“Like being possessed.” How the Nazis and Bandera dealt with Muscovites and Jews
A Jewish woman sits on the sidewalk at the feet of fighters of the Ukrainian people's militia OUN(b) during pogroms in Lvov. 1941
The Russian FSB for the first time published a digital copy of the interrogation protocol of Chief Corporal Hans Isenman. The executioner took part in the massacre of Jews during the Lviv pogrom, which occurred in late June - early July 1941.
Massacres
Public Relations Center (PRC) of the FSB of Russia for the first time опубликовал a digital copy of the interrogation protocol of Chief Corporal Hans Isenmann. He served in the SS Viking division and participated in the massacres of civilians in Lvov and other occupied territories of the Ukrainian SSR.
SS Motorized Division "Wiking" (since 1943 - 5th tank SS Division "Wiking") was created in 1940. The division was part of the elite formations of the SS troops and was the first in which, along with the Germans, foreign mercenaries from “racially related nations” served, primarily from Belgium, Denmark, Holland and the Scandinavian countries.
In June 1941, the Viking division led an offensive in the Lvov direction. On June 28, 1941, units of the Red Army left Lvov. SS troops advanced through Lvov from June 30 to July 2, 1941.
SS soldiers talking to local residents in the Lvov area
These days, a drama took place in Lviv, which is known as the Lemberg or Lviv pogrom. This would be one of the first acts of open genocide of Jews during World War II.
The direct initiators and perpetrators of the pogrom were the Ukrainian people's militia and the local leadership of the OUN(b) - Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (Bandera movement). The SS men also took part in the pogrom.
From the interrogation protocol of Hans Isenmann dated December 29, 1945: “... I took part in the execution of civilian Soviet citizens in the city. Lvov, Berdichev and Tarashche. In the last days of June or early July, our platoon, part of the Viking division, arrived in Lvov, where, by order of the command, I took part in the mass executions of the Jewish population. Our department carried out 4 raids in the city of Lvov over the course of two days, as a result of which up to 800 people of the Jewish population were collected, including men, women, old people and children. All these citizens were taken by us outside the city of Lvov in an eastern direction and at a distance of approximately 2 kilometers from Lvov they were all shot near a ditch. I personally shot approximately 120 people. Those we detained during the raids were taken to the place of execution in groups of 150–200 people. The executions took place during the day..."
In the first half of July, the Nazis arrived in Berdichev, Zhitomir region, where they organized a new bloody pogrom. As Izenman told the Soviet investigation, the executioners acted with the help of local residents: “Our department was divided into groups of two people. Each group was given one local resident who pointed out Jewish apartments and houses. We entered the apartments, took everyone in them, including children and old people, and took them out into the streets. When there were up to 200 people, we took them to the execution site and shot them.”
After the massacres in Lvov and Berdichev, the SS men were sent to the Kyiv region to the village of Tarashcha, where they killed about 400 Jews. There Isenman personally killed about 60 people.
At the trial in Kyiv on January 17–28, 1946, Hans Isenmann, along with 12 other former Wehrmacht soldiers, on the basis of Art. 1 of the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of April 19, 1943, he was sentenced to death by hanging. On January 29 of the same year the sentence was carried out.
Archival document from the funds of the Central Archive of the FSB of Russia.
"Their appearance was disgusting"
The first to enter Lviv on June 30, 1941 was the reconnaissance and sabotage battalion “Nachtigall” (from German - nightingale), formed from Ukrainian nationalists. The Nazis were led by Lieutenant Roman Shukhevych, the future commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).
Ukrainian nationalists carried out a massacre in the city, which surprised even experienced Nazis. “They took long daggers in their teeth, rolled up the sleeves of their tunics, holding weapon ready. Their appearance was disgusting,” recalled German officer Walter Brodorff. “As if possessed, whooping loudly, with foam on their lips, with bulging eyes, they rushed through the streets of Lvov. Everyone who fell into their hands was brutally executed.”
The nationalists dragged Muscovites and Jews who had not managed to escape from their houses and immediately killed them. Women and children were beaten to death with rifle butts. There was a real hunt for the Jews.
SS units, which entered the city a little later, took an active part in the hunt for people. But the actions of the Ukrainian Nazis amazed even seasoned SS men. SS Hauptsturmführer Felix Landau wrote in his diary: “Hundreds of Jews with bloodied faces, broken skulls, broken arms, gouged out eyes are running through the streets. Some bloodied Jews carry others completely crushed in their arms.”
Two Jewish women sitting at the feet of pogrom participants in Lvov occupied by German troops
In total, more than 4 thousand people were killed in the first days of the pogroms in Lviv. Their bodies, collected in one place, could be seen by all residents of the city. The capital of Western Ukraine only recently became part of the USSR; many in it, for one reason or another, did not like Soviet power and sympathized with the nationalists from the OUN. However, this bloody massacre made the townspeople shudder. In the city they said: “The Nazis eat Jews for breakfast, Poles for lunch, Ukrainians for dinner.”
Indeed, it was all just beginning. On July 25, a new pogrom took place in the city called “Days of Petliura.” Those who fled the city were destroyed. Ukrainian nationalists slaughtered the Jews, who fled to the surrounding villages. In the Vinnitsa village of Turbov, nationalists killed all Jewish men and wanted to burn women and children alive. Even the German soldiers, who stopped the massacre, could not stand this.
The bodies of Jews shot during the pogroms in the courtyard of the Lvov prison.
“We need Russian spaces without Russians”
Bloody massacres took place throughout Western Ukraine. They killed for being a Jew, a Muscovite or a communist. The Wehrmacht soldiers and SS men did not understand the different types of “subhumans” - Russians, Jews, Little Russian Ukrainians. What difference does it make if you need to clear all of Ukraine and other lands from the “lower race”.
Brutal pogroms and massacres occurred wherever the invaders came. The Fuhrer's personal guard division - Leibstandarte SS "Adolf Hitler" - was part of the 1st Panzer Group of General von Kleist. Selected troops advanced on Kyiv. On the night before the attack on the USSR, the SS men were explained how to act in the war with the Russians. The name of the Fuhrer alone should have inspired horror in the “subhumans.”
The company commanders read out the commandments of the war of extermination: “Break a Russian’s skull, and you will protect yourself from them forever! You are the limitless ruler in this country! The life and death of the population is in your hands! We need Russian spaces without Russians!”
In one of the villages near Rivne, the Germans encountered strong resistance from Soviet troops. Angered by the losses, the Krauts herded several dozen residents to the square and shot them. The village was burned.
The division commander, Sepp Dietrich, issued an order not to take prisoners, but to shoot them on the spot. “Special teams were created in all areas,” one of the SS men later said. “Teams with a special task: in captured villages, systematically burn house after house, and smoke out residents hiding in basements and shelters with grenades.” There had to be scorched earth in the path of the SS men.
Wehrmacht soldiers and SS men left behind them the corpses of civilians and prisoners of war, burned houses and blown up churches. On July 3, the head of the operational department of the General Staff of the OKH (high command of the ground forces), Adolf Heusinger, wrote in his diary: “German troops in the East are behaving like the hordes of Genghis Khan.”
Nazis shoot Soviet civilians in the Babi Yar tract in occupied Kyiv
"The Russian must die"
In the Baltics, local nationalists, just like the OUN-Bandera men in Ukraine, competed in cruelty with the SS men. Over the course of a few days, more than 4 thousand people were killed in Kaunas. By July 11, according to security reports, 7 Jews had been killed.
In Riga, immediately after the occupation, mass arrests of all those loyal to the Soviet regime began. Workers who welcomed joining the USSR were arrested. In many large factories, entire shifts of people were taken away. They grabbed representatives of Soviet and party bodies. Jews From police stations and prisons, beaten people were taken to the forest and shot. Within 2-3 weeks, about 12 thousand Jews and about the same number of Russians were killed. There were so many arrested in the Baltic cities and villages that concentration camps had to be created, which became “death forts,” since they did not return from there alive.
"Einsatzgruppen" ("target groups", "deployment groups") - paramilitary death squads, from the first days of the war terrified the population of the occupied regions of the USSR. Special punitive units moved east behind the German divisions. Responsible for the security of the army's rear, the Einsatzgruppen destroyed "undesirable elements": communists, Jews, saboteurs, anyone they wanted.
Units of the SS cavalry brigade under the command of Standartenführer Fegelein had been “pacifying” the Belarusian villages of the Starobinsky district since the end of July. In two weeks, the first regiment of the brigade shot 6 civilians and arrested 509. The commander of the second regiment, von Magill, chose not to shoot civilians, but to drown them in a swamp.
He reported upstairs: “We drove the women and children into the swamp, but this did not have the desired effect, since the swamps were not deep enough to drown in them.” After reading the report, Fegelein ordered his subordinates to simply shoot the Russians. Six and a half thousand killed Russians in just two weeks.
The Nazis did not forget to have fun. Girls and women were tortured, raped and killed everywhere. In the town of Shatsk, Minsk region, all the girls were raped, driven naked into the square and forced to dance. Those who refused were shot. In the village of Rekty, the girls were driven into the forest, raped and killed.
Entering the village of Lyady, the Germans first robbed houses, and then the gentlemen officers demanded that the villagers provide them with 18 girls. When the order was not carried out, the marauders themselves took them. They took me into the forest, raped me, and then shot me. They didn’t look at age; among the dead there were girls 12–14 years old.
Such horror was happening everywhere. The monsters did not hide their “exploits”; they took photographs as souvenirs. Only in November 1941 did the SS command come to their senses and prohibit private individuals from photographing executions. But Wehrmacht soldiers often violated this instruction. There are enough photographic documents left.
Thus, the Soviet people survived a terrible war of annihilation. The leaders of the Third Reich set the task of clearing the occupied lands of “subhumans.” The Nazis came to kill millions, and turn the few remaining, downtrodden and intimidated, into slaves. When the Red Army went west, liberating Soviet cities and villages, it was faced with a terrible picture. Houses and villages were burned along with the inhabitants. Wells and ditches filled with corpses.
German soldiers at the call, written on the blackboard: "Russians must die for us to live." In the center of the group photo sits a non-commissioned officer of the Luftwaffe. Occupied area of the Bryansk region
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