Текст книги "ГУЛаг Палестины"
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Arad, Shmuel Krakowski, and Shmuel Spector, The Einsatzgruppen Reports:
Selections from the Dispatches of the Nazi Death Squads' Campaign Against the
Jews July 1941-January 1943, Holocaust Library, New York, 1989, p. 2)
Location: Lvov
According to reliable information, the Russians, before withdrawing, shot
30,000 inhabitants. The corpses piled up and burned at the GPU prisons are
dreadfully mutilated. The population is greatly excited: 1,000 Jews have
already been forcefully gathered together. (Operational Situation Report USSR
No. 11, July 3, 1941, in Yitzhak Arad, Shmuel Krakowski, and Shmuel Spector,
The Einsatzgruppen Reports: Selections from the Dispatches of the Nazi Death
Squads' Campaign Against the Jews July 1941-January 1943, Holocaust Library,
New York, 1989, p. 4)
Location: Zviahel (Novograd-Volynski)
...
Before leaving, the Bolsheviks, together with the Jews, murdered several
Ukrainians; as an excuse, they used the attempted Ukrainian uprising of June
25, 1941, which tried to free their prisoners.
According to reliable information, about 20,000 Ukrainians have disappeared
from Lvov, 80% of them belonging to the intelligentsia.
The prisons in Lvov were crammed with the bodies of murdered Ukrainians.
According to a moderate estimate, in Lvov alone 3-4,000 persons were either
killed or deported.
In Dobromil, 82 dead bodies were found, 4 of them Jews. The latter were
former Bolsheviki informers who had been killed because of their complicity in
this act. Near Dobromil an obsolete salt mine pit was discovered. It was
completely filled with dead bodies. In the immediate neighborhood, there is a
6X15m mass grave. The number of those murdered in the Dobromil area is
estimated to be approximately several hundred.
In Sambor on June 26, 1941, about 400 Ukrainians were shot by the
Bolsheviks. An additional 120 persons were murdered on June 27, 1941. The
remaining 80 prisoners succeeded in overpowering the Soviet guards, and fled.
...
As early as 1939, a larger number of Ukrainians was shot, and 1,500
Ukrainians as well as 500 Poles were deported to the east.
Russians and Jews committed these murders in very cruel ways. Bestial
mutilations were daily occurrences. Breasts of women and genitals of men were
cut off. Jews have also nailed children to the wall and then murdered them.
Killing was carried out by shots in the back of the neck. Hand grenades were
frequently used for these murders.
In Dobromil, women and men were killed with blows by a hammer used to stun
cattle before slaughter.
In many cases, the prisoners must have been tortured cruelly: bones were
broken, etc. In Sambor, the prisoners were gagged and thus prevented from
screaming during torture and murder. The Jews, some of whom also held official
positions, in addition to their economic supremacy, and who served in the
entire Bolshevik police, were always partners in these atrocities.
Finally, it was established that seven [German] pilots who had been
captured were murdered. Three of them were found in a Russian military
hospital where they had been murdered in bed by shots in the abdomen. ...
... Prior to their withdrawal, the Bolsheviks shot 2,800 out of 4,000
Ukrainians imprisoned in the Lutsk prison. According to the statement of 19
Ukrainians who survived the slaughter with more or less serious injuries, the
Jews again played a decisive part in the arrests and shooting. ...
The investigations at Zlochev proved that the Russians, prior to their
withdrawal, arrested and murdered indiscriminately a total of 700 Ukrainians,
but, nevertheless, included the entire [local] Ukrainian intelligentsia.
(Operational Situation Report USSR No. 24, July 16, 1941, in Yitzhak Arad,
Shmuel Krakowski, and Shmuel Spector, The Einsatzgruppen Reports: Selections
from the Dispatches of the Nazi Death Squads' Campaign Against the Jews July
1941-January 1943, Holocaust Library, New York, 1989, p. 29-33)
Location: Pleskau [Pskov] ...
The population is in general convinced that it is mostly the Jews who
should be held responsible for the atrocities that are committed everywhere.
...
As it was learned that the Russians before they left have either deported
the Ukrainian intelligentsia, or executed them, that is, murdered them, it is
assumed that in the last days before the retreat of the Russians, about 100
influential Ukrainians were murdered [in Pleskau]. So far the bodies have not
been found – a search has been initiated.
About 100-150 Ukrainians were murdered by the Russians in Kremenets. Some
of these Ukrainians are said to have been thrown into cauldrons of boiling
water. This has been deduced from the fact that the bodies were found without
skin when they were exhumed. ...
... Before leaving Dubno, the Russians, as they had done in Lvov,
committed extensive mass-murder.
... Before their flight [from Tarnopol], as in Lvov and Dubno, the
Russians went on a rampage there. Disinterments revealed 10 bodies of German
soldiers. Almost all of them had their hands tied behind their backs with
wire. The bodies revealed traces of extremely cruel mutilations such as gouged
eyes, severed tongues and limbs.
The number of Ukrainians who were murdered by the Russians, among them
women and children, is set finally at 600. Jews and Poles were spared by the
Russians. The Ukrainians estimate the total number of [Tarnopol] victims since
the occupation of the Ukraine by the Russians at about 2,000. The planned
deportation of the Ukrainians already started in 1939. There is hardly a
family in Tarnopol from which one or several members have not disappeared.
... The entire Ukrainian intelligentsia is destroyed. Since the beginning of
the war, 160 members of the Ukrainian intelligentsia were either murdered or
deported. Inhabitants of the town had observed a column of about 1,000
civilians driven out of town by police and army early in the morning of July 1,
1941.
As in Lvov, torture chambers were discovered in the cellars of the Court of
Justice. Apparently, hot and cold showers were also used here (as in Lemberg
[Lviv]) for torture, as several bodies were found, totally naked, their skin
burst and torn in many places. A grate was found in another room, made of wire
and set above the ground about 1m in height, traces of ashes were found
underneath. A Ukrainian engineer, who was also to be murdered but saved his
life by smearing the blood of a dead victim over his face, reports that one
could also hear screams of pain from women and girls. (Operational Situation
Report USSR No. 28, July 20, 1941, in Yitzhak Arad, Shmuel Krakowski, and
Shmuel Spector, The Einsatzgruppen Reports: Selections from the Dispatches of
the Nazi Death Squads' Campaign Against the Jews July 1941-January 1943,
Holocaust Library, New York, 1989, p.38-40)
F. Fedorenko
MY TESTIMONY
When the bolsheviks retreated before the German onslaught in the Second
World War they took care in advance not to leave any prisoners behind when the
Germans arrived.
The prisoners were driven, en masse, under heavy NKVD guard deep into
Russia or Siberia, day and night. Many of them were so tired that they could
go no further. These were shot without compunction where they fell. Terrible
things happened then. Sometimes, wives recognized their husbands among the
evacuees, as the prisoners were being driven through the villages. There was
great despair when they saw their loved ones taken under the muzzles of
automatic guns, to far, unknown places.
The villagers took care of those who did not die at once from the NKVD
bullets, but this was a very dangerous thing to do before all the bolsheviks
cleared out.
But the NKVD could not evacuate all the prisoners, there were so many arrests,
and jails were replenished constantly. In such a case the NKVD, before making
a hasty retreat, would murder the prisoners in their cells.
I recall that when the Germans came, in the fall of 1941, to a little town,
Chornobil, on the Prypyat River, 62 miles west of Kiev, 52 corpses of recently
murdered people, slightly covered with earth, were found in the prison yeard.
These corpses had their hands tied at the back with wire; some had their backs
flayed, others had gouged eyes or nails driven into their heels; still others
had their noses, ears, tongues and even genitals cut away. Instruments of
torture which the communists used were found in the dungeon of the prison.
Many of the tortured people were identified because they were mostly farmers
from the local collectives who had been arrested by the NKVD for some unknown
reason.
For instance, one girl (whose name I cannot recall now) from the village of
Zallissya, a mile and a quarter from Chornobil, was arrested because one day
she failed to go to dig trenches. All were compelled at that time, to dig
anti-tank trenches. The girl was sick but there was no doctor to examine her
and the NKVD arrested her, never to return.
Two days later, when the Germans arrived, she was found among the fifty-two
corpses. (F. Fedorenko, My Testimony, in The Black Deeds of the Kremlin: A
White Book, Ukrainian Association of Victims of Russian Communist Terror,
Toronto, 1953, pp. 97-98)
Andriy Vodopyan
CRIME IN STALINE
In this ciy in the NKVD prison factory the communists executed 180 persons
and buried them in two holes dug in the prison yard. The corpses were
liberally treated with unslaked lime, especially the faces.
My brother was sentenced to three months in jail for coming late to work.
After serving 18 days in the factory prison he was set free, and a month later
was drafted to the Red Army because this was in July 1941.
Later, his wife and my mother found him among the corpses, identifying him by
the left hand finger, underwear and papers he had on him.
This atrocity came to light when prisoners who remained alive were liberated.
They had also a very close call. Six days before the arrival of the German
troops they heard muffled shots.
The prison was secretly mined by NKVD agents in preparation for the German
invaders. (Andriy Vodopyan, Crime in Staline, in The Black Deeds of the
Kremlin: A White Book, Ukrainian Association of Victims of Russian Communist
Terror, Toronto, 1953, p. 121)
Yuriy Dniprovy
INNOCENT VICTIMS
In the little town of Zolotnyky in the Ternopil region the bolsheviks
murdered a captain of the former Ukrainian Galician Army (UHA) of 1918-1922,
Mr. Dankiw, and clerks of the Ukrainian cooperative store, the sisters
Magdalene, Sophia and Clementine Husar from the suburb of Vaha. Clementine and
Magdalene were tortured in a beastly manner and had their breats cut off.
Other people executed at that time were: Slavko Demyd, Yosyp Vozny, Vasyl
Burbela, Zynoviy Kushniryna, Pavlo Kushniryna and a non-commissioned officer of
the UHA, Mr. Tsiholsky. (Yuriy Dniprovy, Innocent Victims, in The Black Deeds
of the Kremlin: A White Book, Ukrainian Association of Victims of Russian
Communist Terror, Toronto, 1953, p. 122)
P. K.
THE INFERNAL DEVICE OF THE RUSSIAN COMMUNISTS
(By an eyewitness) In the year 1942, when the Red Army, harassed by the
German divisions, retreated from Katerynodar (Krasnodar), the regional NKVD
division evacuated all the prisoners and sent them in the direction of
Novorossiysk. The railway line between Katerynodar and the station of Krymska
was jammed by nearly two hundred freight boxcars filled to capacity with
political prisoners.
Suspecting that all these prisoners might fall into German hands the
Russian NKVD men, as a precautionary measure, poured gasoline on the cars and
let them burn.
Thus a few thousand people perished in inhuman torture merely because they
were suspected of anti-communism.
When the Germans entered Katerynodar they found in the regional divisional
building of the NKVD in Sinny Bazar, a horrible torture chamber. In the vault
of this building there was a dark passage which ended with a wooden platform
which dipped down at a sharp angle. Right underneath it there was a machine
which resembled a straw chopper. It was a disk equipped with a system of big
knives that revolved at great speed. It was powered by a motor.
After questioning, the innocent victims were driven by the NKVD agents
towards the wooden platform and rolled under the knives of the hellish
meatchopper. The chopped bones and flesh of the victims fell into the sewers
and were carried away with a stream of sewage into the river Kuban.
Having discovered this horrible place, the Germans gave permission to all
who wished to view this inhuman device. Thousands of people visited the place,
among them the author of these lines.
Other nations direct their talents towards the discovery of better
medicines, new materials, better means of communication to make living
conditions better. The Russian people are using all their talents for the
production of machines and new methods of mass murder and torture. (P. K., The
infernal device of the Russian Communists (by an eyewitness), in The Black
Deeds of the Kremlin: A White Book, Ukrainian Association of Victims of Russian
Communist Terror, Toronto, 1953, pp. 123-124)
M. Kowal
BOLSHEVIK MURDERS
I am Michael Kowal, from the town of Kaminka Strumylova in the Lviw Region
in Ukraine. During the communist occupation of Western Ukraine I personally
witnessed three arrests in my native town on June 22, 1941, those of Bohdan
Mulkevich, and Michael Mulkevich who lived on Zamok Street, and Michael
Mulkevich's blacksmith apprentice, presumably from the village of Rymaniw in
the same Region. They were suspected of disloyalty to the communist regime.
After th communist retreat from Kaminska-Strumylova they were found in the
town prison with 33 other victims, murdered in a horribly sadistic manner. All
the corpses were tied together with barbed wire and all bore signs of terrible
beatings. Some had nails driven into their skulls. None of them had been shot
to death. Their bodies, nude and badly mauled, were practically unrecognizable
to their relatives.
Bohdan Mulkevish's wife recognized her husband, but, trying to verify her
identification by his gold teeth, found them missing. All the bodies were
taken away fro interment.
That Same day 19 other bodies were discovered near the village of Todan
about 9 or 10 kilometers from Kaminka-Strumylova. They were tied to trees and
their chests were pierced with bayonets. These were all identified by
relatives and taken away for burial. (M. Kowal, Bolshevik Murders, in The
Black Deeds of the Kremlin: A White Book, Ukrainian Association of Victims of
Russian Communist Terror, Toronto, 1953, p. 529)
Andriy Vodopyan
A RAVINE FILLED WITH THE BODIES OF CHILDREN
I was serving in the Soviet Russian Army. Our artillery unit was
retreating before the Germans in the direction of Yeletsk. On September 18,
1941, our unit came to a wide ravine situated about 14 miles from Chartsysk
station, and about 60 miles from the city of Staline. The ravine stretched
from the station of Chartsysk to the station of Snizhy. When we approached the
ravine we were taken aback by a horrible sight. The whole ravine was filled
with the bodies of children. They were lying in different positions. Most of
them were from 14 to 16 years of age. They were dressed in black, and we
recognized them as students of the F.S.U., a well-known trade and craft
school. We counted 370 bodies altogether. All of them had been killed by
machine gun fire.
This group of children was being evacuated from Staline when the Germans
neared the city. The children had marched 60 miles, and, exhausted and unable
to continue walking, asked for transportation. The officers in charge promised
to send them trucks. Instead of trucks, a detachment of the Russian political
police (NKVD) arrived, and shot the children in cold blood with machine guns.
This ravine, filled with hundreds of bodies of slain children, moved even the
soldiers, accustomed as they were to the sight of death. (Andriy Vodopyan, A
Ravine Filled With the Bodies of Children, in S. O. Pidhainy (ed.), The Black
Deeds of the Kremlin: A White Book, Ukrainian Association of Victims of Russian
Communist Terror, Toronto, 1953, p. 529)
Rev. J. Chyrva was imprisoned in 1941 when the Russian Communist armies were
withdrawing from the city of Riwne. He happened to be cast into one of those
jails in which the communists, fleeing from advancing German armies, attempted
to rid themselves of as many prisoners as possible by throwing hand-grenades
into the crowded cells. When the first grenade was thrown into the cell where
Rev. J. Chyrva was kept, he was the first to fall – his foot shattered. On him
fell many mutilated bodies, covering him, thus saving his life. Later, when
people came into the cell, they found all the prisoners dead with the exception
of Rev. J. Chyrva. He is alive today, a witness of that horrible
manslaughter. (Rev. Lev Buchak, Persecution of Ukrainian Protestants under the
Soviet Rule, in S. O. Pidhainy (ed.), The Black Deeds of the Kremlin: A White
Book, Ukrainian Association of Victims of Russian Communist Terror, Toronto,
1953, p. 529)
The Bolsheviks had arrested thousands of Ukrainian patriots, and prior to their
retreat, they killed them savagely. For some reason even highly regarded
Jewish authors understate the number of Ukrainian victims of Bolshevik terror.
Gerald Reitlinger gives a figure of three to four thousand in Lviv alone.
Hilberg speaks of "the Bolsheviks deporting Ukrainians," but he does not
furnish any overall figures. But on the basis of a German document (RSHA
IV-A-1, Operational Report USSR no. 28, 20 July 1941, No-2943), which I was
unable to verify, he recounts one particularly horrible episode:
In Kremenets 100-150 Ukrainians had been killed by the Soviets.
When some of the exhumed corpses were found without skin, rumors
circulated that the Ukrainians had been thrown into kettles of
boiling water. The Ukrainian population retaliated by seizing
130 Jews and beating them to death with clubs.
He also quotes the French collaborator Dr. Frederic as saying that the
Bolsheviks killed eighteen thousand Ukrainian political prisoners in Lviv and
its outskirts alone.
Basing his remarks on an anonymous article entitled "The Ethnocide of
Ukrainians in the USSR," in the dissident journal Ukrainian Herald, Issue 7-8,
the Ukrainian-American publicist Lew Shankowsky gives the following number of
victims of Bolshevik terror in Galicia and Volhynia: as many as forty thousand
killed in the prisons of Lviv, Lutsk, Rivne, Dubno, Ternopil, Stanyslaviv (now
Ivano-Frankivsk), Stryi, Drohobych, Sambir, Zolochiv and other towns and
settlements. The fact of the matter is that, justifiably or not, some
Ukrainians felt that some Jews were in the employ of the Stalinist secret
police, the NKVD. For instance, it was pointed out to me by a resident of
Western Ukraine that a high NKVD official in Lviv, a certain Barvinsky, was
Jewish, despite his Ukrainian name. (Yaroslav Bilinsky, Methodological
Problems and Philosophical Issues in the Study of Jewish-Ukrainian Relations
During the Second World War, pp. 373-394, in Howard Aster and Peter J.
Potichnyj (eds.), Ukrainian-Jewish Relations in Historical Perspective,
Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, Edmonton, 1990, footnotes deleted)
In their hasty and often panic-stricken retreat, the Soviet authorities were
not about to evacuate the thousands of prisoners they had arrested, mostly
during their last months of rule in western Ukraine. Their solution,
implemented at the end of June and in early July 1941, was to kill all inmates
regardless of whether they had committed minor or major crimes or were being
held for political reasons. According to estimates, from 15,000 to 40,000
prisoners were killed during the Soviet retreat from eastern Galicia and
western Volhynia. (Paul Robert Magocsi, A History of Ukraine, University of
Washington Press, Seattle, 1996, p. 624)
Was the Ukrainian perception of disproportionate Jewish participation in the Soviet secret
police accurate? Observations such as the following suggest that perhaps it was: Yoram Sheftel,
Ivan Demjanjuk's Israeli defense attorney, reports the following in connection with his visit to
the Simferopol, Ukraine, KGB headquarters in 1990:
On the right-hand wall was a stone memorial plaque engraved with the names of
about thirty KGB men from Simferopol who had fallen in the Great Patriotic War,
as the Soviets call World War II. I was shocked and angry as I read the names:
the first was Polonski and the last Levinstein, and all those between were ones
like Zalmonowitz, Geller and Kagan – all Jews. The best of Jewish youth in
Russia, the cradle of Zionism, had sold itself and its soul to the Red Devil.
(The Demjanjuk Affair: The Rise and Fall of a Show-Trial, 1994, p. 301)
Curious wording, incidentally. In the eyes of Sheftel, this plaque does not list torturers and
butchers, it lists "youth." These torturers and butchers are not chosen from the "worst" of
Jews, but from the "best." And whereas a Ukrainian might tend to the view that the members of
the NKVD were the Red Devil, Sheftel views them as merely having sold their souls to some
hypothetical Red Devil residing elsewhere. Sheftel, it seems, extends his sympathy not to the
victims of the torturers and butchers, but to the torturers and butchers themselves, who after
all are merely "the best of Jewish youth" led astray by some "Red Devil" – in other words, to be
viewed not as falling among the victimizers, but among the victims. I suppose that there exist
even today apologists who might speak of Adolf Eichmann as an instance of the best of German
youth who had sold his soul to the Nazi Devil.
Of course Sheftel's sample of 30 is not necessarily a sample that is representative of the
entire NKVD; however the Jewish domination of the entire NKVD is not a rare or dubious
hypothesis, but is one, rather, that is upheld from more than one direction:
As a Jew, I'm interested in another question entirely: Why were there so many
Jews among the NKVD-MVD investigators – including many of the most terrible?
It's a painful question for me but I cannot evade it. (Yevgenia Albats, The
State Within a State: The KGB and its Hold on Russia, Past, Present and Future,
1994, p. 147)
Jews abounded [also] at the lower levels of the Party machinery especially in
the Cheka and its successors, the GPU, the OGPU and the NKVD.... It is
difficult to suggest a satisfactory reason for the prevalence of Jews in the
Cheka. It may be that having suffered at the hand of the former Russian
authorities they wanted to seize the reins of real power in the new state for
themselves. (Leonard Shapiro, The Role of Jews in the Russian Revolutionary
Movement, Slavonic and East European Review, 1961, 40, p. 165)
More recently, I have compiled statistics from data presented by Shapoval which suggests that
out of every ten leading members of the Cheka-GPU-NKVD in Ukraine, 6 were Jewish, 2 Russian, 1
Ukrainian, and 1 other.
Now within this historical context – the Ukrainian Holocaust eight years previously, the
21-month Communist reign of terror, and the recent slaughter of Ukrainians by the retreating
Communists – would it be surprising if upon the arrival of the Germans, these Western Ukrainians
had felt liberated by the Germans and at the same time vengeful toward the Communists, and would
it be surprising if among their first actions was the seeking out and punishment of any
perpetrators and collaborators who had not been able to flee with the retreating Communists?
No, it would not be surprising – and yet that is not what happened.
Zero Retribution
Prior to the arrival of the Germans, there was no anti-Jewish or anti-Communist violence. If
any impulse for vengeance existed, then it was inhibited – the Ukrainian population had been
decimated, deprived of its leadership, throttled into submission. For all they knew, the
Communists who had just left might return that very same day and resume the slaughter, starting
first with any who had dared to lift a vengeful hand. For all they knew, this was just the calm
before a new storm, just a few hours' respite while names were taken for the next round of NKVD
executions. And the last person to lift a hand against would be a Jew because the Jew had
traditionally occupied the position of authority:
From the Ukraine Einsatzkommando 6 of Einsatzgruppe C reported as follows:
Almost nowhere can the population be persuaded to take
active steps against the Jews. This may be explained by the
fear of many people that the Red Army may return. Again and
again this anxiety has been pointed out to us. Older people
have remarked that they had already experienced in 1918 the
sudden retreat of the Germans. In order to meet the fear
psychosis, and in order to destroy the myth ... which, in the
eyes of many Ukrainians, places the Jew in the position of
the wielder of political power, Einsatzkommando 6 on several
occasions marched Jews before their execution through the
city. Also, care was taken to have Ukrainian militiamen
watch the shooting of Jews.
This "deflation" of the Jews in the public eye did not have the desired
effect. After a few weeks, Einsatzgruppe C complained once more that the
inhabitants did not betray the movements of hidden Jews. The Ukrainians were
passive, benumbed by the "Bolshevist terror." Only the ethnic Germans in the
area were busily working for the Einsatzgruppe. (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction
of the European Jews, 1961, p. 202)
The picture painted by Raul Hilberg is not at all the one of Ukrainians enthusiastically
slaughtering Jews that was painted by Morley Safer in his 60 Minutes broadcast:
The Slavic population stood estranged and even aghast before the unfolding
spectacle of the "final solution." There was on the whole no impelling desire
to cooperate in a process of such utter ruthlessness. The fact that the Soviet
regime, fighting off the Germans a few hundred miles to the east, was still
threatening to return, undoubtedly acted as a powerful restraint upon many a
potential collaborator. (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews,
1985, p. 308)
Raul Hilberg is not the only historian testifying to the fact that the Einsatzgruppen organized
and instigated the pogroms, and that they were disappointed by the results. Leo Heiman below,
for example, reaffirms this, and adds the detail that the pogromists had a short attention span
with respect to the German-inspired motive of anti-Semitism, being instead readily diverted by
"looting and plunder." "Lemberg," of course, is Lviv:
The results of diligent Nazi efforts to organize "Ukrainian pogrom mobs" were
disappointing.... According to official German documents introduced by the
prosecution during the Eichmann trial, the Nazi commander of S.D. Einsatzgruppe
"Kommando Lemberg" complained to his superiors that "...to rely on local people
to take the law of retribution in their own hands, and themselves carry out
final solution measures against Jews, is hopeless. We organized several action
groups, but they soon degenerated into ordinary pogrom mobs, more interested in
looting and plunder than in energetic and forceful measures against Jews. The
number of Jews eliminated by mobs runs less than two thousand in my area of
operations, and the damage done by mobs to property, as well as the disruption
of order, does not justify this kind of action. I have no choice but to employ
my own men." (Leo Heiman, Ukrainians and the Jews, in Walter Dushnyck,
Ukrainians and Jews: A Symposium, The Ukrainian Congress Committee of American,
New York, 1966, p. 60)
In reading the above Einsatzgruppe report, many question come to mind. Just how would a pogrom
mob be organized? – Might it be staffed entirely by criminals held in custody by the Germans?
What weapons would be given the pogromists? Would it be safe to give incarcerated criminals
weapons and then to release them on their own recognisance? Obviously, they would tend to
escape and then, being armed, would be particularly dangerous to recapture. Wouldn't armed
Germans have to accompany the pogromists in order to steer them to the proper targets, to keep
them from getting out of control, and to make sure that weapons were returned? – In which case,
how much of the killing would be done by the supervising Germans? What was the ethnic
composition of these pogromists? Above I cited Raul Hilberg stating "Only the ethnic Germans in
the area were busily working for the Einsatzgruppe," which brings us to the realization that a
pogrom within Ukraine is not necessarily a pogrom perpetrated by Ukrainians, and so brings us
also to the question of how many of the pogromists were Germans, Russians, Poles, or Jews?
Raul Hilberg discusses two motives for the Nazis to incite pogroms in Ukraine, the second of
which will be of particular relevance when we discuss further below the origin of the historical
documentary footage broadcast by 60 Minutes:
Why did the Einsatzgruppen endeavor to start pogroms in the occupied areas?
The reasons which prompted the killing units to activate anti-Jewish outbursts
were partly administrative, partly psychological. The administrative principle
was very simple: every Jew killed in a pogrom was one less burden for the
Einsatzgruppen. A pogrom brought them, as they expressed it, that much closer
to the "cleanup goal".... The psychological consideration was more
interesting. The Einsatzgruppen wanted the population to take a part and a
major part at that – of the responsibility for the killing operations. "It was
not less important, for future purposes," wrote Brigadefuhrer Dr. Stahlecker,
"to establish as an unquestionable fact that the liberated population had
resorted to the most severe measures against the Bolshevist and Jewish enemy,
on its own initiative and without instructions from German authorities." In
short, the pogroms were to become the defensive weapon with which to confront
an accuser, or an element of blackmail that could be used against the local
population. (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 1961, p. 203)
