destroy the traces of their crimes. The bodies began to burn. After the liberation of Kiev, Babiy Yar found a half-meter layer of ash and bones. The number of people killed there is unknown. Only some Jews number up to 150 thousand people.
October 16 Soviet troops were evacuated from Odessa. Romanians and Germans entered the city, universal arrests of Jews and mixed families began. The detainees were imprisoned in a powder magazine in the Strelbischensky field and October 23 began to burn. At the same time there were mass executions.
7 November 1941, on the anniversary of the October Revolution, SS formations and auxiliary police (including the Baltic) staged a pogrom in the Minsk ghetto. This ghetto was one of the largest in the occupied territory, second only in size to the Lviv ghetto. On the territory of the Minsk ghetto were more than 100 thousand people. Approximately 15 thousand people were driven to the area of Tuchinka and shot. The slaughter continued for several days.
In the brutal killings of the Jews, not only were units of the SD, SS, auxiliary police, but also units of the Wehrmacht "distinguished themselves." A wave of bloody murders swept through the Crimea after Erich von Manstein's 11 Army entered. According to the German commander: “It is impossible to wage war in the East in ordinary forms. ... The Jew is the mediator between the enemy in our rear and the Red Army ... the Jewish-Bolshevik system in the USSR must be destroyed forever. ... Every soldier must be imbued with the need to ruthlessly revenge the Jews. " Only in Kerch more than 7 thousand Jews were exterminated. Most of those killed were old men, women, teenagers, children (men fought, worked in evacuated enterprises).
Wehrmacht soldiers staged another bloody massacre in Rostov-on-Don. November 21st tank an army under the command of Colonel General Ewald von Kleist broke into the city. After a short time, the Red Army was able to recapture the city and discovered traces of Hitler's crimes. People were killed only because they were Jews. Searched in houses, in cellars. They killed women, the elderly, children. “Before being shot, they scoffed at many, beaten, knocked out their teeth, killed many of them with rifle butts, crushing their heads. Pieces of skulls of these people were lying right on the street ... ”
According to some estimates, in just six months of occupation, approximately 1,2 million Soviet Jews were killed. Moreover, not only adults, but adolescents, small children. The final decision of the Jewish question for Berlin was a direct consequence of the war of extermination against the USSR. In the East, it was possible to do what was impossible in Western Europe. At first, the Jews were destroyed as communists, “commissars”, civil servants, a “subversive element”, then as Soviet Jews (in the West, this system was not introduced yet) and only from the beginning of 1942, it was officially decided that you can kill only because Jew.
Mass execution on the seashore in Skедde, Libava (Lithuania), 15. 12. 1941. Jewish women are standing at the edge of the grave, just before the execution. In the execution, the Latvian platoon of the SD guard, the SS police department and its local police officer D. Dietrich and the Latvian battalion 21 police took part. On this day, 2350 Jews were killed.
application
Act, Stavyshche market town in the Kiev region, January 14 1944
“Two weeks after the seizure of the town, the Germans drove all the Jewish men - an 60 man - supposedly to work. They were taken to the Revukuh tract two kilometers away, forced to dig holes, and all were shot. After some time, they drove all the women with children — Jews — ostensibly for evacuation and were shot at the same place. They brought a man to the pit on 4 and shot him with a pistol. The babies were thrown alive into the pit. ”
The atrocities of the Nazi invaders 22 March 1944
“30 July 1941, the Germans occupied the city of Golovanevsk, Odessa region. Began a savage reprisal against the Jewish population. Around 100, Jews were shot on the spot, right in the city. Then a 800 man was gathered, taken by car under guard, taken to a forest a kilometer from the city, and all were shot. Among them were a lot of women and children. 12-15 girls were raped by Germans before being shot. On the outskirts of the city, the Germans took away from their mothers and threw small children alive into a well, which was filled almost to the top and was covered with earth. ”
Report of the Political Department of the 5 Guards Tank Army
“We, the residents of Dmitrovka (9 surnames), Bogodukhov district, Kharkiv region, testify that during the occupation of the village in 1941, the Germans gathered all Jewish population from neighboring villages during 3-4 days, drove it into a shed in a kolkhoz yard, they were beaten, mocked, every day they were taken to heavy road works, and a few days later everyone was shot, including small children. The girls were raped by groups of soldiers. There was a wild cry and cry. All were shot at least forty Jews.
The act of mass extermination of citizens of Mstislavl, 4 October 1943
In early October, 1941, all Jews were ordered to the market square on the orders of the chief of the punitive detachment. Men were separated from women. At first, 30 old men were taken, they were taken by car to Leschinsky ditch and shot there. From the Jewish women, the Nazis took away the young, drove out their district mages, there they stripped naked, raped, tortured, then shot. October 15 all the remaining Jews gathered in the yard pedagogical school. They read the sentence. After that, they took them outside, built 10 people in a row and drove to the Kogalny ditch, where at night the local population ordered pits to be dug by the Germans. First selected 50 men. They were ordered to deepen the pit, and then shot. After that, Jews were led to the pits by 10 and shot. First all men were killed, then women with adult children. Small children were thrown into the pits alive. Many were stunned by blows to the head. ”
After the outbreak of World War II, Jewish migration channels were blocked. In addition, soon most of Europe was under the control of Berlin. The Department of the Secret State Police (Gestapo), which was responsible for the Jewish question, made plans for the mass eviction of Jews from Europe. Previously, they decided to isolate the Jews in a ghetto on Polish territory, where they were brought from all over the empire. After the start of the war with the Soviet Union, this experience was extended to Soviet territory.
It should be noted that initially the military-political elite of the Reich did not plan the destruction of an entire people. The scale of the extermination of the Jews should not exceed the size of the liquidation of the population of other "subhumans". In the spring of 1941, on the eve of the attack on the USSR, Jews were equated with partisans, “communist instigators” and saboteurs. As a result, the Wehrmacht soldiers received the right to destroy them. At about the same time, the head of the General Directorate of Imperial Security (RSHA), Reinhard Heydrich, gave the command of the Einsatzgroup an oral order to exterminate all Jews, including those in the Communist Party. 2 July Heydrich softened the instruction - not all Jews were subject to extermination, but only party members engaged in civil service and radical elements (saboteurs, saboteurs, propagandists, etc.).
As a result, when the war began in the East, the killing of Jews became a favorite entertainment for the advancing German troops, as was the destruction of captured Soviet soldiers, violence against women. Pogroms, the destruction of synagogues, the killing of children, women, old people, adults, and bullying of them were commonplace in the Wehrmacht offensive.
The next wave of terror brought with them the Einsatz command of the SD. Their motive was not hatred, not a thirst for entertainment or profit, they did "work." Their actions against the Jews were fairly well regulated: only members of the Communist Party and “radical elements” were subject to liquidation. But in reality, the main principle underlying their activity is the ability to destroy anyone who seems suspicious, made any restriction a formality. Shot in batches of tens, hundreds of people. Executions have become commonplace. It must be said that they also shot Russians (including Little Russians and Belarusians), sought out and killed “loyal” to the Soviet authorities. From the SD readings, it is clear that at first the punishers shot the Jews more, but then the relationship between the Jews and representatives of other nationalities leveled off.
After the first wave of terror subsided, the process of “isolating” Soviet Jews began. People were driven into the ghetto. Those who were caught outside were immediately destroyed. Naturally, the process itself was accompanied by massive robbery and violence. Ghettos were created in large and medium cities. They represented fenced with barbed wire urban neighborhoods with double security: the German “order service” (internal security) created by the Germans and the local police (external). For the management of the ghetto, self-government bodies were established — Judenrates. The Jewish Council was responsible for the behavior of the Jews, their registration, accounting, resettlement, collection of contributions and other issues. For Jews, compulsory labor service was introduced, which covered people of both sexes at the age of 14-60. Among the Jews stood out "useful" - members of the "service of order", councils, workers, etc.
During this period, there was no talk about the total extermination of Jews. The Third Reich needed working hands. The question is that the Jews, like the Slavs, were recorded in the category of "subhumans", so it was considered useful to reduce their number. An interesting fact is that during this period the German command was not shy about destroying Soviet prisoners of war by thousands and hundreds of thousands, but preferred to entrust the cause of extermination of Jews to local Nazis. German intelligence services had old and well-established contacts with various kinds of anti-Soviet nationalist underground. The Nazis took into account perfectly well the fact that national separatists are completely controllable and hate “liquid Bolsheviks” (that is, Jews and Russians). 29 June 1941 of the year Heydrich, in one of the orders, gave instructions to quietly strengthen and guide the local anti-communist and anti-Jewish circles. It attached more importance to the fact that the population resorted to the most cruel measures against the Bolsheviks and Jews "independently."
Large-scale pogroms took in the Baltic States. As soon as the Nazi troops entered the territory of the Baltic republics, pogroms began there. Most of the people killed at the same time were killed not by the Germans, but by the local Nazis, who showed exceptional cruelty, sparing neither the elderly, nor women, nor children. Over one night on June 26, more than 1,5 thousand people were killed in Kaunas. After a few days, the number of Jews killed reached 4 thousand. In Riga, by the beginning of July, many synagogues were destroyed and 400 Jews were killed. According to the BD, there were difficulties in the extermination of Jews in Latvian territory at first. Thanks to the competent actions of the NKVD, before the war, they were able to deport a portion of local nationalists from Latvia. This created difficulties for the invaders to liquidate the Jews. True, the hitch was short. On July 4, members of the Latvian nationalist organization Perkonkrust (Thunder Cross) burned down Jews in a choral synagogue in Riga at 500. On the same day, the nationalists burned down and destroyed 20 synagogues and prayer houses.
In early July, 1941 was created by the Latvian Auxiliary Police Unit, Viktor Arajs. Sonderkomanda Araisa directly subordinated to the German SD in the Reichskommissariat Ostland and was engaged in the destruction of "subhumans - Jews, Russians, Gypsies, as well as the mentally ill. A detachment of up to 300 people destroyed thousands of people in the territory of Latvia to 26. In the summer and autumn of 1941, the members of the Sonja team of Arajs regularly traveled to the province to “hunt” on special buses painted in blue. They caught and killed Jews and communists, Gypsies. Only in Vilani on August 4, they destroyed about 400 Jews. The brutality of their actions was amazing even against the background of the atrocities of the Nazis. Jews were slaughtered to death with death, burned alive in synagogues, drowned, brutally killed in dwellings. Women were raped, abused, did not spare anyone, including young children.
Auxiliary police units from the Baltic nationalists took an active part not only in black deeds on the territory of the Baltic states, but also on the lands of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. At the end of October, the 12 Lithuanian police battalion arrived from Kaunas to the Belarusian Slutsk. His commander said that he had an order to “solve the Jewish question” in the city within two days. The objection of the German commandant about the speed of the operation, the need of a part of the Jews for production, the inexpediency of organizing a slaughter in front of the citizens, was ignored. According to the German commandant, the actions of the Lithuanian punishers “bordered on sadism.” A bloody massacre began in the city, mountains appeared on some streets from corpses, before killing people were severely beaten with “improvised means”, neither women nor children were spared. Along the way, there was a plunder of the population, and Russians and Belarusians suffered. Punishers broke into houses and enterprises where Jews lived and worked. People were beaten, killed, those who were not killed immediately were taken to the forest and shot. The German commandant was even forced to protect the property of the Reich from the dispersed punishers.
These actions allowed Berlin to draw several conclusions. The struggle against Jewry and communism made it possible to mobilize local nationalists, making them an instrument in the hands of the Reich. From nationalists, you can create auxiliary punitive units, very useful parts for the black work in the occupied territories. They know local conditions better, they act without sentiment. Local Nazis easily go to the action on the mass destruction of "subhumans", which relieves Germany of the blame for these actions. The creation of auxiliary units allows the release of part of the German troops for the front.
At the same time, Hitler's propagandists are stepping up the trend towards a radical solution to the "Jewish question." Jews are almost the main target of Nazi propaganda. The Nazis tried to split the Soviet people, to generate hatred for the "liquid-Bolshevik" Moscow. The occupied territory was flooded with leaflets, brochures, and anti-Jewish newspapers. Their essence was quite simple, it can be understood from these words: “Only a Jew can be a Bolshevik; For these bloodsuckers, there is nothing better if there is no one to stop them. Wherever you spit, there are only Jews around, in the city, in the village ... Even the smallest bloodsuckers had positions with great privileges. They lived in the best houses ... Real workers lived in small houses or barracks for livestock ... ”
Actions to eliminate the Jews were supposed to make propaganda against the “Zhidobolshevik” more relevant. Einsatzkommandy gradually began to move to the extermination of all Jews. In August, a punitive division entered into Belaya Tserkov '(Ukraine) - the Sonderkommando 4 of Paul Blombel. Their target was the Jews. If in July only men were shot, in August Jews were killed from 14 years and above. All Jews were driven into the camp yard, stripped naked and driven to the den, where they were kneeled down and shot. According to the memories of local residents: "There was a heart-rending cry and cry." After the adults were killed, after some thought, they decided to kill the children of 7-14 years. Only very small ones remained, they were locked away without food and water in a house on the outskirts. There was a question what to do with them. The command confirmed the order for their destruction. But even the butchers of the sondercommand refused to do this. Then they decided to entrust the "case" of the Ukrainian auxiliary police. The kids were shot in the woods.
The leadership of the Reich is gradually inclined to the decision on the total extermination of Jews in the occupied territories. According to the head of the "Jewish department" of the Gestapo Adolf Eichmann, his chief Heydrich told him that Hitler "ordered to physically destroy the Jews." Eichmann did not even immediately understand the essence of the matter, more recently his department was thinking about where to evict the Jews (there were even plans to deport them to Madagascar). Eichmann was sent to the East to see with his own eyes how the process is going. A senior Gestapo man who dealt with the problem of deportation and isolation of Jews, was so shocked when he saw the process of mass execution in Minsk that he felt bad: “The pit was full of corpses. She was full! ... It's terrible, what's going on there ... How can you just shoot at a woman and children like that? How is this possible? ... After all, it is impossible to do so ... People will either go insane, or become sadists, our own people. ”
European Jews were still going to be evicted from Europe. Only Soviet Jews were going to exterminate the polls. The action in Belaya Tserkov was a trial, the wholesale liquidation of Jews began everywhere. Neither the old men, nor women, nor children were spared, and the mixed families were also destroyed. September 19 fell Kiev, ten days later announcements appeared all over the city, in which Jews were ordered 29 September 1941 of the year to 8 in the morning to appear at the corner of Melnikovskaya and Dokhturovskaya with documents, money, valuables and warm clothes. People felt that they were waiting for eviction. Many were accompanied by Russian and Ukrainian relatives, friends, neighbors, since many families were mixed. Anti-tank and wire barriers with a passage guarded by the Germans and Ukrainian police blocked the street at the gathering place. Jews were allowed in groups on the other side, waiting, then letting new ones. When passing through the gate, documents, valuables, were taken from them, stripped. Only then people began to realize that they were not waiting for eviction, but something terrible. They heard shooting and screaming. People were led to a huge ravine - Babi Yar, and shot. People were killed until late in the evening, only on that day 33771 people were shot. The executions continued the next day, and later, a week later, a year. They killed not only Jews, but also communists, prisoners of war, Russians, Ukrainians, Gypsies. When the Soviet troops began to liberate Ukraine, the Nazis tried to destroy the traces of their crimes. The bodies began to burn. After the liberation of Kiev, Babiy Yar found a half-meter layer of ash and bones. The number of people killed there is unknown. Only some Jews number up to 150 thousand people.
October 16 Soviet troops were evacuated from Odessa. Romanians and Germans entered the city, universal arrests of Jews and mixed families began. The detainees were imprisoned in a powder magazine in the Strelbischensky field and October 23 began to burn. At the same time there were mass executions.
7 November 1941, on the anniversary of the October Revolution, SS formations and auxiliary police (including the Baltic) staged a pogrom in the Minsk ghetto. This ghetto was one of the largest in the occupied territory, second only in size to the Lviv ghetto. On the territory of the Minsk ghetto were more than 100 thousand people. Approximately 15 thousand people were driven to the area of Tuchinka and shot. The slaughter continued for several days.
In the brutal killings of the Jews, not only were units of the SD, SS, auxiliary police, but also units of the Wehrmacht "distinguished themselves." A wave of bloody murders swept through the Crimea after Erich von Manstein's 11 Army entered. According to the German commander: “It is impossible to wage war in the East in ordinary forms. ... The Jew is the mediator between the enemy in our rear and the Red Army ... the Jewish-Bolshevik system in the USSR must be destroyed forever. ... Every soldier must be imbued with the need to ruthlessly revenge the Jews. " Only in Kerch more than 7 thousand Jews were exterminated. Most of those killed were old men, women, teenagers, children (men fought, worked in evacuated enterprises).
Wehrmacht soldiers staged another bloody massacre in Rostov-on-Don. November 21st tank an army under the command of Colonel General Ewald von Kleist broke into the city. After a short time, the Red Army was able to recapture the city and discovered traces of Hitler's crimes. People were killed only because they were Jews. Searched in houses, in cellars. They killed women, the elderly, children. “Before being shot, they scoffed at many, beaten, knocked out their teeth, killed many of them with rifle butts, crushing their heads. Pieces of skulls of these people were lying right on the street ... ”
According to some estimates, in just six months of occupation, approximately 1,2 million Soviet Jews were killed. Moreover, not only adults, but adolescents, small children. The final decision of the Jewish question for Berlin was a direct consequence of the war of extermination against the USSR. In the East, it was possible to do what was impossible in Western Europe. At first, the Jews were destroyed as communists, “commissars”, civil servants, a “subversive element”, then as Soviet Jews (in the West, this system was not introduced yet) and only from the beginning of 1942, it was officially decided that you can kill only because Jew.
Mass execution on the seashore in Skедde, Libava (Lithuania), 15. 12. 1941. Jewish women are standing at the edge of the grave, just before the execution. In the execution, the Latvian platoon of the SD guard, the SS police department and its local police officer D. Dietrich and the Latvian battalion 21 police took part. On this day, 2350 Jews were killed.
application
Act, Stavyshche market town in the Kiev region, January 14 1944
“Two weeks after the seizure of the town, the Germans drove all the Jewish men - an 60 man - supposedly to work. They were taken to the Revukuh tract two kilometers away, forced to dig holes, and all were shot. After some time, they drove all the women with children — Jews — ostensibly for evacuation and were shot at the same place. They brought a man to the pit on 4 and shot him with a pistol. The babies were thrown alive into the pit. ”
The atrocities of the Nazi invaders 22 March 1944
“30 July 1941, the Germans occupied the city of Golovanevsk, Odessa region. Began a savage reprisal against the Jewish population. Around 100, Jews were shot on the spot, right in the city. Then a 800 man was gathered, taken by car under guard, taken to a forest a kilometer from the city, and all were shot. Among them were a lot of women and children. 12-15 girls were raped by Germans before being shot. On the outskirts of the city, the Germans took away from their mothers and threw small children alive into a well, which was filled almost to the top and was covered with earth. ”
Report of the Political Department of the 5 Guards Tank Army
“We, the residents of Dmitrovka (9 surnames), Bogodukhov district, Kharkiv region, testify that during the occupation of the village in 1941, the Germans gathered all Jewish population from neighboring villages during 3-4 days, drove it into a shed in a kolkhoz yard, they were beaten, mocked, every day they were taken to heavy road works, and a few days later everyone was shot, including small children. The girls were raped by groups of soldiers. There was a wild cry and cry. All were shot at least forty Jews.
The act of mass extermination of citizens of Mstislavl, 4 October 1943
In early October, 1941, all Jews were ordered to the market square on the orders of the chief of the punitive detachment. Men were separated from women. At first, 30 old men were taken, they were taken by car to Leschinsky ditch and shot there. From the Jewish women, the Nazis took away the young, drove out their district mages, there they stripped naked, raped, tortured, then shot. October 15 all the remaining Jews gathered in the yard pedagogical school. They read the sentence. After that, they took them outside, built 10 people in a row and drove to the Kogalny ditch, where at night the local population ordered pits to be dug by the Germans. First selected 50 men. They were ordered to deepen the pit, and then shot. After that, Jews were led to the pits by 10 and shot. First all men were killed, then women with adult children. Small children were thrown into the pits alive. Many were stunned by blows to the head. ”
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