Between Giants (19 page)

Unfortunately for the Jewish population as a whole, some of those who worked for the Soviet regime during 1939–41 had a very prominent profile. Large parts of the communist administrations were made up of those perceived as foreigners – either Latvian and Lithuanian communists who arrived from the Soviet Union with the occupying forces, or Russians. Of the rest, although Jews formed a minority of the new administrations, they formed a larger proportion than Latvians and Lithuanians recruited from the local population. Consequently, many Lithuanians and Latvians grew to feel that the new regime favoured Jews above other groups. It became commonplace for people to tell each other that ‘Under this regime, only the Jews live well’, and to talk about ‘the Jewish takeover of the regime’.
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Some of the pronouncements of the regime also raised anti-Semitic sentiment. Genrikas Zimanas, head of the Lithuanian Minorities Bureau, declared that the arrival of Soviet troops had dealt a mortal blow to anti-Semitism; the Soviet Union, he maintained, was the only state in the world free of anti-Semitism. Stalin himself had declared that anti-Semitism was a capital offence, and the Communist Party would never contemplate anti-Semitism, as this was equivalent to counterrevolutionary thinking.
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Given the attitude of Stalin to Jews at the time, this seems an extraordinary statement; in any event, many Lithuanians interpreted it as further proof of the ‘privileged status’ of Jews.

It was into this volatile and increasingly polarised environment that the invading Germans brought their dreams of a New Order, requiring the subjugation or elimination of those deemed to be undesirable. The Jews were at the top of that particular list.

Prior to the invasion of the Soviet Union, Hitler made very clear to all his subordinates that the new war was to be like no other. On 30 March 1941, he addressed his senior officers on the nature of the coming conflict. Franz Halder, Chief of Staff of the army, recorded in his diary afterwards that the conflict would be a ‘struggle between two ideologies’. Hitler condemned Bolshevism as being a form of ‘antisocial criminality’, and given the danger that communism represented for Germany, the war had to result in the ‘extermination of Bolshevik commissars and of the communist intelligentsia’. When it came to officials of the Soviet Union, Hitler stated that ‘Commissars and GPU [
Gosudarstvennoye Politicheskoye Upravlenie
or ‘State Political Directorate’, a part of the NKVD] personnel are criminals and must be treated as such. The struggle will differ from that in the west.’
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At the beginning of June 1941, all units were informed that Bolsheviks, agitators, partisans, saboteurs, and Jews must all be treated as potential enemies. It was at this point that Wehrmacht units were told that it was their responsibility to compile lists of all Jews in their areas, and to hand these lists to the
Einsatzgruppen
that followed the front-line units. Although much of the Wehrmacht tried to behave as if fighting the Red Army was its sole function and attempted to leave implementation of Hitler’s more extreme policies, and those required by
Generalplan Ost
, to other agencies such as the SS, there can be little doubt that almost every part of the German military machine had a role in the atrocities that followed the invasion.

The speed and scale of the killing of Jews in Lithuania and Latvia made the previous activities of German forces in Poland seem no more than a prelude. There were several components to these killings; some were carried out by the Wehrmacht, others by Lithuanians and Latvians, and many by the
Einsatzgruppen
. Whilst it is in some respects practical to consider these different agencies in turn, it should be remembered that all these groups were active in overlapping timescales.

Security in the rear areas was the responsibility of special security divisions, which as the war went on often found themselves forced into taking on a front-line role. Three such formations – 207th, 281st, and 285th Security Divisions – followed in the wake of Army Group North, while 403rd Security Division took control of the Vilnius region after Army Group Centre had moved on. These divisions came under the overall command of an officer with the title
Befehlshaber des Rückwärtigen Heeresgebietes
(‘Commander of the Rear Army Areas’, often abbreviated to
Berück
), a post held in the Army Group North area by General Franz von Roques. By coincidence, his cousin, Karl von Roques, held the equivalent command behind Army Group Centre. The son of a family that originated in the flight of Huguenot Protestants from France, he was not an enthusiastic advocate of Hitler’s concept of a brutal, racial war. Although he ordered all Jews in his area to wear six-pointed yellow stars on their right breasts, his decrees regarding the creation of ghettos stated that such activity should not be regarded as a priority, and should only proceed when adequate resources had been made available.
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The commanders of the security divisions also displayed some reluctance to show the ruthlessness that Hitler desired. Roques’ orders to the divisions – perhaps deliberately – did not make expressly clear how they were to operate. Generalleutnant Carl von Tidemann, commander of 207th Security Division, and Generalleutnant Friedrich Bayer, commander of 281st Security Division, explicitly ordered their men that ‘shooting sections of the population purely on the grounds that they are members of the Communist Party or of other groups, for example Jews’, was forbidden. Likewise, although the security divisions were to seize groups of Jews to be held as hostages, in an attempt to ensure the good behaviour of the rest of the population, they were not to hand these groups over to the SS, at least while the groups remained within the area defined as Rear Army Areas.
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The combat divisions in the front line also sometimes showed little appetite for following Hitler’s orders regarding commissars and Jews. In an attempt to change this, General Hermann Hoth, commander of Army Group Centre’s 3rd Panzer Group – which included 7th Panzer Division, the unit that seized Vilnius – issued an order as early as 28 June, less than a week after the beginning of
Barbarossa
, stating that any members of the Wehrmacht who allowed communist officials to escape would face court martial; the order warned soldiers to remain aware of ‘the well-known Asiatic practices of murder, treachery, and perfidy’.
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However, it seems that in many other cases there was little friction between the Wehrmacht and the SS. In October 1941, Franz Walther Stahlecker, commander of
Einsatzgruppe A
, recorded that cooperation with the army was ‘generally good, in a few cases, for instance with the 4th Panzer Group under Generaloberst Hoepner, very close, almost cordial’.
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Stahlecker’s report is a detailed description of his
Einsatzgruppe
in the early months of the war, and illustrates clearly how it functioned. It is therefore worthy of detailed attention.

Einsatzgruppe A
crossed into Lithuania a day after the Wehrmacht invasion. Originally, it was intended that the
Einsatzgruppen
would function in areas handed over by the army as it advanced, but Stahlecker recorded that this proved unworkable for two reasons. Firstly, the rapid advance of the army led to delays in handing over rear areas; secondly, fighting partisans and suppressing communist activity was best done within the combat zone. This was because local paramilitary formations, which were used extensively by the Germans to carry out many of the killings of Jews and others, were frequently disarmed once the front line had moved on. If they were to be used to augment the work of the
Einsatzgruppen
, therefore, this would have to be before their weapons were confiscated. There was also a feeling that once a degree of normality had returned, it would be far harder to incite locals to ‘spontaneous’ attacks. In many cases, groups of Lithuanians and Latvians spontaneously organised themselves into paramilitary groups, but in order to help create as many local units as possible,
Einsatzgruppe
personnel accompanied the leading German units into Kaunas, Riga and Tallinn, and rapidly established ‘volunteer detachments from reliable natives in all three Baltic provinces’. These detachments were an essential part of the plan to deal with the Jews:

The report then goes on to provide further information about these ‘self-cleansing actions’:

Considering that the population of the Baltic countries had suffered very heavily under the government of Bolshevism and Jewry while they were incorporated in the USSR, it was to be expected that after the liberation from that foreign government, they (i.e. the population themselves) would render harmless most of the enemies left behind after the retreat of the Red Army. It was the duty of the Security Police to set in motion these self-cleansing movements and to direct them into the correct channels in order to accomplish the purpose of the cleansing operations as quickly as possible. It was no less important in view of the future to establish the unshakable and provable fact that the liberated population themselves took the most severe measures against the Bolshevist and Jewish enemy quite on their own, so that the direction by German authorities could not be found out. In Lithuania this was achieved for the first time by partisan activities in Kaunas. To our surprise it was not easy at first to set in motion an extensive pogrom against Jews. Klimatis, the leader of the partisan unit … who was used for this purpose primarily, succeeded in starting a pogrom on the basis of advice given to him by a small advanced detachment acting in Kaunas, and in such a way that no German order or German instigation was noticed from the outside.
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Stahlecker had accompanied the leading units into Kaunas, and made his way to the offices of the Lithuanian State Security Department, which had been seized by members of the Lithuanian Activist Front. Here, he made a speech calling for a pogrom against the Jews, but was disappointed that there was little apparent enthusiasm for such an act. Instead, he turned to Algirdas Klimatis, who had organised a paramilitary group of about 600 individuals, and had taken part in fighting against the retreating Red Army. He had no allegiance either to the Lithuanian Activist Front or to the newly proclaimed provisional government, and proved to be a willing accomplice for the Germans. On 25 June, his men started attacking Jews in the suburb of Vilijampolė, and spread their activity from there to other parts of the city and the surrounding area. The exact number of victims of this pogrom is disputed. Stahlecker claimed that in three days, some 5,000 Jews were killed, but it has been suggested that Stahlecker may deliberately have exaggerated the number of killings.
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In many cases, the attacks on Jews were genuinely spontaneous, with little or no encouragement from the Germans – indeed, it seems that once the pogroms commenced, they spread rapidly to neighbouring areas. Dov Levin described how Lithuanians looted Jewish houses, attacking Jews and raping women. One Lithuanian waved several bloodstained passports at Levin as proof of the Jews he had already killed.
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The Lithuanian partisans wore white armbands, and were widely known as
baltaraiščiai
(‘white armbands’). Even within the ranks of the partisans, there was a perception that not all of those wearing armbands were actively fighting the Red Army:

Some procured guns and took part in the fight for the Fatherland, while others broke into shops, private homes and abandoned houses, where they took every opportunity to steal and take away things, or bury them in the earth.
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Whilst not all partisans took part in anti-Jewish attacks, it seems that most of those who robbed, beat and killed Jews were wearing white armbands.
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Some partisan leaders, such as Jurgis Bobelis in Kaunas, attempted to prevent such acts by their men; Bobelis threatened to execute any men found to be involved in random attacks. Others simply turned a blind eye to events. Many continued to make little distinction between Jews and communists, and encouraged their men to round up all those who fell into either category.

Stahlecker’s
Einsatzgruppe
was divided into several
Einsatzkommando
, each with its area of operations.
Einsatzkommando 3
was under the command of Karl Jäger, who was born in the Swiss town of Schaffhausen in 1888. He served as an artilleryman in the First World War, and thereafter was a member of the so-called Black Reichswehr, a paramilitary grouping designed to circumvent the restrictions imposed on the size of German armed forces by the Treaty of Versailles. He was an early adherent of the National Socialist movement, and was enrolled into the ranks of the SS in 1936. He rose rapidly through the ranks, and by summer 1941 held the rank of
Standartenführer
(the equivalent army rank would be colonel). At this stage, he was ordered to form
Einsatzkommando 3
. When its 120 personnel gathered at their training base in the small town of Pretzch, Jäger learned that in addition to commanding the
Einsatzkommando
, he would also be the commander of the Security Police and
Sicherheitsdienst
(‘Security Department’ or SD) in Lithuania. Both at Pretzch and in a meeting in Berlin, Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the RSHA, made clear to Jäger and other similarly ranked SS officers that ‘in the event of a war with Russia, all the Jews in the east will have to be shot’.
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