How the Nazis solved the "Jewish question"
The execution of Soviet citizens in the Babiy Yar tract in occupied Kiev
On September 29, 1941, the German Nazis began the extermination of Kiev Jews. They were shot at Babi Yar. In just one day, 33 people were killed. The shootings continued until the fall of 771, when Kiev was liberated by the Red Army.
To this day, it is not known how many people were killed there. Modern researchers speak of 150 thousand Jews alone. Also there were shot Soviet prisoners of war, partisans, underground workers, political workers and employees of the NKVD, patients of a psychiatric hospital, gypsies, etc.
From September to the end of October 1941, the executions were mainly carried out by mobile SS units (Einsatzgruppa and the police) with the assistance of the field gendarmerie and units of the Wehrmacht (454th Security Division, 75th and 299th Infantry Divisions). From October 1941 to the end of September 1943, Babi Yar was the site of regular shootings carried out by the security police and SD in close cooperation with the military and civilian authorities of Kiev.
Babi Yar became one of the symbols of the "final solution to the Jewish question" - the brutal and mass extermination of Jews in Eastern Europe. It was also a symbol of the solution of the "Russian question" by the Nazis - the destruction of the most active part of the Russian people in order to turn the rest into slaves of the Third Reich.
Damn place
On September 19, 1941, German troops occupied Kiev. On September 27, the first execution took place - 752 patients of the V.I. Ivan Pavlov, which was located near the ravine Babiy Yar. A large ravine was located in the northwestern part of Kiev, between the Lukyanovka and Syrets districts. The steep slopes made it look like a gorge, a stream flowed along the bottom. Before the war, children played here. The German occupiers thought it was an excellent place for a massacre.
In the last days of September 1941, small posters in three languages were hung on all city fences: German, Russian and Ukrainian. The announcement suggested that all the Jews of Kiev appear on Monday, September 29, 1941 at 8 o'clock in the morning at the corner of Melnikovskaya and Dokhturovskaya (near the cemetery). Take with you documents, money, valuables, warm clothes, underwear, etc. Those who did not comply with this order were subject to execution. At the same time, rumors spread through the city through the rabbis, house managers and janitors that the Jews would be rewritten and deported to a safe place.
The new event of the Nazis was striking in its scale: it was proposed to evict tens of thousands of people from the huge city. Expulsion on ethnic grounds.
What for?
There was no doubt that we were talking about deportation. The question was, how will they be lucky and where will they be taken? People had no idea that thousands, tens of thousands of people were going to be destroyed.
On the morning of September 29, crowds of people from all parts of Kiev were drawn to the gathering place. Many went out even after dark in order to get to the place on time. Mostly children, women and old people, as many men went to the front. There were many mixed families in big Kiev; Russians and Jews have long been intermingled. Therefore, Russian husbands saw off their Jewish wives, Russian wives - their Jewish husbands. There were many people seeing off: Russian relatives, friends, neighbors. They helped the elderly and the sick to bring things.
The closer the meeting place was, the more German soldiers there were. They knew that the Jews would not be expelled, they would be exterminated.
At the place of gathering, the street was blocked by wire barriers, anti-tank "hedgehogs". The passage was guarded by German soldiers and Ukrainian policemen. Jews were allowed in in groups to the other side, they waited for a while, then new ones were admitted.
And only then did people begin to understand that something terrible was in store for them. They were ordered to hand over documents and belongings, to undress. Then people were brought to the pit and shot. Group by group.
German Sonderkommando killed 33 people in a day.
The shootings continued in the following days: and in a week, a month and a year. People were killed almost until the liberation of Kiev by the Red Army. In a ravine fenced off with barbed wire, they shot communists, Red Army men, underground workers, etc.
When the Nazis were driven from Soviet soil, the Nazis tried to hide the traces of their terrible deeds. For three weeks the corpses were burned in Babi Yar, the bones were ground in special machines. Then the troops of the Red Army found a half-meter layer of ash and bones in the ravine.
Soviet prisoners of war in Babi Yar among the belongings of those shot
"The Final Solution of the Jewish Question"
Babi Yar was no exception to the rule, the same nightmares were happening in the Baltics, Belarus, Smolensk region, throughout Ukraine, in the Crimea, etc. The Nazis brought suffering and death with them.
The theme of the "Jewish threat" was one of the main themes in the ideology of Nazism. Immediately after Hitler and the National Socialists came to power, the Jewish community in Germany began to be persecuted. Laws were passed restricting the rights of Jews. In particular, Jews were forbidden to have German citizenship, to marry Germans, vote, be in the civil service, etc. The further it went, the worse it got. Jews were forced to emigrate from Germany. They planned to make the Third Reich a racially clean country.
But by the beginning of World War II, the channels of Jewish emigration were mostly closed. Then most of Western Europe came under the control of the Reich. And the "Jewish question" again faced the Nazi elite. Plans were made to deport Jews from Europe somewhere farther: to Africa, to Madagascar. The head of the SS, Himmler, ordered the isolation of Jews in a ghetto in occupied Poland. When planning a war of extermination against the USSR, it was decided to extend this practice to the occupied Soviet regions.
Preparing for a war with Russia, the Nazi leadership has not yet come to the idea of the complete destruction of an entire people. In the directives developed by the Nazis on the eve of the attack on the USSR, Jews are hardly mentioned. But in April 1941, the directives "on the conduct of German troops in Russia" already noted that Jews, along with partisans and "communist instigators", were to be exterminated. This approach was the basis for a special order of the head of the OKW (High Command of the Wehrmacht) dated May 19, 1941, in which Jews were equated with partisans and saboteurs.
At about the same time, the head of the Main Directorate of Imperial Security Heydrich gave the command of the Einsatzgruppen (the militarized "death squads" of Nazi Germany, which carried out the massacres of civilians in the occupied territories) a verbal order to eliminate all Jews, since "Judaism became the source of Bolshevism and, therefore must be destroyed. " True, in July, Heydrich backed down and in a special directive indicated that not all Jews were to be liquidated, but members of the Bolshevik Party employed in the civil service and radical elements (partisans, saboteurs, saboteurs, propagandists, etc.).
Thus, when the Nazis invaded the USSR, they were able to attribute all Jews to partisans and saboteurs who were to be destroyed. The special forces had instructions to liquidate some of the Jews, the rest were planned to be driven into the ghetto.
As a result, the robbery, violence and murder of Jews from the first days of the war became a kind of entertainment for the advancing German troops. Synagogues were burning, murdered Jews lay in houses and on the streets. The girls were raped and hanged with the words "a restroom for German soldiers", babies were smashed. And the occupation authorities who came for the troops were establishing a "new order". The actions were clearly regulated and methodical. At first, the Einsatzkommando destroyed the communists, "radical elements", generally "suspicious". That is, there was an opportunity to kill anyone. Therefore, mass executions soon became commonplace. Russians (including Belarusians and Little Russians) were shot in the same way.
Soviet prisoners of war, guarded by SS men, cover the area of Babi Yar with earth, where the executed Soviet citizens lie. October 1, 1941
From ghetto to total extermination
When the first wave of terror subsided, the isolation of Jews in the ghetto began.
Crowds of people were herded to special places, quarters in cities, they were isolated from other people. There was a double guard: the German-controlled Jewish "order service" on the inside, and the local police on the outside. The Jewish council was responsible for the behavior of the Jewish community. Jews were robbed, driven to forced labor. Everyone who was caught outside was immediately shot.
Life in the ghetto was hard: overcrowding, lack of food, lack of rights and freedoms. Getting a job meant becoming a "useful Jew": they were given rations, taken to work, allowed to live in a barrack outside the ghetto, they had the hope that they would not be killed for fun.
There was no question of the total extermination of the Jewish population at that moment. The Nazis were pragmatists. The warring Reich needed working hands, and the "masters" needed slaves. And the Jews worked no worse than the Poles or the Russians. Another thing is that the Nazis believed that the number of Jews (as well as Russians) should be reduced. Therefore, labor was used without mercy, people were squeezed out completely (in principle, this is the usual approach under capitalism). In addition, the Nazis used local Nazis to solve the "Jewish question", who also hated "Jews" like the Nazis.
Local Nazis got down to business quickly, began to destroy the "Jewish Bolsheviks" instead of their German masters. The Baltic and Ukrainian Nazis flooded the Soviet lands with blood. The brutality of their actions shocked even the seasoned German "senior comrades". Jews were burned along with synagogues, beaten with crowbars, drowned, raped and slaughtered in their own homes. Destroyed everyone: old people, women and children.
The occupiers hastily formed police and punitive units from local Nazis who had proved themselves. The punishers had a lot of work - in the occupied regions of the USSR. The local Nazis could be blamed for the "dirty work" and the creation of a police force that would help control and "cleanse" the occupied areas. Also, each police battalion liberated one German, which was needed at the front, because the Russians continued to fight fiercely.
In the Baltic states, local punishers very soon demonstrated to the Nazis the solution to the “Jewish problem” - the total extermination of Jews. The Baltic Nazis showed that Jews can simply be exterminated without being evicted to other areas and ghettos. As a result, the German punitive units have already switched to the practice of the total extermination of Jews, which was manifested in Kiev.
The Nazi leadership decides on the total extermination of Soviet Jews. On September 12, 1941, the head of the OKW, Field Marshal Keitel, issued an order:
"The fight against Bolshevism requires the adoption of ruthless and energetic action, primarily towards the Jews."
Jews are equated with Bolshevik commissars, political workers. The Fuehrer set the same task for the security service.
Thus, the final solution of the "Jewish question" was a consequence of the extermination war in the East. The logic of total war led to the decision on the total extermination of Soviet Jews. At first, Jews were killed as Soviet citizens who belonged to the category of "suspicious persons", "saboteurs", "Jewish Bolsheviks"; since 1942, they were liquidated simply because they were Jews. According to researchers, in just six months of 1941, about 1,2 million Soviet Jews were exterminated in the territory occupied by the Nazis.
A photograph of the execution of the last Jew in Vinnitsa, taken by an officer of the German Einsatzgroup. Vinnitsa was occupied by German troops on July 19, 1941. Some of the Jews who lived in the city managed to evacuate. The remaining Jewish population was locked up in a ghetto. On July 28, 1941, 146 Jews were shot in the city. In August, the shootings resumed. On September 22, 1941, most of the prisoners of the Vinnytsia ghetto were destroyed (about 28 thousand people). Only people whose labor was useful to the invaders, artisans, workers and technicians (several thousand) were left alive. In the spring of 1942, the remaining Jews were exterminated, 150 craftsmen were left alive. They were shot on August 25, 1942. Only a few Jewish underground fighters survived.
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