The victims of the Nazi regime share their memories
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Eva Umlauf Hecht
Eva Umlauf was born on December 19, 1942 in a forced labor camp for Jewish pr... -
Hendrina Kalkoene - Swaab
Before the Second World War, my grandmother Hendrina (Henny) lived with her b... -
Hartog (Harry) Kalkoene
Hartog (Harry) Kalkoene grew up together with his brother Willem, father Bern... -
Lotty (Charlotte) Veffer
Lotty Veffer was born on 10 July 1921 on the Tugelaweg 46 into a happy non-be... -
Jacqueline Turfkruyer
The hardest part was losing my mother. That still hurts. Why did they tear fa... -
Frits Evenbly
“This is where I lived during the war” my dad, Frits Evenbly began in a tremb... -
Jean Maupoint
Jean Maupoint was born on 24 September 1907 in Luçon, France. He moved to Cle... -
Tadeusz Pietrzykowski
Tadeusz Pietrzykowski was born on April 8, 1917 in Warsaw. Shortly before the... -
Herman Grossman
Herman Grossman was born in Kladno, CSR in 1931. Herman then moved to Aknaszl... -
Selma Velleman
Selma van de Perre - Velleman is the daughter of the Jewish actor, singer and...
The Star of David
After the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, German authorities imposed a mandatory marker or "Jewish badge" in certain Polish towns and villages. The first town to have such a decreed was Wloclawek on October 29, 1939. Governor General Hans Frank ordered on November 23, 1939, that all Jews over the age of ten wear a "Jewish Star" which was a white armband with a blue six-sided star, worn over the right upper sleeve on top of the garments. Heavy penalties were imposed for those caught not wearing it.
On September 1, 1941, Reinhard Heydrich, Chief of the Reich Security Main Office Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA), ordered all Jews in the Reich from the age of six to wear a yellow Star of David to be worn on the chest. The yellow star shaped badge with the word "Jew" printed on the inside. Spelling of the word Jew depended on the country where the Star was issued. For instance Holland had the word "Jood" and France the word "Juif".
Discover the transit-, concentration- and deathcamps
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SobiborMay 1940 - January 1945 -
Kamp SchoorlDecember 1940 - October 26, 1941 -
MajdanekOctober 1, 1941 - July 22, 1944 -
Neuengamme13 December 1938 - 2 May 1945 -
Camp ErikaSummer 1941 - 31 december 1946 -
Mauthausen8 August 1938 - 5 May 1945 -
Buchenwald15 July 1937 - 11 April 1945 -
AuschwitzMay 1940 – January 1945 -
DachauMarch 22, 1933 - April 29, 1945 -
RavensbrückMay 1939 - April 1945
How did they train the Einzatsgruppen?
The members of the Einsatzgruppen were prepared from May 1941 for their deployment on the Eastern Front at the Border Police School in Pretzsch on the Elbe, about 150 kilometers southwest of Berlin. The Einsatzgruppen operated in territories occupied by the Wehrmacht (German army) after the invasion of Poland, the Soviet Union and other Baltic states, begining in June 1941.
Who were the men of the Einzatsgruppen?
The Einsatzgruppen or death squads, adding up to around 3.000 men, consisted of young members of the Sicherheitspolizei (Sipo), Sicherheitsdienst (SD), Ordnungspolizei (Orpo) from mostly lower class backgrounds and selected members of the Waffen SS.
Who were in charge of these killing units?
The Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommandos were led by highly educated young men, career officers in the SS and SD. Carefully selected men from the inner circle of Reinhard Heydrich. A lot of them had doctoral research degrees and were academically well trained in race rights, criminal law etc.
These men were selected for a reason. To properly convey the image of the racial ideology to the men of the death squads who were not natrual born killers. The Einsatzgruppen carried out their mass killings mostly with the help of uniformed volunteers from the local police forces from the Baltic states.
With the invasion of Poland on September 1st, 1939, the order for the Einsatzgruppen was to murder Polish leaders, scientists and scholars, members of the church, teachers and nobility. In 1941 the activities of the Einsatzgruppen reached a peak when they were sent to Russia to eliminate the 'undesirables' such as Jews, Roma (The Gypsies of Eastern Europe), communist leaders and Russian officers during Operation Barbarossa (the invasion of the Soviet Union).
The Einsatzgruppen reports
A report by the SS Standartenführer Karl Jäger, commander of the Einsatzkommando 3. He stated that the areas were "Judenfrei". The report kept an almost daily running total of the liquidations of 137.346 people in the Baltic states.
Einsatzgruppen commanders during Operation Barbarossa
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SS-Brigadeführer Dr. Franz W. Stahlecker
Einsatzgruppe A was assigned to Army Group Nord from Von Leeb, operated in the Baltic states up to Leningrad. It was divided into Sonderkommandos 1a and 1b, after which Sonderkommando 1b was divided into Einsatzkommandos 2 and 3.
Death
Franz. W. Stahlecker was killed on 22 March 1942 in a battle with Soviet partisans near Krasnogvardeysk, Soviet Union. -
SS-Brigadeführer Arthur Nebe
Einsatzgruppe B was assigned to Von Bock's Army Group Mitte, had its headquarters in Smolensk and operated in Belarus, from Belarus to Moscow. It was divided into the Sonderkommandos 7a and 7b, and the Einsatzkommandos 8 and 9, and a special group of Sonderkommando 7c, which could advance to Moscow when in German hands.
Death
Around mid October 1941 Nebe returns to Berlin to take up his work for the RSHA. He is later arrested and hanged for plotting against Hitler. -
SS-Gruppenführer Dr. Dr. Otto Rasch
Einsatzgruppe C was assigned to Gerd von Rundstedt's Heeresgruppe Süd. It had its headquarters in Kiev and operated in the northern and central part of Ukraine. It was divided into Sonderkommandos 4a and 4b and the Einsatzkommandos 5 and 6.
Death
Rasch was indicted at the Einsatzgruppen trial at the end of September 1947 but discontinued on 5 February 1948 because he had Parkinson's disease. He died later that year on 1 November in Wehrstedt, Lower Saxony. -
SS-Gruppenführer Dr. Otto Ohlendorf
Einsatzgruppe D was assigned to the 11th Army, had its headquarters in Sevastopol (Simferopol) and operated in Moldavia, southern Ukraine (Bessarabia), the Crimea and (if it came to that) the Caucasus. It was divided into Sonderkommandos 10a and 10b and the Einsatzkommandos 11a, 11b and 12.
Death
Ohlendorf was convicted of crimes against humanity and spent three years in detention before being hanged at the Landsberg Prison in Bavaria on 7 June 1951
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SS-Brigadeführer Heinz Jost
Einsatzgruppe A was assigned to Army Group Nord from Von Leeb, operated in the Baltic states up to Leningrad. It was divided into Sonderkommandos 1a and 1b, after which Sonderkommando 1b was divided into Einsatzkommandos 2 and 3.
Death
In 1951, Jost was released from Landsberg Prison. He then worked in Düsseldorf as a real estate agent. He died in 1964 at Bensheim. -
SS-Brigadeführer Erich Naumann
Einsatzgruppe B was assigned to Von Bock's Army Group Mitte, had its headquarters in Smolensk and operated in Belarus, from Belarus to Moscow. It was divided into the Sonderkommandos 7a and 7b, and the Einsatzkommandos 8 and 9, and a special group of Sonderkommando 7c, which could advance to Moscow when in German hands.
Death
Found guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity and belonging to illegal organizations, namely the SS and the SD. Naumann was sentenced to death and hanged shortly after midnight on 7 June 1951. -
SS-Gruppenführer Dr. Max Thomas
Einsatzgruppe C was assigned to Gerd von Rundstedt's Heeresgruppe Süd. It had its headquarters in Kiev and operated in the northern and central part of Ukraine. It was divided into Sonderkommandos 4a and 4b and the Einsatzkommandos 5 and 6.
Death
After the war on December 6, 1945, he attempted suicide and died from the attempt in the Luitpold Hospital in Würzburg. -
SS-Gruppenführer Dr. Otto Ohlendorf
Einsatzgruppe D was assigned to the 11th Army, had its headquarters in Sevastopol (Simferopol) and operated in Moldavia, southern Ukraine (Bessarabia), the Crimea and (if it came to that) the Caucasus. It was divided into Sonderkommandos 10a and 10b and the Einsatzkommandos 11a, 11b and 12.
Death
Ohlendorf was convicted of crimes against humanity and spent three years in detention before being hanged at the Landsberg Prison in Bavaria on 7 June 1951
The orders for the Einsatzgruppen were quite broad so that they could use much of their own interpretation as to the way they eliminated the 'enemies of the Reich'
Did the Einsatzgruppen have enough man power?
No, even with an auxiliary force of 10.000 police officers and 33.000 locals, the Einsatzgruppen still didn't have enough man power to wipe out all the Jews in Eastern Europe. Other SS units received orders to participate in this task. Such as the Tilsit Commando (that operated in Poland), many frontline SS Brigades, the Fegelein Cavalry Division in the marshes of Polesia, the Wiking division in the Ukraine, reserve police battalion 101, the infamous SS Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger made up of convicted criminals and led by Oskar Dirlewanger, well known psychopath and convicted child molester. The Werhmacht (the regular German army) also lend a hand in the exetermination aktions.
Did the Einsatzgruppen suffer mentally from murdering innocent people?
Yes. The members of the Einsatzgruppen complained of battle fatigue and mental anguish and severe alcoholism caused by shooting large numbers of innocent men, women and children. During on of his trips to Russia in 1941, SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler learned about the psychological impact of the mass shootings on the Einsatzgruppen. He commissioned Arthur Nebe (head of Einsatzgruppe B) to explore ways of killing that were less stressful. A plan had to be devised to come up with new ways of killing on an industrial scale with less impact on the soldiers. On October 13th 1941, Heinrich Himmler ordered SS and Police Leader Odilo Globočnik based in Lublin, to begin the construction of the first extermination camp at Bełżec in occupied Poland.
Movement of the Einsatzgruppen (1941-1942)
Click on the map to enlarge
On the map you can see the movement of the Einsatzgruppen A, B, C and D. The period was from June 1941 to November 1942. These mobile killing units followed the advancing German Wehrmacht into the Soviet Union during Operation Barbarossa. The killing squads were supported by local civilians and police. During pogroms (a violent riot incited with the aim of massacring or expelling an ethnic or religious group, particularly Jews.) and mass shootings (also know as the Holocaust by bullets) tens of thousands of Jews and enemies of the Reich were murdered without any from of trial or charge throughout Eastern Europe.
Operation Reinhard facts
Under the codename: Aktion Reinhard the Nazis built several extermination camps such as: Bełżec, Treblinka and Sobibor. Aktion Reinhard was one of the largest non military operations of World War 2. In the death camps Belzec, Treblinka and Sobibor, the victims were murdered immediately upon arrival. The camps were disassembled and destroyed and the bodies of the victims excavated and burned. Wanting to cover up their crimes the SS planted trees on the locations the camps had been.
It is generally assumed (eventhough it is still debated by historians) that the operation was named after Reinhard Heydrich, the coordinator of the Final Solution, the answer to of the Jewish question outlined during the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942. Aktion Reinhard was terminated in November 1943.
Murder by gassing in the Soviet Union
Exhaust fumes from gassing vans killed around 700.000 people, mostly Jews, Roma (Gypsies), enemies of the Reich and mentally ill people. Gassing also proved to be more economical and less aggravating for the SS. However the "gas van" was not a Nazi, but a Soviet invention. The use of the gas van was invented in the Soviet Union in 1936, by Isay Berg, head of the administrative and economic department of the NKVD (Later the KGB) of Moscow. The Soviets also used the vans to suffocate batches of prisoners. These vans were hermetically sealed trucks with engine exhaust diverted to the interior compartment. A method that the Nazis gratefully copied.
Murder in gassing vans
Similar vans such as this one, were provided to the Einsatzgruppen. They were used to gas hundreds of thousands of people with Carbon monoxide, produced from the van's exhaust pipe. This invisible gas, the result of incomplete combustion of fuel, is very toxic to humans.
Result of the Einsatzgruppen
3000
Total personel of the Einsatzgruppen
Added with ± 43.000 auxiliary forces (mostly police) and locals
2000000
were mudered by the Einsatzgruppen
Around 1.5 million and possibly over 2 million people died due to mass shootings or in gas vans organised by the Einsatzgruppen.
700000
by gassing vans
Gassing was considered and proved to be more economical and less aggravating for the SS.
600
were annihilated
These villages were wiped off the map by the Einsatzgruppen.
The Holocaust was the darkest page from our history. That is one of the reasons for my website. This should never happen again.
The Final Solution
Wannsee Conference, 20 January 1942
The meeting was held in Villa Marlier in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee on 20 January 1942. Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Reich Security Main Office or in German: Reichs Sicherheits Haupt Amt (RSHA), organizes the Wannsee Conference. The meeting, which lasted only 90 minutes, was attended by senior government officials of Nazi Germany and Schutzstaffel (SS) leaders.
Purpose of the Wannsee Conference
The purpose of the Wannsee conference, was to ensure the co-operation of administrative leaders of various government departments in the implementation of the Final solution to the Jewish question, whereby most of the Jews of German-occupied Europe would be deported to occupied Poland and murdered.
Who attended the Wannsee Conference
The following people participated in the meeting on the "Final Solution" of the Jewish question, held on 20 January 1942 at Am Grossen Wannsee 56-58 in Berlin.
Representing the SS at the Wannsee Conference
Representing the agencies of the State at the Wannsee Conference
In the course of the meeting, Heydrich outlined how European Jews would be rounded up and sent to extermination camps in the General Government (the occupied part of Poland), where they would be killed.
Discrimination against Jews began immediately after the Nazi seizure of power on 30 January 1933. Violence and economic pressure were used by the Nazi regime to encourage Jews to voluntarily leave the country. After the invasion of Poland in September 1939, the extermination of European Jewry began, and the killings continued and accelerated after the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.
Hermann Göring's authorisation
On 31 July 1941, Hermann Göring gave written authorization to Heydrich to prepare and submit a plan for a "total solution of the Jewish question" in territories under German control and to coordinate the participation of all involved government organisations. At the conference, Heydrich emphasised that once the deportation process was complete, the fate of the deportees would become an internal matter under the purview of the SS. A secondary goal was to arrive at a definition of who was Jewish.
A concentration camp work suit. One of the outcomes of the Wannsee Conference: to imprison and annihilate the Western European Jews.
At the end of the meeting Heydrich gave Eichmann instructions about what was to appear in the notes. They were not to be verbatim: Eichmann ensured that nothing too explicit appeared in them.
Notes
In March 1947 Robert Kempner, the Chief Prosecutor in the Wilhelmstraßen Trial, received a collection of files from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from the period of Joachim von Ribbentrop. These files were of course in German and had to be translated into English. Among the documents was Martin Luther's copy of the top secret notes of the Wannsee conference. These notes, and their translation, were the first reports of this meeting to be released. There had only been 30 copies of the notes. All other copies were destroyed before the end of the war.
Discovery of the Katyn massacre
It was in the spring of 1942, that the bodies of around 22.000 Polish military officers and intelligence prisoners of the Kaytin massacre (carried out by the NKVD - the Soviet secret police in April - May 1940) were discovered. The free western countries received all kinds of reports of massacres taking place in occupied Europe. This forced the Nazis to find a way to hide the evidence for their war crimes. SS-Standartenführer Paul Blobel was appointed head of Sonderaktion 1005 in March 1942. The operation only started in June, after the assassination attempt on Reinhard Heydrich, and started in the Chełmno extermination camp, where the bodies were burned after exhumation.
Sonderaktion 1005
Sonderaktion 1005, also known as Enterdungsaktion, was the code name for the Nazis large-scale operation to destroy all evidence of the Holocaust during WW2. The operation was started in June 1942 and lasted until the end of 1944.
The work of Aktion 1005 was mainly performed by prisoners. They were forced to open the mass graves and burn the bodies in large pyres. After all the bodies in that particular spot were burned, the site was leveled, plowed and planted. This to create the appearance that it was just a natural area. The prisoners who took part in Aktion 1005 were regularly murdered and replaced by other prisoners, in order to guarantee the secret nature of the operation. There are some known cases where prisoners tried to escape this fate, but those attempts were not successful.
In June 1943 the Germans also started burning bodies in the other parts of Poland and the Soviet Union. For this purpose, two special Sonderkommandos were created, consisting of prisoners. One Sonderkommando worked in the vicinity of Berdichev and Zamość. In the Ukraine they cleared the graves of camp Janovska near Lviv. The other Sonderkommando worked in the regions around Riga and Dvinsk. Sonderaktion 1005 also moved to areas in Belarus and the Baltic States, where bodies of Russian prisoners of war were burned.
In mid-1944, the activities of Sonderaktion 1005 mainly focused on the Government General in Poland. The operation soon moved to German-annexed areas of Poland as well. Operations also took place in Yugoslavia, including at Jasenovac concentration camp
Concentration and deathcamps in Europe
In concentration- and death or extermination camps such as Auschwitz, Bełżec, Chełmno, Majdanek, Sobibór, and Treblinka which were located in occupied Poland, the Nazi murdered on an industrial scale. From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than one thousand concentration camps on its own territory and in parts of German occupied Europe all were run exclusively by the SS.
Paul Blobel
Paul Blobel born on 13 August 1894 in Potsdam Germany, was a Nazi commander of
- Sonderkommando 4a of Einsatzgruppe C
- Sonderaktion 1005
After the war he was sentenced to death by the US Nuremberg Military Tribunal in the Einsatzgruppen trial. Up to 59.018 killings are credited to Blobel, although he claimed to have killed 10.000 - 15.000 people. He was hanged at Landsberg Prison shortly after midnight on June 7, 1951.
Murder of innocent people by mass shootings
The Einsatzgruppen and their auxilliaries and collaborators perpetrated war crimes with mass shootings of Jews in the occupied territories in Eastern Europe. Around 2 million Jews were murdered in these mass shooting massacres also known as "Holocaust by Bullets'.
Mischlingen / Half breeds
A difficult issue at the Wannsee Conference was the treatment of Jews born of mixed Jewish-non-Jewish marriages or those whose grandparents were Jewish. The Nazis called them "Mischlingen" (half-breeds in English) 1st and 2nd degree. No agreement was reached on that. Often people with this or similar backgrounds ended up in the concentration camps. There were some differences with regard to the Nuremberg Race Laws of September 15th, 1935. The most striking addition is the sterilization as an escape clause. There are also some minor adjustments:
- Who were married before September 17, 1935 to someone of German blood. Their children (Mischlingen 2nd degree) are also equal to Germans.
- Indispensable for the state. If their status changes in the future, they would become Jews again.
- Mischlingen 1st degree of these two categories who did not allow themselves to be sterilized were considered Jews.
- Descended from two Mischlingen of the 2nd degree.
- Have a distinctively Jewish appearance.
- Acting and feeling like a Jew.
Law for the Safeguard of German Blood and German Honor barred marriage between Jews and other Germans.
The origin of the Nazi ghettos
The SS and German authorities concentrated the Jewish population in ghettos during WW2. A ghetto was often an enclosed area of a town in which Jews and so called 'enemies of the Reich' were separated from the non incarcerated people.
The Nazis saw the ghettos as a temporary measure to control and segregate the Jews while their leadership in Berlin debated over the options to achieve the final goal of removing all of the Jewish population.
Living conditions were miserable and food was scarse. The Nazis established at least 1.100 ghettos across the occupied countries in Eastern Europe.
The SS (or Schutzstaffe) was originally a paramilitary elite organisation that acted as Adolf Hitler's personal bodyguards and was founded in 1925. The SS was solely responsible for running the the concentration camps and deathcamps and for setting up each ghetto and ensuring that the administration of the ghettos ran smoothly.