Scope for action under German Occupation

The path to the annihilation of Jewry in eastern and southern Europe was not clearly mapped out. Those giving the orders were reliant on their subordinates being willing to carry them out. They were also reliant on the support of the local population in these areas. In the course of the persecution process, various possible courses of action were presented to those involved. Their subsequent actions were determined not only by orders and external pressures but also their perception of the situation, their views and their motives.

The willingness of locals to cooperate with the German occupiers varied according to the region, political and ideological orientation and personal interests. Jews sometimes were hidden by their neighbours, but more frequently had to face their indifference and fear. Yet they were also confronted with collaborators, who denounced and robbed them and even took part in their murder because they hated Jews, bowed to German orders and hoped that their involvement in the murder of Jews would give them material or political advantages.

There were only a few Germans in the occupied territories who evaded orders to participate in the murders or who tried to save Jews. Their actions prove that humane behaviour was possible even under the National Socialist regime, and that it was successful in some cases.

The Jews were initially defenceless against the murder squads.  However, resistance movements developed in many areas. Self-help organisations were set up to alleviate the misery created by the Germans in the ghettos.  Active resistance was hampered by territorial and social isolation and the chronic lack of food, medicines and weapons. Only in exceptional cases did Jews manage to flee the towns and join partisan groups. Although armed resistance in the ghettos was ultimately unsuccessful, from 1942-43 on, Jewish partisan units saved thousands of lives.

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6.1.

German Occupation in Eastern Europe 1941-1944

6.2.

Collaboration

Following the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the then Lithuanian capital Kaunas on 22 June 1941, Lithuanian nationalists took violent action against the Jewish population. The pogroms continued even after the Germans occupied the town on 24 June. Wehrmacht authorities did nothing to intervene.

On Heydrich’s instruction, SS-Brigadeführer  Stahlecker, Chief of Einsatzgruppe A, encouraged the actions of the murder squads and tried at the same time to put the Lithuanian militia under the orders of the German Security Police.

By 11 July 1941 around 7,800 Jews had died in massacres in the town and the surrounding forts VII and IX.

6.3.

Bystanders

On 12 September 1939, the film-maker Leni Riefenstahl witnessed a German war crime as she was filming in the small Polish town of Konskie.

Wehrmacht soldiers forced Jewish men to dig a grave in a park for four German soldiers who had been shot dead behind the front.  When the Jews left the park on the instruction of a German police officer, the Flakoffizier (anti-aircraft officer) Bruno Kleinmichl fired two shots at the supposedly fleeing Jews. Wehrmacht soldiers then fired randomly at the panic-stricken group, killing twenty-two people.

Riefenstahl complained to General Walter von Reichenau, Commander of the 10^th Army, about the actions of the German soldiers and resigned from her post as war correspondent.

A court martial sentenced Lieutenant Kleinmichl to a year in prison. The sentence was probably never carried out because of Hitler’s amnesty for German war crimes.

6.4.

Rescuers

On 26 July 1942 – a few days after Himmler’s order to liquidate all Polish ghettos by the end of the year – Wehrmacht soldiers blocked a police unit from entering the Przemysl ghetto and thus prevented a planned “evacuation operation”.

To justify this unusual step the local commandant Max Liedtke and his adjutant, Dr. Albert Battel, referred to an agreement with the local police, according to which Jewish forced labourers working for the Wehrmacht were to be exempted from evacuation from the ghetto.

With a unit of soldiers, Battel himself got a further 80 to 100 Jews out of the ghetto and gave them shelter in the local commandant’s headquarters.

However, over the next few days the SS and police completed the liquidation of the ghetto. At least 10,000 Jews were deported to the Belzec death camp or shot dead right there.

At Himmler’s instigation, Battel was to be expelled from the NSDAP at the end of the war and imprisoned.

6.5.

Resistance

Between 1941 and 1944 a large Jewish partisan group led by Anatolij “Tuvia” Bielski and his brothers was based in the inaccessible forests of Naliboki (Belorussia). The group did take part in operations carried out by the Soviet partisan leadership but focused on securing their own survival and rescuing Jewish refugees – primarily from the ghetto in the town of Nowogrudok. The establishment of an extensive “family camp” with an improvised hospital, school, workshops and a synagogue also allowed women, children and the elderly to survive.

Following the German retreat in summer 1944 Bielski returned to Nowogrudok with more than 1,200 people who had been saved.

Many former “Bielski partisans” emigrated via Germany to the USA and Israel at the end of the war.

6.6.

Self-Assertion

Eugenia Tabaczynska was forced to move to the Warsaw ghetto with her family in 1940. Despite the horrendous living conditions, she went to the secret grammar school there and graduated in spring 1942. Like the rest of her family she worked for the German company “Schultz & Co.”, which protected her from evacuation from the ghetto. During the ghetto uprising in April 1943 she was able to hide in a bunker in the company grounds.

Text: Florian Dierl

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