Bialystok, 27 June 1941: Planned Slaughter Or "improvised" Action?
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MASSIM0 ARICO .:. Bialystok, 27 June 1941: planned slaughter or "improvised" action?
The city and its houses, from its foundation to its top, I destroyed, I devastated, I burned with fire. Sennacherib, Babylon 689 B.C.
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I. THE FACTS
Around midday of 27 June 1941, the tragedy begun. Since the early hours of dawn, Wehrmacht units had entered Bialystok, an ancient Polish town located at the crossroad of the Baltic, Germanic and Slavic worlds. Of the more than 90.000 inhabitants identified by the census of 1931, about 50.000 formed the Jewish community, that together with that of Vilnius, represented the two most flourishing askenazian cultural realities in North-Eastern Europe. During the morning, in the wake of the 221.Sicherungs-Division of the Wehrmacht, a battalion appeared, that was not formally part of that division, but had been assigned to it, in order to perform security tasks in the rear area: in particular, according to the orders issued by the divisional commander, Gen.Ltn. Johann Pflugbeil, the battalion had to "cleanse the town of any Russian stragglers and anti-German peoples, and to act for the maintaining of calm, security and orders, within the boundaries of the city of Bialystok" 1. This unit was the Polizei-Bataillon 309 of Cologne. We are talking about a recently-formed battalion 2 almost totally lacking of war experience, that had been transferred to Radom and Pionki, in Poland, on 23 September 1940, and of which we have no details concerning its involvement in war crimes, before 27 June 1941. What is certain is that, it was subjected to some hours of political indoctrination, shortly before entering the Soviet territory, the showing of anti-Semitic movies, included 3: however, nothing more than the scheduling of the training tables, in which just a couple of lessons of "weltanshaunliche Schulung" per week, were usually planned. The battalion was 500 men strong, subdivided among three companies: - Bataillon Stab: Maj. Ernst Weis - the 1/309 under the orders of Hptm. Hans Behrens - the 2/309 under the orders of Oltn Johann Höhl - the 3/309 under the orders of Oltn Rolf-Joachim Buchs The Bialystok Synagogue - circa 1920
We have the names of other officers belonging to the battalions: Ltn. Gorgs, platoon leader of the 1/309; Ltn. Theo Oldenburg, commander of another platoon of the 1/309; Ltn. Wilhelm Porschen, commander of the 2nd platoon of the 3/309; Ltn. Heinrich Schneider, leader of the 4th platoon of the 3/309. Two of these companies, the 1/309 and the 3/309 entered Bialystok on 27 June, between 9 A.M. and midday; later, in the afternoon, the 2/309 followed 4. It is unclear, at this point, by whom the implementation of the subsequent events was decided. What is certain is that, around midday, Behrens and Buchs ordered the two companies – gathered on the market square – to proceed with the rounding-up of the Jewish Quarter, whose male inhabitants were forced from their homes and driven to the square; many other Jews were locked up into the Synagogue 5. During this first stage, amidst the crackling of authomatic weapons, grenades exploding against the door’s houses, implorations and screams, humiliations and brutalities, there were about 50÷250 victims among the Jews, some of which were the phisically unmovable patients 2
www.ordnungspolizei.org of the hospital. Then, the 1/309 cordoned the square and the 3/309 was deployed all around the Synagogue. Shortly after midday, the leader of the 1/309 – and deputy commander of the battalion – Behrens, reached the square, bringing the order of shooting at the Jews gathered there, which in groups were brought to the sites where the executions would have been perpetrated, and where machine-guns had been previously placed: a mass grave dug into the garden of the Governement Palace and an open field in the outskirts of the town. While the 1/309 perpetrated the executions, Behrens ordered the officers of the 3/309, to set fire to the Synagogue, where 500 Jews at least had been locked up, including several women with childrens, who had not wanted to leave their husbands and fathers 6. A double line of policemen was deployed around the Synagogue, whose doors and windows were barred from the outside and guarded with machine guns, while gasoline was poired inside. Also personnel of the 2/309 and of the Nachrichtenzug, took part at this stage. At this point, while from the Synagogue sacred hymns were raised, grenades exploded on the gasoline, that immediately started burning, quickly spreading to the whole building. Some Jews that, through the burning front door managed to escape outside, were machine gunned; others who tried from the windows, suffered the same fate. It took about half an hour before the tragedy came to its end. Then the screams ceased, and it was the silence of death. At that point, Buchs, commander of the 3/309, ordered the cease-fire to the machine guns. The burned ruins of the Bialystok Synagogue. Source ARC
Nevertheless, because of the high temperature, the fire soon began to spread to the neighbouring houses, built of wood, and it was only at that point – in front of a situation really out of control – that the battalion commander, Weis, finally arrived and ordered to put out the fire. In spite of the intervention of a group of Wehrmacht engineers, most of the quarter around the Synagogue continued to burn throughout the afternoon and the evening, to the point that, also the vehicles of the battalion had to be quickly evacuated. Further 1.000 Jews at least, under the flames and the rubble of the collapsed houses, ended by losing their lives. In short time, the fire arrived to threaten the Governement Palace, in which the Gen.Ltn. Plugbel had established the command of the 221.Sich.-Div, so much so that, the HQ of the 2.Sicherung-Regiment had to be abandoned. In the course of the evening, when finally Pflugbeil decided to intervene by calling Weis to report, this man was found completely drunk. In the same conditions were also Heinrich Schneider and several other members of the battalion. At last, when the fire was extinguished in the late evening, most of the quarter around the Synagogue had been completely destroyed. Overall, counting the executions at the mass graves, the victims into the burned houses and those locked inside the Synagogue, 2.000 Jews at least, lost their lives in Bialystok, on 27 June 1941. The survivors of the community, organized in groups and guarded by personnel of the battalion, were forced to the removal of the bodies, most of which were carbonized or reduced to ashes, to the point of having to be removed from the ground with shovels, thrown in sacks and buried into the mass grave 7. These are the facts, as the Court of Wuppertal ascertained during the trial versus Buchs and Schaffrat 8. 3
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II. CRIMES WITHOUT PUNISHMENT Weis, Ernst: Stettin 20.6.1894, Major of the Schutzpolizei, Pol.-Btl. 309, EK I. "Major Weis, on 26 and 27.6.1941, personnally led his companies to the cleansing of the wooded area area on both sides of the road Sokoly-Bialystok and secured the forest south of the town, operating tirelessly under the fire of the enemy snipers. He personnally, and with his battalion, were successfull in action. The cleansing operation, carried on by his battalion has been effective and in comparatively short time, the town and the neighbouring areas have been pacified. He is worthy of decoration". [Sicherungs-Regiment 2. Proposal of conferring of Iron Cross 1st Class to Maj. Ernst Weis, 2.7.1941] 9. Analogously, on 11 July 1941, also Behrens, Buchs, Schaffrat, Schneider and Rondholz, were awarded with EK II 10. Buchs, Rolf-Joachim: Kaiserswerth bei Düsseldorf, 12.9.1914, Lieutenant of the Schutzpolizei, Pol.-Btl. 309, EK II. After the war he became High Commissioner and instructor at the Landespolizeischule of Düsseldorf. Behrens, Hans: Rehna in Meklemburg, 13.9.1895, Captain of the Schutzpolizei, Pol.-Btl. 309, EK II After the war he became instructor of Criminal Law at the Landespolizeischule of Kiel. The main hall of the Wuppertal Trial
In the late post war period 14 members of the Police-Bataillon 309, involved in the slaughter of Bialystok, were put on trial by the Public Prosecutor of Wuppertal 11. In particular, in front of the law were called the commanders of the 1/309 (Behrens) and of the 3/309 (Buchs), the platoonleaders Porschen and Schneider, and other 10 policemen 12. As far as the battalion commander Weis, he had deceased in August 1964 13.
This proceeding, in the intention of the President of the Court, Norbert Simgen, should have had a particular relevance, both from the legal point of view, and from the media 14, given the high number of defendants, the presence, among the accusation witnesses, of survivors coming from Israel, the choosing of a symbolic place in which the hearings had to be held (the great hall of the Polizeipräsidium of Wuppertal) 15, as well as the allocation, to the correspondents, of reserved seats in the audience. Things, however, would turn out a little differently. Started on 7 October 1967, the proceeding ended on 12 March 1968, with ambiguous results: from the beginning in fact, the position of Hans Behrens had been crossed out, because of 4
www.ordnungspolizei.org health reasons 16, whereas Heinrich Schneider committed suicide in cell, few days after the beginning of the hearings. Then, to the other 12 defendants, the following judgements were passed 17: -
aquittal for Morgenbesser, Porschen e Thomas; suspended sentence for Herweg; remission of punishment for Eberhardt, Fuchs, Ihrig, Leinemann and Schütte; life-imprisonment for Buchs, Rondholz and Schaffrat.
After which this judgement – comparatively unsatisfactory in and of itself – was dismantled in 1973, after the subsequent appeal, that revoked the three life-imprisonments and sentenced only Buchs and Schaffrat to 4 and 6 years respectively, already served in any case 18.
III. CONSIDERATIONS The slaughter of Bialystok of 27 June 1941 is a particularly well-known criminal event mentioned by several authors and researchers. Nevertheless, it's still able to raise questions, the main of which may be resumed as follows: was it a wanted and premeditated massacre, and if so, to what level of connivance, or instead, was it the product of an "improvised" action, arisen from the lowest levels and, subsequently, gone out of control until its tragic final result? First of all have to be said that, this was the very first slaughter perpetrated by a police battalion on the Russian front. Soon after this, countless others followed, and far more brutal in relation to the number of victims: nevertheless, the slaughter of Bialystok marked a sort of point of no return, as far as the involvement of the Ordnungspolizei in the Jewish Genocide is concerned. In Poland in fact, since 1939, several mass executions of Jews had been perpetrated, but nothing comparable, either for number of victims, nor for the way of killing, or for the "reasons" given by the executioners 19. In this sense Bialystok was an archetype, a kind of "model" for the subsequent events. However, there are dynamics, in this massacre, that make us think to something "improvised" and managed at the lowest levels of the battalion hierarchy, rather than planned a priori; something more similar to a progrom – like those that would have been perpetrated some days later at Jedwabne and Radzilow – than to the quasi industrial-level-organized slaughters, such as Babi Yar and Rumbula 20. Ltn.Gen. Johann Pflugbeil
What is certain is that, although the overall responsibility of the slaughter have to be parcelled out, without any doubt, among several subjects, starting from the divisional commander Pflugbeil – who did nothing to prevent it 21 – up to the platoon leaders – which operated on the ground – well, the attribution of specific responsibilities seems being a bit more difficult: it has not been completely explained in fact, by whom the orders to proceed with the execution of the Jews gathered in the square had been issued, nor to set fire to the Synagogue; at the complaints of a Wehrmacht captain, in front of the tragedy that was happening, Behrens replied that the orders "came from above", while during the subsequent investigation of the 221.Sicherungs-Division, about the cause of the runaway fire, all the battalion's officers replied that "nothing they knew about". Still, Weis stated in a report that, the fire of the Synagogue was caused by the incidental explosion of an anti-tank shell, while a periodic of the German troops, attributed the event to an air bombing. 5
www.ordnungspolizei.org Actually, while Weis would have decided the rounding-up of the Jewish Quarter, the subsequent fate of the prisoners would have been left in the hands of the two company commanders 22. Therefore, according to this interpretation, the slaughter of Bialystok would have been the result of a "personal" initiative of Behrens and Buchs, approved by Weis which, in a more and more chaotic situation, would have left free hand to his subordinates. In essence, no explicit order would have been given but, what the policemen should have done – or what it was expected they would have done – it would have been implied 23. As a matter of fact, the presence of a sort of "improvisation" in the slaughter seems being confirmed by the fact that no gathering camps, nor a plan for transporting the victims outside the town would have been prepared in advance 24, but above all, by the fact that – in spite of torrid weather conditions – no preventive measures were taken to avoid the spreading of the fire from the Synagogue to the neighbouring houses, so much so that also the battalion's vehicles were menaced, as well as the commands of the 221.Sicherungs-Division 25. Amidst such a confusion, worsened by the inertia and the indifference of those who – as General Pflugbeil and his officers – had the authority to put an end to the massacre 26, it seems rather difficult to find the traces of a real premeditation of the slaughter, but instead, it seems more likely to discern the will of Behrens and Buchs to apply – in the most extreme way and according to a personal interpretation, encouraged and legitimised by Weis (or at least not hindered) – a series of orders that the battalion had received in the days before the beginning of "Barbarossa". In fact, it is confirmed that before 22 June, apart from promulgate the "Kommissarbefehl" to the personnel, concerning the suppression of the Soviet Political Commissars fallen in the German hands, as well as the so-called "Erlass Barbarossa", that authorized the collective reprisals against the civilians (kollektive Gewaltmassnahmen), giving impunity to the perpetrators, Weis enunciated to the battalion’s officers, the beginning of the war "against the Judaism and the Jews, which had to be wiped out without any exception" 27. All of this was followd by the already mentioned order of Gen.Ltn. Pflugbeil, dated 27 June 1941. Moreover, in the hours before the taking of Bialystok, the corpses of 25 German soldiers, mutilated and tortured probably by retreating Soviets, were found out by the men of the companies 1/309 and 3/309 28: a gruesome episode, that may have functioned as further priming – but basically as a pretext – for the subsequent events. In such a context of personal interpretations, ideological automatisms and implied intentionalities and with an environmental situation totally out-of-control, it is plausible that, no further solicitations were needed, to the men of the Polizei-Bataillon 309, to make them feel authorized to apply, with the utmost discretion, the more or less generic orders received. However, even though this dynamics seems probable, perhaps is not yet sufficient to explain such a brutal and gratuitous savagery, already in this very first genocidal stage. There is something aberrant and degenerated in fact, in the way in which this slaughter was perpetrated; an explosion of savage and idolatric violence, sublimated in the flames of the stake: that does not seems so much, a purificatory conflagrations, the product of minds blinded by anti-Semitism – as states by Goldhagen 29 – but rather, something similar to a primeval reflex, the resort to the fire as the immediate source of destructive power, on the part of a tribal horde engaged in a sacrilegious ritual of death 30. We note in fact, something deepest in this genocidal act, that goes beyond the "simple" application of an ideological theorem; something that found its roots in the very essence of the post-Neolithic civilization: that is, the exercise of power as such, that becomes absolute through the unlimited control – pseudo divine – over men and things 31. For this reason, we think is far too simplistic and generous to grant the alibi of anti-Semitism – that in spite of everything, is the product of a millenial and gloomy cultural process – to an event that seems, instead, a sublimate of violence, the exercise of a destructive ferocity end in itself: a real return to the "heart of darkenss", to the adoration of the idol identified with the stake. To the horror-terror of everyone that erupts uncontrollably,
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IV.CONCLUSIONS Even in the diversity of interpretations, what is certainly accepted by all the historians and researchers is the fact that, in the case of Bialystok, no explicit orders would have been issued, as far as the "treatment" of the Jews captured during the rounding-up. After which, whether the slaughter has attributable to the decision of a single commander [Weis], who would have guessed and anticipated the will of his Führer 32, or that the only doubt the perpetrators had, could have been related to the way of killing [stake? execution?] and not about the expedience to perpetrate the slaughter or not 33, what is certain is that this was a hellish bloodbath, carried on in a particularly brutal way. Therefore, it is plausible that a perverse chain of causes and events may have helped the priming of the genocidal spiral, even beyond the initial intentions (on which, never will be possible to give the ultimate answer), but that the orgy of violence, perpetrated during the rounding-up, has ended up by powering itself, up to its tragical epilogue: an epilogue that, at that point, would have been almost unavoidable. That is to say: at some time in the early afternoon of 27 June 1941, intentionally or not, a moral threshold was overcame, beyond which the distructive tendency became unstoppable. Source Wikimedia
If we want to find a synthesis on the facts of Bialystok, then we could talk about a sort of "induced spontaneity", by mean of which the potentialities of the emotional detachment between perpetrators and victims became evident: so evident that, later, would have been also managed and amplified successfully. In this way, what could have been just a transitional "emotional withdrawal" 34, ended up becoming a model, ready to be applied in the subsequent analogous circumstances. We think there are many reasons – in addition to those already mentioned – that prevent, the slaughter of Bialystok, from being considered the starting point of the Jewish Genocide (that, on our opinion, could be more properly identified with Rumbula): we believe instead that – beyond the specific causes – this was the dramatic materialization of the most destructive among the many possible scenarios. The tragedy was that, this "occasional" scenario would have been cleverly exploited and repeated countless times in the subsequent weeks, months and years, until to become a consolidated and ordinary routine.
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www.ordnungspolizei.org BIBLIOGRAPHY Bender, Sara: The "Reinhard Aktion" in the "Bialystok District". In Anders/Kutscher/Stoll, pages 186-208. Bender, Sara: The Jews of Bialystok during WWII and the Holocaust. 2008. Quoted Bender Bialystok. Browning, Christopher: Uomini comuni. Polizia tedesca e "soluzione finale" in Polonia. Turin, 1992. Curilla, Wolfgang: Die Deutsche Ordnungspolizei und der Holocaust im Baltikum und in Weissrussland, 1941-1944. Paderborn, 2006 Gerlach, Christian: Kalkulierte Morde: die deutsche Wirtschafts- und Vernichtungspolitik in Weissrussland 19411944. Hamburg, 1999. Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah: I volonterosi carnefici di Hitler. Milano, 1997. Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung (Hrsg.): Verbrechen der Wehrmacht. Dimensionen des Vernichtungskrieges 1941-1944. Hamburg, 2002 Klemp, Stefan: "Nicht Ermittelt". Polizeibataillone und die Nachkriegsjustiz. Ein Handbuch. Essen, 2005. Klemp, Stefan: Kölner Polizeibataillone in Osteuropa: die Polizeibataillone 69, 309, 319 und die Polizeireservekompanie Köln. In Buhlan/Jung, pagg. 277-298. Quoted Klemp Osteuropa Lichtenstein, Heiner: Himmlers grüne Helfer. Die Schutz- und Ordnungspolizei im "Dritten Reich". Cologne, 1990. Lichtenstein, Heiner: Ein Lügengewirr – Der Wuppertaler Prozeβ gegen Angehörige des Polizeibataillons 309. In Buhlan/Jung, pages 619-632. Quoted Lichtenstein Wuppertaler. Mallmann, Klaus-Michael/Riess, Volker/Pyta Wolfram (Hrsg): Deutscher Osten 1939-1945. Der Weltanschauungskrieg in Photos und Texten, Darmstadt, 2003. Okroy, Michael: "Man will unserem Batl. Was tun…" Der Wuppertaler Bialystok-Prozeβ 1967/68 un die Ermittlungen gegen Angehörige des Polizeibataillons 309. In Kenkmann/Spieker, pages 301317. Westermann, Edward B.: Hitler’s Police Bataillons. Einforcing Racial War in the East. Lawrence, 2005.
FOOTNOTES 1 Mallmann/Riess/Pyta, page 70. "Pol.Batl. 309 wird Sich.Rgt. 2 für Säuberung der Stadt von russ. Versprengten und deutschfeindlicher Bevölkerung und zur Aufrechterhaltung der Ruhe, Sicherheit und Ordnung innerhalb der Stadt Bialystok unterstellt". Befhel Sich.Div.221/Ia v. 27.6.1941, BA-MA, RH 26221/12b; vgl. PB 309 an 1. und 2.Komp. v. 27.6.1941, BAB, R 20/58. 2 The battalion had been formed on 19 September 1940 through the renaming of a training unit, the Polizei-Ausbildungs-Bataillon A "Köln". Sonderbefehl nr. 106 KdO d.Schupo Köln vom 19/9/1940. 3 According to the witness of a policeman, the battalion watched the screening of the "Jud Süss" the infamous anti-Semitic movie, that the Nazi propaganda particularly appreciated. Mallmann/Riess/Pyta, page 71, testimony of Ltn. Heinrich Schneider. Westermann, page. 175, 284 4 Bender, page. 40. 5 Klemp Osteuropa, pag. 280 6 The exact number of the Jews locked into the Synagogue differs according to the sources. For example, 700 victims were ascertained by the sentence pronounced during the first Wuppertal trial, versus Buchs and others(800 according to the Act of Indictment); instead, according to the evaluation of the second Wuppertal trial versus Buchs and Schaffrat, there were 500 victims. 7 Lichtenstein Wuppertaler, page 622. 8 LG Wuppertal II versus Buchs and Schaffrat, 12 Ks 1/67, 24/05/1973 - JuNsVe, Lfd.Nr. 664, Vol. XXXVIII. 9 "Weis Ernst, Stettin 20.6.1894, Major der Schutzpolizei, Pol.-Btl. 309, e.K.I des Weltkrieges. Major Weis hat am 26 und 27.6.1941 persönlich an Ort und Stelle seine kompanien zur Säuberung der Waldstücke beiderseits der Strasse Sokoly-Bialystok und bei der Säuberung des Waldes südlich der Stadt und in derselben eingesetzt und unermüdlich im feindlichen Heckenschützenfeuer eingegriffen. Er persönlich und seine Bataillon waren stets hilfsbereit zur Stelle. Die Säuberungsaktion seines Btl hat dazu
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www.ordnungspolizei.org beigetragen, dass Stadt und Umgebung in verhaeltnismässig kurzer Zeit befriedet wurde. Er ist der Auszeichnung würdig. gez. Ronicke, oberst und Rgts.-Kdr". Mallmann/Riess/Pyta, pag. 74, HIS, page 594. 10 Lichtenstein, pag. 74, Klemp Osteuropa, pag. 281, HIS, page. 594, 597. 11 The preliminary investigations had been opened by the ZStL since April 1960 (205 AR-Z 20/60. The original 23 suspects were reduced to 14, that later were put on trial; instead, the positions of further 162 policemen were crossed out. 12 Lichtenstein, pagg. 69-82, Lichtenstein Wuppertaler, pag. 620. 13 Klemp Ermittelt, pag. 267, Klemp Osteuropa, pag. 279. 14 Those defendants, still serving in the Federal Police, at the first hearings they attended dressed with their uniforms. 15 Okroy, page. 302. 16 Klemp Ermittelt, pag. 267, Okroy, pag. 302. 17 Okroy, pag. 302, LG Wuppertal, 12 Ks 1/67, 12/03/1968 – JuNSVe, Lfd.Nr. 664. 18 LG Wuppertal II, 12 Ks 14/71, 24/05/1973 – Lfd.Nr. 792. 19 We remember, for example, the slaughter of Ostrow Mazowiecka, 11 November 1939, during which 364 Jews were shot "in reprisal" by a unit of the Polizei-Bataillon 11, or the many executions perpetrated by the Polizei-Bataillon 61, or by the police units subordinated to the EG zbV von Woyrsch, in Autumn 1939. All this, without mention the slaughters in which the victims were Poles. 20 According to the Court of Wuppertal, during the rounding-up of the Jewish Quarter, several Poles would have collaborated with the policemen, giving them information about their Jewish neighbours, and revealing potential hiding places. LG Wuppertal, page 31. 21 At a certain point, while the shots were perpetrated in front of the Governement Palace, in which the command of the 221.Sicherungs-Division had been established, Pflugbeil ordered the firing squads to move more inside the park, in order to avoid possible stray bullets, against his windows. 22 Browning, page 15. According to a testimony that Buchs released, no explicit orders concerning the massacre of the Jews of Bialystok were issued, but only generic instructions, whose implied meaning would have been clearly understandable. 23 Klemp, page 263, Klemp Osteuropa, page 280. 24 Klemp, page 263. 25 According to the testimony of a former trooper, released during the preliminary invesigations of the ZStL, the policemen would have prevented some local volunteer from extinguishing the fire. Goldhagen, page. 545. 26 At any time Pflugbeil could have intervene. During the first stage of the rounding-up, while the Jews were forced to the square, two members of the community, an elder and a youth, fell at Pflugbeil's feet, begging him to put an end to the massacre. At that point a policeman of the battalion, who was present at the scene, opened his trousers and urinated over them. The general turned away. LG Wuppertal, page 30, Curilla, page 514, Goldhagen, page 210. Such a behaviour of a subordinate in front of his superior, apart from being morally reprehensible, should be unacceptable at least under the point of wiew of the military discipline: a fundamental concept that should be manifest to every good officer; but, evidently, Pflugbeil had not such a kind of moral [instead, according to another source, Pflugbeil would have summoned and chastised the policeman. Bender Bialystok, page. 91]. As far as the role in the massacre of the 221.Sicherungs-Division, the trial of Wuppertal did not clarified this question. According to a testimony, some Wehrmacht soldiers would have fired tracing bullets into the gasoline, helping the spreading of flames. Klemp Osteuropa, page. 281. Moreover, some Russians would have been executed. 27 According to Weis' interpretations, the orders meant that all the Jews, regardless of age and sex, had to be wiped out, as the war was directed against the Jews and the Bolsheviks. Browning, page. 13, LG Wuppertal, pages 29-30. 28 Curilla, page. 511, LG Wuppertal, page 20. 29 Goldhagen, pages 202-203. 30 About the concept of "tribalism", applied to the police battalions, see the article "Closed communities and microdynamics: environmental context and tribal bonds in the police battalions". Here. 31 Compare Erich Fromm "The Anatomy of the Human Destructiveness", page 210-211, who quotes the inscription of the Assyrian king Sennacherib, on the distruction of Babylon: "The city and its houses, from its foundation to its top, I destroyed, I devastated, I burned with fire. The wall and the outer wall, temples and gods, temple towers of bricks and earth, as many as they were, I razed and dumped them into the Arakhtu Canal. Through the midst of that city I dug canals, I flooded its site with water, and the very foundations thereof I destroyed. I made its destruction more complete than that by a flood". 32 Browning, page 14. 33 Goldhagen, page 200. 34 Fromm, pages 162-163.
Text by Carnaro - Copyrighted material © This article is taken from WWW.ORDNUNGSPOLIZEI.ORG -------------------------------------------------------------------------------9
MASSIM0 ARICO .:. Bialystok, 27 June 1941: planned slaughter or "improvised" action?
The city and its houses, from its foundation to its top, I destroyed, I devastated, I burned with fire. Sennacherib, Babylon 689 B.C.
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I. THE FACTS
Around midday of 27 June 1941, the tragedy begun. Since the early hours of dawn, Wehrmacht units had entered Bialystok, an ancient Polish town located at the crossroad of the Baltic, Germanic and Slavic worlds. Of the more than 90.000 inhabitants identified by the census of 1931, about 50.000 formed the Jewish community, that together with that of Vilnius, represented the two most flourishing askenazian cultural realities in North-Eastern Europe. During the morning, in the wake of the 221.Sicherungs-Division of the Wehrmacht, a battalion appeared, that was not formally part of that division, but had been assigned to it, in order to perform security tasks in the rear area: in particular, according to the orders issued by the divisional commander, Gen.Ltn. Johann Pflugbeil, the battalion had to "cleanse the town of any Russian stragglers and anti-German peoples, and to act for the maintaining of calm, security and orders, within the boundaries of the city of Bialystok" 1. This unit was the Polizei-Bataillon 309 of Cologne. We are talking about a recently-formed battalion 2 almost totally lacking of war experience, that had been transferred to Radom and Pionki, in Poland, on 23 September 1940, and of which we have no details concerning its involvement in war crimes, before 27 June 1941. What is certain is that, it was subjected to some hours of political indoctrination, shortly before entering the Soviet territory, the showing of anti-Semitic movies, included 3: however, nothing more than the scheduling of the training tables, in which just a couple of lessons of "weltanshaunliche Schulung" per week, were usually planned. The battalion was 500 men strong, subdivided among three companies: - Bataillon Stab: Maj. Ernst Weis - the 1/309 under the orders of Hptm. Hans Behrens - the 2/309 under the orders of Oltn Johann Höhl - the 3/309 under the orders of Oltn Rolf-Joachim Buchs The Bialystok Synagogue - circa 1920
We have the names of other officers belonging to the battalions: Ltn. Gorgs, platoon leader of the 1/309; Ltn. Theo Oldenburg, commander of another platoon of the 1/309; Ltn. Wilhelm Porschen, commander of the 2nd platoon of the 3/309; Ltn. Heinrich Schneider, leader of the 4th platoon of the 3/309. Two of these companies, the 1/309 and the 3/309 entered Bialystok on 27 June, between 9 A.M. and midday; later, in the afternoon, the 2/309 followed 4. It is unclear, at this point, by whom the implementation of the subsequent events was decided. What is certain is that, around midday, Behrens and Buchs ordered the two companies – gathered on the market square – to proceed with the rounding-up of the Jewish Quarter, whose male inhabitants were forced from their homes and driven to the square; many other Jews were locked up into the Synagogue 5. During this first stage, amidst the crackling of authomatic weapons, grenades exploding against the door’s houses, implorations and screams, humiliations and brutalities, there were about 50÷250 victims among the Jews, some of which were the phisically unmovable patients 2
www.ordnungspolizei.org of the hospital. Then, the 1/309 cordoned the square and the 3/309 was deployed all around the Synagogue. Shortly after midday, the leader of the 1/309 – and deputy commander of the battalion – Behrens, reached the square, bringing the order of shooting at the Jews gathered there, which in groups were brought to the sites where the executions would have been perpetrated, and where machine-guns had been previously placed: a mass grave dug into the garden of the Governement Palace and an open field in the outskirts of the town. While the 1/309 perpetrated the executions, Behrens ordered the officers of the 3/309, to set fire to the Synagogue, where 500 Jews at least had been locked up, including several women with childrens, who had not wanted to leave their husbands and fathers 6. A double line of policemen was deployed around the Synagogue, whose doors and windows were barred from the outside and guarded with machine guns, while gasoline was poired inside. Also personnel of the 2/309 and of the Nachrichtenzug, took part at this stage. At this point, while from the Synagogue sacred hymns were raised, grenades exploded on the gasoline, that immediately started burning, quickly spreading to the whole building. Some Jews that, through the burning front door managed to escape outside, were machine gunned; others who tried from the windows, suffered the same fate. It took about half an hour before the tragedy came to its end. Then the screams ceased, and it was the silence of death. At that point, Buchs, commander of the 3/309, ordered the cease-fire to the machine guns. The burned ruins of the Bialystok Synagogue. Source ARC
Nevertheless, because of the high temperature, the fire soon began to spread to the neighbouring houses, built of wood, and it was only at that point – in front of a situation really out of control – that the battalion commander, Weis, finally arrived and ordered to put out the fire. In spite of the intervention of a group of Wehrmacht engineers, most of the quarter around the Synagogue continued to burn throughout the afternoon and the evening, to the point that, also the vehicles of the battalion had to be quickly evacuated. Further 1.000 Jews at least, under the flames and the rubble of the collapsed houses, ended by losing their lives. In short time, the fire arrived to threaten the Governement Palace, in which the Gen.Ltn. Plugbel had established the command of the 221.Sich.-Div, so much so that, the HQ of the 2.Sicherung-Regiment had to be abandoned. In the course of the evening, when finally Pflugbeil decided to intervene by calling Weis to report, this man was found completely drunk. In the same conditions were also Heinrich Schneider and several other members of the battalion. At last, when the fire was extinguished in the late evening, most of the quarter around the Synagogue had been completely destroyed. Overall, counting the executions at the mass graves, the victims into the burned houses and those locked inside the Synagogue, 2.000 Jews at least, lost their lives in Bialystok, on 27 June 1941. The survivors of the community, organized in groups and guarded by personnel of the battalion, were forced to the removal of the bodies, most of which were carbonized or reduced to ashes, to the point of having to be removed from the ground with shovels, thrown in sacks and buried into the mass grave 7. These are the facts, as the Court of Wuppertal ascertained during the trial versus Buchs and Schaffrat 8. 3
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II. CRIMES WITHOUT PUNISHMENT Weis, Ernst: Stettin 20.6.1894, Major of the Schutzpolizei, Pol.-Btl. 309, EK I. "Major Weis, on 26 and 27.6.1941, personnally led his companies to the cleansing of the wooded area area on both sides of the road Sokoly-Bialystok and secured the forest south of the town, operating tirelessly under the fire of the enemy snipers. He personnally, and with his battalion, were successfull in action. The cleansing operation, carried on by his battalion has been effective and in comparatively short time, the town and the neighbouring areas have been pacified. He is worthy of decoration". [Sicherungs-Regiment 2. Proposal of conferring of Iron Cross 1st Class to Maj. Ernst Weis, 2.7.1941] 9. Analogously, on 11 July 1941, also Behrens, Buchs, Schaffrat, Schneider and Rondholz, were awarded with EK II 10. Buchs, Rolf-Joachim: Kaiserswerth bei Düsseldorf, 12.9.1914, Lieutenant of the Schutzpolizei, Pol.-Btl. 309, EK II. After the war he became High Commissioner and instructor at the Landespolizeischule of Düsseldorf. Behrens, Hans: Rehna in Meklemburg, 13.9.1895, Captain of the Schutzpolizei, Pol.-Btl. 309, EK II After the war he became instructor of Criminal Law at the Landespolizeischule of Kiel. The main hall of the Wuppertal Trial
In the late post war period 14 members of the Police-Bataillon 309, involved in the slaughter of Bialystok, were put on trial by the Public Prosecutor of Wuppertal 11. In particular, in front of the law were called the commanders of the 1/309 (Behrens) and of the 3/309 (Buchs), the platoonleaders Porschen and Schneider, and other 10 policemen 12. As far as the battalion commander Weis, he had deceased in August 1964 13.
This proceeding, in the intention of the President of the Court, Norbert Simgen, should have had a particular relevance, both from the legal point of view, and from the media 14, given the high number of defendants, the presence, among the accusation witnesses, of survivors coming from Israel, the choosing of a symbolic place in which the hearings had to be held (the great hall of the Polizeipräsidium of Wuppertal) 15, as well as the allocation, to the correspondents, of reserved seats in the audience. Things, however, would turn out a little differently. Started on 7 October 1967, the proceeding ended on 12 March 1968, with ambiguous results: from the beginning in fact, the position of Hans Behrens had been crossed out, because of 4
www.ordnungspolizei.org health reasons 16, whereas Heinrich Schneider committed suicide in cell, few days after the beginning of the hearings. Then, to the other 12 defendants, the following judgements were passed 17: -
aquittal for Morgenbesser, Porschen e Thomas; suspended sentence for Herweg; remission of punishment for Eberhardt, Fuchs, Ihrig, Leinemann and Schütte; life-imprisonment for Buchs, Rondholz and Schaffrat.
After which this judgement – comparatively unsatisfactory in and of itself – was dismantled in 1973, after the subsequent appeal, that revoked the three life-imprisonments and sentenced only Buchs and Schaffrat to 4 and 6 years respectively, already served in any case 18.
III. CONSIDERATIONS The slaughter of Bialystok of 27 June 1941 is a particularly well-known criminal event mentioned by several authors and researchers. Nevertheless, it's still able to raise questions, the main of which may be resumed as follows: was it a wanted and premeditated massacre, and if so, to what level of connivance, or instead, was it the product of an "improvised" action, arisen from the lowest levels and, subsequently, gone out of control until its tragic final result? First of all have to be said that, this was the very first slaughter perpetrated by a police battalion on the Russian front. Soon after this, countless others followed, and far more brutal in relation to the number of victims: nevertheless, the slaughter of Bialystok marked a sort of point of no return, as far as the involvement of the Ordnungspolizei in the Jewish Genocide is concerned. In Poland in fact, since 1939, several mass executions of Jews had been perpetrated, but nothing comparable, either for number of victims, nor for the way of killing, or for the "reasons" given by the executioners 19. In this sense Bialystok was an archetype, a kind of "model" for the subsequent events. However, there are dynamics, in this massacre, that make us think to something "improvised" and managed at the lowest levels of the battalion hierarchy, rather than planned a priori; something more similar to a progrom – like those that would have been perpetrated some days later at Jedwabne and Radzilow – than to the quasi industrial-level-organized slaughters, such as Babi Yar and Rumbula 20. Ltn.Gen. Johann Pflugbeil
What is certain is that, although the overall responsibility of the slaughter have to be parcelled out, without any doubt, among several subjects, starting from the divisional commander Pflugbeil – who did nothing to prevent it 21 – up to the platoon leaders – which operated on the ground – well, the attribution of specific responsibilities seems being a bit more difficult: it has not been completely explained in fact, by whom the orders to proceed with the execution of the Jews gathered in the square had been issued, nor to set fire to the Synagogue; at the complaints of a Wehrmacht captain, in front of the tragedy that was happening, Behrens replied that the orders "came from above", while during the subsequent investigation of the 221.Sicherungs-Division, about the cause of the runaway fire, all the battalion's officers replied that "nothing they knew about". Still, Weis stated in a report that, the fire of the Synagogue was caused by the incidental explosion of an anti-tank shell, while a periodic of the German troops, attributed the event to an air bombing. 5
www.ordnungspolizei.org Actually, while Weis would have decided the rounding-up of the Jewish Quarter, the subsequent fate of the prisoners would have been left in the hands of the two company commanders 22. Therefore, according to this interpretation, the slaughter of Bialystok would have been the result of a "personal" initiative of Behrens and Buchs, approved by Weis which, in a more and more chaotic situation, would have left free hand to his subordinates. In essence, no explicit order would have been given but, what the policemen should have done – or what it was expected they would have done – it would have been implied 23. As a matter of fact, the presence of a sort of "improvisation" in the slaughter seems being confirmed by the fact that no gathering camps, nor a plan for transporting the victims outside the town would have been prepared in advance 24, but above all, by the fact that – in spite of torrid weather conditions – no preventive measures were taken to avoid the spreading of the fire from the Synagogue to the neighbouring houses, so much so that also the battalion's vehicles were menaced, as well as the commands of the 221.Sicherungs-Division 25. Amidst such a confusion, worsened by the inertia and the indifference of those who – as General Pflugbeil and his officers – had the authority to put an end to the massacre 26, it seems rather difficult to find the traces of a real premeditation of the slaughter, but instead, it seems more likely to discern the will of Behrens and Buchs to apply – in the most extreme way and according to a personal interpretation, encouraged and legitimised by Weis (or at least not hindered) – a series of orders that the battalion had received in the days before the beginning of "Barbarossa". In fact, it is confirmed that before 22 June, apart from promulgate the "Kommissarbefehl" to the personnel, concerning the suppression of the Soviet Political Commissars fallen in the German hands, as well as the so-called "Erlass Barbarossa", that authorized the collective reprisals against the civilians (kollektive Gewaltmassnahmen), giving impunity to the perpetrators, Weis enunciated to the battalion’s officers, the beginning of the war "against the Judaism and the Jews, which had to be wiped out without any exception" 27. All of this was followd by the already mentioned order of Gen.Ltn. Pflugbeil, dated 27 June 1941. Moreover, in the hours before the taking of Bialystok, the corpses of 25 German soldiers, mutilated and tortured probably by retreating Soviets, were found out by the men of the companies 1/309 and 3/309 28: a gruesome episode, that may have functioned as further priming – but basically as a pretext – for the subsequent events. In such a context of personal interpretations, ideological automatisms and implied intentionalities and with an environmental situation totally out-of-control, it is plausible that, no further solicitations were needed, to the men of the Polizei-Bataillon 309, to make them feel authorized to apply, with the utmost discretion, the more or less generic orders received. However, even though this dynamics seems probable, perhaps is not yet sufficient to explain such a brutal and gratuitous savagery, already in this very first genocidal stage. There is something aberrant and degenerated in fact, in the way in which this slaughter was perpetrated; an explosion of savage and idolatric violence, sublimated in the flames of the stake: that does not seems so much, a purificatory conflagrations, the product of minds blinded by anti-Semitism – as states by Goldhagen 29 – but rather, something similar to a primeval reflex, the resort to the fire as the immediate source of destructive power, on the part of a tribal horde engaged in a sacrilegious ritual of death 30. We note in fact, something deepest in this genocidal act, that goes beyond the "simple" application of an ideological theorem; something that found its roots in the very essence of the post-Neolithic civilization: that is, the exercise of power as such, that becomes absolute through the unlimited control – pseudo divine – over men and things 31. For this reason, we think is far too simplistic and generous to grant the alibi of anti-Semitism – that in spite of everything, is the product of a millenial and gloomy cultural process – to an event that seems, instead, a sublimate of violence, the exercise of a destructive ferocity end in itself: a real return to the "heart of darkenss", to the adoration of the idol identified with the stake. To the horror-terror of everyone that erupts uncontrollably,
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IV.CONCLUSIONS Even in the diversity of interpretations, what is certainly accepted by all the historians and researchers is the fact that, in the case of Bialystok, no explicit orders would have been issued, as far as the "treatment" of the Jews captured during the rounding-up. After which, whether the slaughter has attributable to the decision of a single commander [Weis], who would have guessed and anticipated the will of his Führer 32, or that the only doubt the perpetrators had, could have been related to the way of killing [stake? execution?] and not about the expedience to perpetrate the slaughter or not 33, what is certain is that this was a hellish bloodbath, carried on in a particularly brutal way. Therefore, it is plausible that a perverse chain of causes and events may have helped the priming of the genocidal spiral, even beyond the initial intentions (on which, never will be possible to give the ultimate answer), but that the orgy of violence, perpetrated during the rounding-up, has ended up by powering itself, up to its tragical epilogue: an epilogue that, at that point, would have been almost unavoidable. That is to say: at some time in the early afternoon of 27 June 1941, intentionally or not, a moral threshold was overcame, beyond which the distructive tendency became unstoppable. Source Wikimedia
If we want to find a synthesis on the facts of Bialystok, then we could talk about a sort of "induced spontaneity", by mean of which the potentialities of the emotional detachment between perpetrators and victims became evident: so evident that, later, would have been also managed and amplified successfully. In this way, what could have been just a transitional "emotional withdrawal" 34, ended up becoming a model, ready to be applied in the subsequent analogous circumstances. We think there are many reasons – in addition to those already mentioned – that prevent, the slaughter of Bialystok, from being considered the starting point of the Jewish Genocide (that, on our opinion, could be more properly identified with Rumbula): we believe instead that – beyond the specific causes – this was the dramatic materialization of the most destructive among the many possible scenarios. The tragedy was that, this "occasional" scenario would have been cleverly exploited and repeated countless times in the subsequent weeks, months and years, until to become a consolidated and ordinary routine.
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www.ordnungspolizei.org BIBLIOGRAPHY Bender, Sara: The "Reinhard Aktion" in the "Bialystok District". In Anders/Kutscher/Stoll, pages 186-208. Bender, Sara: The Jews of Bialystok during WWII and the Holocaust. 2008. Quoted Bender Bialystok. Browning, Christopher: Uomini comuni. Polizia tedesca e "soluzione finale" in Polonia. Turin, 1992. Curilla, Wolfgang: Die Deutsche Ordnungspolizei und der Holocaust im Baltikum und in Weissrussland, 1941-1944. Paderborn, 2006 Gerlach, Christian: Kalkulierte Morde: die deutsche Wirtschafts- und Vernichtungspolitik in Weissrussland 19411944. Hamburg, 1999. Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah: I volonterosi carnefici di Hitler. Milano, 1997. Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung (Hrsg.): Verbrechen der Wehrmacht. Dimensionen des Vernichtungskrieges 1941-1944. Hamburg, 2002 Klemp, Stefan: "Nicht Ermittelt". Polizeibataillone und die Nachkriegsjustiz. Ein Handbuch. Essen, 2005. Klemp, Stefan: Kölner Polizeibataillone in Osteuropa: die Polizeibataillone 69, 309, 319 und die Polizeireservekompanie Köln. In Buhlan/Jung, pagg. 277-298. Quoted Klemp Osteuropa Lichtenstein, Heiner: Himmlers grüne Helfer. Die Schutz- und Ordnungspolizei im "Dritten Reich". Cologne, 1990. Lichtenstein, Heiner: Ein Lügengewirr – Der Wuppertaler Prozeβ gegen Angehörige des Polizeibataillons 309. In Buhlan/Jung, pages 619-632. Quoted Lichtenstein Wuppertaler. Mallmann, Klaus-Michael/Riess, Volker/Pyta Wolfram (Hrsg): Deutscher Osten 1939-1945. Der Weltanschauungskrieg in Photos und Texten, Darmstadt, 2003. Okroy, Michael: "Man will unserem Batl. Was tun…" Der Wuppertaler Bialystok-Prozeβ 1967/68 un die Ermittlungen gegen Angehörige des Polizeibataillons 309. In Kenkmann/Spieker, pages 301317. Westermann, Edward B.: Hitler’s Police Bataillons. Einforcing Racial War in the East. Lawrence, 2005.
FOOTNOTES 1 Mallmann/Riess/Pyta, page 70. "Pol.Batl. 309 wird Sich.Rgt. 2 für Säuberung der Stadt von russ. Versprengten und deutschfeindlicher Bevölkerung und zur Aufrechterhaltung der Ruhe, Sicherheit und Ordnung innerhalb der Stadt Bialystok unterstellt". Befhel Sich.Div.221/Ia v. 27.6.1941, BA-MA, RH 26221/12b; vgl. PB 309 an 1. und 2.Komp. v. 27.6.1941, BAB, R 20/58. 2 The battalion had been formed on 19 September 1940 through the renaming of a training unit, the Polizei-Ausbildungs-Bataillon A "Köln". Sonderbefehl nr. 106 KdO d.Schupo Köln vom 19/9/1940. 3 According to the witness of a policeman, the battalion watched the screening of the "Jud Süss" the infamous anti-Semitic movie, that the Nazi propaganda particularly appreciated. Mallmann/Riess/Pyta, page 71, testimony of Ltn. Heinrich Schneider. Westermann, page. 175, 284 4 Bender, page. 40. 5 Klemp Osteuropa, pag. 280 6 The exact number of the Jews locked into the Synagogue differs according to the sources. For example, 700 victims were ascertained by the sentence pronounced during the first Wuppertal trial, versus Buchs and others(800 according to the Act of Indictment); instead, according to the evaluation of the second Wuppertal trial versus Buchs and Schaffrat, there were 500 victims. 7 Lichtenstein Wuppertaler, page 622. 8 LG Wuppertal II versus Buchs and Schaffrat, 12 Ks 1/67, 24/05/1973 - JuNsVe, Lfd.Nr. 664, Vol. XXXVIII. 9 "Weis Ernst, Stettin 20.6.1894, Major der Schutzpolizei, Pol.-Btl. 309, e.K.I des Weltkrieges. Major Weis hat am 26 und 27.6.1941 persönlich an Ort und Stelle seine kompanien zur Säuberung der Waldstücke beiderseits der Strasse Sokoly-Bialystok und bei der Säuberung des Waldes südlich der Stadt und in derselben eingesetzt und unermüdlich im feindlichen Heckenschützenfeuer eingegriffen. Er persönlich und seine Bataillon waren stets hilfsbereit zur Stelle. Die Säuberungsaktion seines Btl hat dazu
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www.ordnungspolizei.org beigetragen, dass Stadt und Umgebung in verhaeltnismässig kurzer Zeit befriedet wurde. Er ist der Auszeichnung würdig. gez. Ronicke, oberst und Rgts.-Kdr". Mallmann/Riess/Pyta, pag. 74, HIS, page 594. 10 Lichtenstein, pag. 74, Klemp Osteuropa, pag. 281, HIS, page. 594, 597. 11 The preliminary investigations had been opened by the ZStL since April 1960 (205 AR-Z 20/60. The original 23 suspects were reduced to 14, that later were put on trial; instead, the positions of further 162 policemen were crossed out. 12 Lichtenstein, pagg. 69-82, Lichtenstein Wuppertaler, pag. 620. 13 Klemp Ermittelt, pag. 267, Klemp Osteuropa, pag. 279. 14 Those defendants, still serving in the Federal Police, at the first hearings they attended dressed with their uniforms. 15 Okroy, page. 302. 16 Klemp Ermittelt, pag. 267, Okroy, pag. 302. 17 Okroy, pag. 302, LG Wuppertal, 12 Ks 1/67, 12/03/1968 – JuNSVe, Lfd.Nr. 664. 18 LG Wuppertal II, 12 Ks 14/71, 24/05/1973 – Lfd.Nr. 792. 19 We remember, for example, the slaughter of Ostrow Mazowiecka, 11 November 1939, during which 364 Jews were shot "in reprisal" by a unit of the Polizei-Bataillon 11, or the many executions perpetrated by the Polizei-Bataillon 61, or by the police units subordinated to the EG zbV von Woyrsch, in Autumn 1939. All this, without mention the slaughters in which the victims were Poles. 20 According to the Court of Wuppertal, during the rounding-up of the Jewish Quarter, several Poles would have collaborated with the policemen, giving them information about their Jewish neighbours, and revealing potential hiding places. LG Wuppertal, page 31. 21 At a certain point, while the shots were perpetrated in front of the Governement Palace, in which the command of the 221.Sicherungs-Division had been established, Pflugbeil ordered the firing squads to move more inside the park, in order to avoid possible stray bullets, against his windows. 22 Browning, page 15. According to a testimony that Buchs released, no explicit orders concerning the massacre of the Jews of Bialystok were issued, but only generic instructions, whose implied meaning would have been clearly understandable. 23 Klemp, page 263, Klemp Osteuropa, page 280. 24 Klemp, page 263. 25 According to the testimony of a former trooper, released during the preliminary invesigations of the ZStL, the policemen would have prevented some local volunteer from extinguishing the fire. Goldhagen, page. 545. 26 At any time Pflugbeil could have intervene. During the first stage of the rounding-up, while the Jews were forced to the square, two members of the community, an elder and a youth, fell at Pflugbeil's feet, begging him to put an end to the massacre. At that point a policeman of the battalion, who was present at the scene, opened his trousers and urinated over them. The general turned away. LG Wuppertal, page 30, Curilla, page 514, Goldhagen, page 210. Such a behaviour of a subordinate in front of his superior, apart from being morally reprehensible, should be unacceptable at least under the point of wiew of the military discipline: a fundamental concept that should be manifest to every good officer; but, evidently, Pflugbeil had not such a kind of moral [instead, according to another source, Pflugbeil would have summoned and chastised the policeman. Bender Bialystok, page. 91]. As far as the role in the massacre of the 221.Sicherungs-Division, the trial of Wuppertal did not clarified this question. According to a testimony, some Wehrmacht soldiers would have fired tracing bullets into the gasoline, helping the spreading of flames. Klemp Osteuropa, page. 281. Moreover, some Russians would have been executed. 27 According to Weis' interpretations, the orders meant that all the Jews, regardless of age and sex, had to be wiped out, as the war was directed against the Jews and the Bolsheviks. Browning, page. 13, LG Wuppertal, pages 29-30. 28 Curilla, page. 511, LG Wuppertal, page 20. 29 Goldhagen, pages 202-203. 30 About the concept of "tribalism", applied to the police battalions, see the article "Closed communities and microdynamics: environmental context and tribal bonds in the police battalions". Here. 31 Compare Erich Fromm "The Anatomy of the Human Destructiveness", page 210-211, who quotes the inscription of the Assyrian king Sennacherib, on the distruction of Babylon: "The city and its houses, from its foundation to its top, I destroyed, I devastated, I burned with fire. The wall and the outer wall, temples and gods, temple towers of bricks and earth, as many as they were, I razed and dumped them into the Arakhtu Canal. Through the midst of that city I dug canals, I flooded its site with water, and the very foundations thereof I destroyed. I made its destruction more complete than that by a flood". 32 Browning, page 14. 33 Goldhagen, page 200. 34 Fromm, pages 162-163.
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