Grosse Ghetto, Grosse Aktion. Kaunas, October 28-29, 1941

www.ordnungspolizei.org Massimo Arico _______________ “GROSSE GHETTO, GROSSE AKTION” Kaunas, 28-29 October 1941 Wikimedia – Bundesarchiv. Kaunas, 1916

”It wasn’t worthwhile living for more than sixty years, in order to witness a day like this…..” Elchanan Elkes, Kaunas, October 28, 1941

”Eine art 'ausforstung' vorgenommen worden sie….” Heinrich Schmitz, Wiesbaden, February 28, 1962

INTRODUCTORY NOTE Avraham Tory in Kaunas, March 1943 *

This article is partially based on the book, by Avraham Tory: “Surviving the Holocaust. The Kovno Ghetto Diary” 1, that, in turn, is the editorial reworking, enriched with historical notes and updates, of the personal diary written, at the time of facts, by the same Tory, a young lithuanian Jew, who worked as secretary at the Judenrat of the Kaunas ghetto, from 1941 to 1944. In this sense, in the next sections, some selected excerpts will be highlighted, directly taken from this work, that not only was a personal diary, but and above all, a real historical chronicle meticulously documented, so much so that it was accepted, as primary evidence, during three different legal proceedings, for war crimes or denaturalization, opened by the Public Prosecutors of Wiesbaden (Germany), Tampa (Florida, US) and Toronto (Canada), against subjects of the Nazi political and military administration of Kaunas, deemed among the main responsibles of the Jewish genocide in Lithuania, between 1941 and 1944 2. Therefore, having the belief that nothing is better than the original, we suggest the reading of Tory’s book, by which this article was inspired, as far as in particular, the narration of the events of October 28, 1941, is concerned.

I. OCTOBER 28, 1941: ONE-WAY ROADS

”Tuesday morning, October 28 was rainy. A heavy mist covered the sky and the whole ghetto was shrouded in darkness. A fine sleet filled the air and covered the ground in a thin layer. From all directions, dragging themselves heavily and falteringly, groups of men, women and children, elderly and sick who leaned on the arms of their relatives or neighbors, babies carried in the mother’s arms, proceeded in long lines. They were all wrapped in winter coats, shawls, or blankets, so as to protect themselves from the cold and the damp. Many carried in their hands lanterns or candles, which cast a faint light, illuminating their way in the darkness. Many families stepped along slowly, holding hands. They all made their way in the same direction – to Demokratu Square. It was a procession of mourners grieving over themselves. Some thirty thousand people proceeded that morning into the unknown, toward a fate that could already have been sealed for them by the bloodthirsty rulers. A deathlike silence pervaded this procession tens thousands strong. Every person dragged himself along, absorbed in his own thoughts, pondering his own fate and the fate of his family whose lives hung by a thread. Thirty thousand lonely people, forgotten by God and by men, delivered to the whim of tyrants whose hands had already spilled the blood of many Jews. All of them, especially heads of families, had equipped themselves with some sort of document, even a certificate of being employed by one of the ghetto institutions, or a high school graduation diploma, or a German university diploma – some paper that might perhaps, perhaps, who knows, bring them an ”indulgence” for the sin of being a Jew” […] 3. This dramatic scene is what we would have seen in Kaunas at dawn of October 28, 1941. A gray and livid dawn, the last one for many thousands of Jews, selected among the weakest and the vulnerable, among the “useless” and the disabled; among those, in short, no more able to produce, but instead still capable to consume precious resources. And that, for this “reason”, had to be eliminated. But how, was it possible, to arrive to all of this?

II. TWO MONTHS BEFORE Ever since the days immediately following its establishment (August 15, 1941), three different actions at least, were perpetrated in the ghetto of Kaunas, during which more than 5.000 Jews had been taken from their homes and executed at the Fourth and Ninth Forts by the Lithuanian auxiliaries 4. Previously, an unspecified number of Jews – about 8/10.000 – had been “cleared” in town by the beginning of August 5, when it was finally decided, by Stahlecker and Jäger, the establishment of the ghetto in the old and dilapidated Jewish quarter of Vilijampole (Slabodka), apparently with the aim to restore the “order” and “security”. The ghetto of Kaunas. The bridge over Paneriu Strasse *

The deportation of about 25/30.000 people was finally carried out by August 15, when the perimeter of the ghetto was fenced and cut off from the rest of the town. Moreover, a second barbed wire barrier subdivided the ghetto in two parts: the “Klein Ghetto” and the “Grosse Ghetto”, crossed by a main road (Paneriu Strasse), whose access was forbidden to the Jews. The two parts of the ghetto were connected by a wooden bridge surmounting the road, while the surveillance was tasked to the the third company of the Polizei-Bataillon 11, reinforced by Lithuanian auxiliaries 6 . The police battalion, about which we are talking about, had been formed in Königsberg, East Prussia, about in September 1939, and especially during the first months of Barbarossa, it would have become one of the most destructive tools assigned by the Ordnungspolizei for the implementation of the Genocide: infact, in addition to Kaunas – where it entered about in late July 1941 – this battalion would have also perpetrated several slaughters in the area of Minsk, where two of its companies would have been transferred on October 6, 1941, for a stay that lasted just for a few weeks. The battalion was under the orders of Maj. Franz Lechthaler, a 51 y.o. Rhenish policeman, with a distant Socialist past, who after the war was sentenced to two years in prison, for the massacres perpetrated in Belorussia. Fundamental was the role this battalion played in Kaunas, also because it represented, for a long time, the main German unit at disposal of the FK 821, even after the shifting of powers from the Wehrmacht military administration to the civil rule of the Reichkommissar von Renteln, that occurred on July 17. Infact, until the appointment of the KdO Engels, that happened in September 1941, Lechthaler remained the highest-ranking officer of the Ordnungspolizei present in Kaunas, with a prominent role also within the complicated German hierarchy, taken as a whole, in the Lithuanian capital city. By virtue of this kind of situation, almost automatic was, to the Polizei-Bataillon 11 and its commander, the attribution of tasks directly connected with the “Jewish question”, among which from mid August on, the already mentioned surveillance of the ghetto 7, as well as the escort of the so-called Jewish Arbeitskommandos, that every day departed from the ghetto for reaching the various workplaces, the Aleksotas airfield in particular. And infact, just the decision of using the Jewish labour force, with consequent issuing of individual workpermits – the so-called Jordanscheine – delivered to the specific workers by the civil administration 8, was the discriminating factor along which the subsequent selections, among the ghetto inhabitants, would have passed: that is to say, among those still able to work and those who were no longer able, among the productive and those considered “unuseful”, among those, in essence, who would have lived a little more, and those instead, who would have been immediately killed.

III. TWO DAYS BEFORE The drama was staged in the afternoon of October 25, 1941, with the entrance in the offices of the Judenrat, of SS-Hauptscharführer Helmut Rauca, the officer in charge of the Jewish affairs at the Gestapo of Kaunas. This man, without preambles, instructed the terrorized members of the Councils that, in order to rationalize the Jewish workforce and avoid any competition between those who had received the Jordansheine and those who had remained excluded, the latter had to be transferred and isolated within the small ghetto. After which, more abundant rations would have been granted to the workers and their families: for this reason, pics had to be taken of those who were able to work 9. This operation would have been carried out through a roll call summoned on October 28 at 6 a.m. in Demokratenplatz. Consequently, by mean of a decree, the Judenrat was ordered to spread the news to the Jewish population, in order to induce everybody to obey without any exception, the disabled and the babies included. Obviously, Rauca said, anyone who would have tried to avoid the roll call, would have been shot on the spot by the patrols tasked to proceed with house to house searching 10. Given the precedents, this order clearly panicked the whole Council. Turned out unsuccessful a petition to Rauca – who ensured about the absence of any evil intent by him 11 – the Council tried to find more informations, useful to disclose the real Rauca’s intentions; and infact, through contacts with the Lithuanians, soon began to arrive rumors concerning the excavation of large mass graves at the Ninth Fort, by part of the Russian POWs. Moreover, directly from the offices of the Gestapo, special work permits were distributed to a group of selected workers, employed at the airfield yards, or at particularly important factories 12: disquieting clues that gave no room for optimistic interpretations about the real intents of Rauca. Finally, after long discussions and contrasts within the Council, in the late morning of October 27, the Judenrat decree was spread to the population of the ghetto. After which, during the subsequent few hours, the whole ghetto lived as in a sort of suspended animation, awaiting for dawn of October 28 and the dramatic appointment with an unavoidable fate.

IV. INGLORIOUS BASTARDS SS-Hauptsturmführer Heinrich Schmitz *

Those who decided, planned and finally executed most of the slaughters in the ghetto of Kaunas during Summer 1941, were a small and heterogeneous group of zealous and efficient henchmen. According to the Lithuanian historian Arunas Bubnys, on September 23, 1941, the Einsatzkommando 3a of Karl Jäger – that had reached Kaunas on June 29 – was formally reorganized into the KdS “Litauen” 13 . This structure included, as far as the so-called “Jewish question” was concerned, the Abt. IV (Gestapo), to which as commander, SSObersturmführer Martin Kurmis was appointed; actually, around mid October, this officer was replaced by SS-Hauptsturmführer Heinri ch Schmi tz 14 who, after having acted until that moment as Jäger’s deputy at the Stab EK 3a, in the subsequent months would have become one of the main perpetrators of the Jewish Genocide in Lithuania. To the same Abt. IV and directly subordinated to Schmitz, two more NCOs, among the others, were transferred, which had previously served with the infamous – and then disbanded – Rollkommando Hamann: SS-Hauptscharführer Helmut Rauc a, who had been Hamann’s deputy and SS-Hauptscharführer Josef Stütz 15. Rauca in particular, who at a later date would have become the commander of the Section 4 A 3 (Partisan Movements), was appointed by Jäger responsible for the Jewish Affairs in Kaunas: a role that would have substantially granted to him the right of life and death over the inhabitants of the ghetto, having among his tasks, during the various rounding-ups, the selection of the victims destined to be shot 16. Substantially in the same role of Rauca, in charge of the Jewish Affairs but in his case belonging from the civil administration of Kaunas, acted SS-Hauptsturmführer Frit z Jord an , through which passed the issuing of the work permits to the ghetto inhabitants: that is to say, the only glimmer of temporary survival allowed to the few selected Jews, lucky enough to receive it 17. Finally, there was Mi kas Kaminska s, a Lithuanian

quisling employed at the civil administration of Kaunas and close collaborator of Jordan, who had been tasked by the Lithuanian mayor Palciauskas, to keep the liaisons between the civilian authorities and the ghetto Judenrat. Apart from the leaders, engaged with the planning, what it was needed, in order to phisically carry out the Jewish actions, was what it has been efficaciously defined as Fussvolk der Endlösung 18, that is to say, a genocidal manpower, quite large and able to reinforce the scarce details of the Sichereitspolizei and that, in the case of Kaunas, was well represented by the already mentioned third company of the Polizei-Bataillon 11, of Hptm. Alfred Torn ba um 19.

Maj. Kazys Simkus

It is interesting to notice that, in the specific case of the 3/11 of Tornbaum, this company had been put at disposal – after the transferring to Belorussia of about half of the battalion – of the KdS “Litauen” Jäger, probably as a result of an agreement with the KdO Engel, to whom the company remained formally subordinated, but only for the ordinary matters 20. For everything else, and in particular the facets concerning the “Jewish question”, the company acted as a real genocidal cohort: as so were also the other two battalion companies, in that period relocated in Belorussia and fully engaged in spreading death among the Jewish communities of the area of Minsk. Moreover, as a further reinforcement, also Lithuanian personnel was available, taken from the LitauischeHilfspolizei-Bataillon 1 of Maj. Kazys Simkus , a former Air Force officer, now in command of an auxiliary battalion, formed since the early days of the German occupation and regularly used by the EK 3, for the carrying out of the mass shooting in the forts of Kaunas 21.

V. OCTOBER 28, 1941: DEMOKRATENPLATZ Just after dawn of October 28, once the ghetto inhabitants were rounded up in Demokratenplatz 22, a houseto-house search was started by groups of Lithuanian auxiliaries, looking for possibly hidden Jews: these bravos were coordinated by a squad of German policemen, under the orders of Hauptwachtmeister Blask 23; in the meantime, other policemen of the 3/11, equipped with machine guns, surrounded the entire perimeter of the ghetto. Behind them, standing on the hills overlooking the ghetto, many Lithuanian civilians played their role of bystanders. Demokratenplatz *

The waiting of the crowd, gathered at the square, lasted until 9 a.m., when finally Schmitz, Rauca, Jordan and Tornbaum, arrived before their victims, already subdivided in groups, according to the workplace of the family heads 24. All around to them, at the corners of the square, machineguns were placed, while policemen of the 3/11 of Tornbaum and Lithuanian auxiliaries, surrounded the crowd of Jews. The selection, at that point, could finally begin. Here’s what's happened according to the testimony of Tory 25: ”The columns of employees of the ghetto institutions and their families passed before Ruaca, followed by other columns, one after another. The Gestapo man fixed his gaze on each pair of eyes and with a flick of the finger of his right hand passed sentence on individuals, families, or even whole groups **. Elderly and sick persons, families with children, single women, and persons whose physique did nont impress him in terms of labor power, were directed to the right. There, they immediately felt into the hands of the German policemen and the Lithuanian partisans 26, who showered them with shouts and blows and pushed them

towards an opening especially made in the fence, where two Germans counted them and then reassembled them in a different place […] **. When some old or sick person could not hold out any longer and collapsed on to the ground, the Lithuanians set upon him istantly, kicking him with their boots, beating him, and threatening to trample him underfoot […]. Dr. Elchanan Elkes, 1939 *

Rauca directed the job of selection composedly, with cynism, and with the utmost speed […]. Throughout the selections he did not exhibit any sign of fatigue or sensitivity at the wailing, pleas, and cries, or at the sight of the heartrending spectacles which took place before his eyes when children were separated from their parents, or parents from their children, or hurbands and wives from each other […]. From time to time, Rauce feasted on a sandwich […] or enjoyed a cigarette, all the while performing his fiendish work without interruption **. When a column composed mostly of elderly people, or of women or children appeared before him, he would command contemptuously: ’All this trash to the right!’ or ’All this pile of garbage goes to the right!’. To Dr. Elkes, when he tried to intervene in an attempt to save their lives 27, he would say: “Wait, you’ll be grateful to me for having rid you of this burden” […]. Now and then Rauce would be handed a note with a number written on it, copied from the notebook kept by the German who diligently applied himself to the task of recording the number of Jews removed to the small ghetto […]. The selection was a protracted affair. Hungry, thirsty, and dejected, thousands of people waited for their turn from dawn […]. Those who were weak – those who could not withstand the psychological tension and the bodily torment – collapsed and breathed their last even before their turn came to pass before Rauca. It was beginning to grow dark, yet thousands of people remained standing in the square. Captain Jordan now opened another selection place **; he was assisted by Captain Tornbaum. Rauca could count on this pair without reservation […] 28. The selection was completed only after nightfall, but not before Rauca made sure that the quota had been fulfilled and that some 10.000 people had been transferred to the small ghetto. Only then where those who had passed through the selection, and had remained standing in the square, allowed to return to their homes […] **. One-third of the ghetto population had been cut down. The sick people who had remained in their homes in the morning had all disappeared. They had been transferred to the Ninth Fort during the day **. The square was strewn with several dozen bodies of elderly and sick people who had died of exhaustion. Here and there stools, chairs , and empty baby carriages were lyng about 29. On his way back Dr. Elkes muttered: “It wasn’t worthwhile living for more than sixty years in order to witness a day like this….”. The selection had finally ended.

VI. OCTOBER 29, 1941: AUTUMN TWILIGHT Overall, the dramatic selection of October 28 had forced about 10.000 Jews, most of which elderly, sick and children, and unemployed adults, from the great ghetto to the small and dilapidated quarter around Sajungosplatz, previously emptied from its inhabitants, during the action of October 4 30. All of them, although the majority had no longer any reasonable hope, could not be sure of what would be really happened in their future: so much so that some of them begun to organize their survival in the new sector. Obviously, any illusion was brutally broken at dawn of October 29, when Tornbaum’s policemen and the Lithuanians, stormed the houses of the small ghetto, forcing the Jews to line up and march toward the Ninth Fort, about 4 km far, while the weakest and the people no more able to move autonomously – among whom there were many women with their children – were loaded onto the trucks of the company 31. At that point, from the procession of thousands of victims, begun to rise, more and more intense, a simphony of tears, prayers and cries of despair, that hovered along the entire column from top to bottom. The “Grosse Aktion” of the great ghetto of Kaunas, was reaching its tragic final.

But let's read once more the words of Tory 32: ”It was an autumnal, foggy and gloomy dawn when German policemen and drunken Lithuanian partisans broke into the small ghetto, like so many ferocious beasts, and began driving the Jews out of their homes […]. The partisans barked out their orders to leave the houses and to line up in rows and columns. Each column was immediately surrounded by partisans, shouting “Forward march, you scum, forward march”, and driving the people by rifle butts out of the small ghetto toward the road leading to the Ninth Fort. It was the same direction that the Jews had been led away in the “action” commanded by Kozlowski on September 26, 1941, and in the “action” of the liquidation of the small ghetto on October 4, 1941. The same uphill road […] to a place from which no one returned. It was a death procession […]. Column after column, family after family, those sentenced to death passed by the fence of the large ghetto. Some men, even a number of women, tried to break through the chain of guards and flee to the large ghetto, but were shot dead on the spot. One woman threw her children over the fence, but missed her aim and the child remained hanging on the barbed wire. Its screams were quickly silenced by bullets […]. The procession, numbering some 10.000 people, and proceeding from the small ghetto to the Ninth Fort, lasted from dawn until noon. Elderly people and those who were sick, collapsed by the roadside and died […]. Thousands of curious Lithuanian flocked to both sides of the road to watch the spectacle, until the last of the victims was swallowed up by the Ninth Fort. In the fort, the wretched people were immediately set upon by the Lithuanian killers, who stripped them of every valuable article – gold rings, earrings, bracelets. They forced them to strip nacked, pushed them into pits which had been prepared in advance and fired into each pit with machine guns which had been positioned there in advance. The murderers did not have time to shoot everybody in one batch before the next batch of Jews arrived. They were accorded the same treatment as those who had preceded them. They were pushed into the pit on top of the dead, the dying, and those still alive from the previous group. So it continued, batch after batch, until the 10.000 men, women, and children had been butchered. Villagers living in the vicinity of the fort told stories of horrors they had seen from a distance, and of the hearttrending cries that emanated from the fort and troubled their waking hours all day and night […]”. The description of what happened in the Ninth Fort in Kaunas, on October 29, comes to us through the dramatic testimony of Kuki Kopelman, who in those days was a boy of thirteen, lucky enough to survive because deemed as dead into the pit, under the corpses of the other victims 33.

Kaunas, the gates of the Ninth Fort *

This is the narration of Kopelman 34: ”German and Lithuanian guards stood at the entrance with several large dogs straining at their leashes, barking and snarling furiously. We were pushed through the gates. Several trucks were standing inside the courtyard, their engines running. They often backfired and it sounded like shots. A young German officer addressed us: ’In spite of all the ridiculous rumors, you’re going to be transported to working camps in the east. You will shower and then be issued working clothes. Undress and leave your clothing here’. He spoke in civil tones, and in spite of all we knew about this death factory he almost sounded convincing. Whatever spark of hope we felt was estinguished when we heard a long burst of machine-gun fire and distant screams. The Germans heard it too, for they raised their guns and pointed them at us. ’Quickly you Jews! Undress and into the showers! You’re just hearing the backfire of some trucks’, the officer shouted […]. But no one moved, no one seemed able to move a muscle. The officer calmly walked up to an elderly who was standing near the front, drew his luger and shot him in the face. When he fell to the ground his head opened up and his brains pured out into the mud. Suddenly everyone was undressing. When you’re about to die, even a few minutes seem precious, as if another second might bring a reprieve […].

What followed was a nightmare in slow motion. Every tiny detail will stay burned in my memory forever. On the officer’s signal the Germans and Lithuanians launched themselves at us. ’Run, run, you Jew swine’, they shouted, lashing out at us with sticks and rifle butts, their dogs attacking the slow-moving ones, tearing pieces of flesh from their legs and buttocks. We started running in a wild panic with the guards and dogs after us […]. Then as we rounded a corner we saw dozens and dozens of machine guns mounted around an open field. They were firing long bursts into a huge pit. I could hear screaming from inside […]. Lithuanians and Germans with rolled up sleeves and red faces were loading and firing into the mob. You could see the yellow flashes from the barrels, and a veil of blue smoke drifting over the field. It was a scene out of hell itself. There were hoarse shouts, and women’s screams – shrill, and children and babies crying and barking dogs. It stank of sweat and urine and excrement as terrified bodies just… let go. I saw one bearded man standing by the pit, shaking his fists at the sky and screaming. ’Jews! There is no God! There is a devil sitting up there!’ He looked a lot like my old rabbi. Blood was streaming down him and they kept shooting at him, but he kept standing there, screaming at the sky. Then we were at the pit. It looked like thousands of bodies, one on top of another, screaming and writhing, begging the Germans to finish them off. A vision of hell. A vision of hell. We were right in front of the guns. Bullets were buzzing around me like angry bees, but all I felt was the crush of the mod behind me […]. Then I felt a weight fall on my head, knocking me into merciful oblivion”. That day, 9.200 Jews were butchered: 2.007 men, 2.920 women, and 4.273 children, as it has been confirmed by Karl Jäger in his summarized report of December 1, 1941, in which we read:

”Säuberung des Ghetto von überflüssige Juden” – “cleansing ghetto of superfluous Jews”.

VII. WAITING TIMES In the post war period, those who were the major responsible of the slaughters perpetrated in Kaunas during Summer/Winter 1941, had to answer for their actions in the course of an endless judicial procedure, started by the ZStL in the late ‘50s, with the gathering of the firsts personal folders, and closed about thirty years later, when died in prison for an incurable disease – while still in wait for the beginning of his trial – the last of the main defendants involved in that investigation: the former SS-Hauptscharführer Helmut Rauca who, just a few months before, had been finally extradited in Germany from Canada, where he had lived undisturbed by December 30, 1950, to May 20, 1983 35. As far as the other two main responsible of the slaughter are concerned, namely Jordan and Simkus, the former was KIA on the Eastern front on August 2, 1942, while the latter escaped to Australia, where he died probably by the beginning of the ‘90s 36. Here follows a summarized chronology of the judicial procedure, concerning the investigations carried out by the Public Prosecutor of Frankfurt on the Main, between 1959 and 1983. 1959 The Public Prosecutor of Frankfurt receives by the ZStL the folder concerning to Schm it z and other members of the EK3: the folder is labelled as ZStL 207 AR-Z 14/1958 (Schmitz). The Prosecutor of Frankfurt classifies the file as StA Frankfurt 4 Js 1106/59 gegen Heinrich Schmitz und anderen. 1961 On September 27, 1961, the Prosecutor of Frankfurt ask for the opening of the preliminary investigations (StA Frankfurt VU-Antrag gegen EK 3), to the Court of Wiesbaden, against members of the Polizei-Bataillone 9 and 11 and of the EK 3, included Rauc a, versus who an arrest warrant in absentia, had already been issued, just a few days before (September 21). Heinrich Schm it z is remanded in custody.

Helmut Rauca on trial

1962 – February As far as the slaughter of October 28-29, 1941, is concerned, the following statement is released by Heinrich Schm it z to the Public Prosecutor of Frankfurt: ”eine art 'ausforstung' vorgenommen worden sie. Dieser Ausdruck hört sich jetzt fürchterlich an, aber er bezeichnet ziemlich treffend das, was damals geschah. Es wurden etwa 10.000 Juden ausgewählt nach dem Grundsatz der Nützlichkeit und auch der Gesundheit. 10.000 wurden damals auch tatsächlich umgebracht” 37 [It was a sort of “weeding out”. Such a phrase, today, may sound horrific, but it describes, rather efficaciously, what happened then. About 10.000 Jews were selected on the basis of principles of utility and good health. And about 10.000 were actually killed. A/N]. 1962 – November In November 1962 the Court of Wiesbaden opens the proceeding. Schm it z commits suicide in jail. Avraham Tory is called among the prosecution witnesses. His diary is accepted as a primary evidence. 1966 – March On March 27, 1966, the Public Prosecutor of Frankfurt asked to the Court of Wiesbaden the removal, from the defendants, of G.B., former member of the 3/11. 1966 – August The Court of Wiesbaden, with ruling LG Wiesbaden 4 Js 1106/59 – 7 VU 3/61 vom 22.8.1966, approved the request of the Prosecutor of Frankfurt, concerning the removal of G.B., from the defendants. 1971 The Court of Wiesbaden, with ruling LG Wiesbaden 4 Js 1106/59 – VU 3/61 vom 6.12.71, removes from the defendants, the other members of the PB 11 still under investigations, including Tornb au m, and also four former members of the EK3. According to the disconcerting judgment of the court: ”the only role Tornbaum played was the selection of the victims, without having precise knowledge about what would have been the result of his actions. Moreover, his presence in the ghetto, in the course of the various actions, does not lead automatically to consider Tornbaum as partially responsible of what happened there, nor it demonstrates he has played any kind of supporting role” 38. In the same period the Prosecutor of Frankfurt receives concrete proofs concerning the presence in Canada of Rauc a. 1973 A further verdict, issued on January 28, 1971, by the Court of Wiesbaden, LG Wiesbaden VU 3/61 – 4 Js 1106/59 vom 28.1.73, removes the positions of the remaining members of the PB 9, still under investigations. 1982 The German authorities ask for the extradition of Rau ca from Canada. Rauca is arrested by the RCMP on June 17, 1982. Avraham Tory is called in Toronto to testify against Rauca. Again, his diary and other documents are accepted as evidences. 1983 The Public Prosecutor of Frankfurt, following the extradition in Germany of Helmut Rau ca (20.5.1983), issues a bill of indictment against him on August 26, 1983 (StA Frankfurt 50/4 Js 284/71 vom 26.8.1983 gegen Rauca), on which basis Rauca is arrested and posted in custody in Kassel. He die in jail, waiting for the beginning of the trial, on October 29, 1983.

VIII. CONSIDERATIONS With the massacre of Kaunas, of October 28-29, 1942, the short and bloody path that in a span of one season, from the firsts improvised and “occasional” slaughters at the beginning of July, had led to the planned and systematic mass-extermination of the following Autumn, essentially reaches its conclusion: we enter infact, into the final stage of the Jewish Genocide, that which – within few months – would have touched its historical peak and the definitive turning point, with the establishment in Poland of the three extermination camps of Belzec, Sòbibor and Treblinka. In other occasions we have already had the opportunity to highlight, as in our opinion, the symbolic beginning of the Jewish Genocide, may be made to coincide with the slaughter of Rumbula of November/December 1941, therefore, about one month after that of Kaunas. Well, the events of Kaunas seem to us fully coherent with this path, being Rumbula a symbol not necessarily by reason of the destructive dynamics that produced (and were produced during) this slaughter, which were already well tested and functional, but rather because of its apocalyptic magnitude. Compared to Kaunas infact, Rumbula has, as specific characteristic, the tragic enormity of its numbers (about 25.000 victims in two days of shootings), besides the fact of having seen a large Jewish community (that of Riga), erased in its entirety, forever from the history. On the contrary in Kaunas, where the victims of October 28-29 were about one-third compared to Rumbula, and where the Jewish ghetto managed to survive, in a way or another, for about 32 months yet, all the genocidal dynamics that variously but never simultaneously, had emerged from time to time, during the previous slaughters, appeared in their full evidence, as in a kind of total synthesis. In Kaunas there was a premeditated selection, planned and implemented, of the weakest and the most vulnerable among the Jews, of the childrens and the youngest (about 45% of total), of the women and the elders: that is to say, of all those categories deemed as “superfluous” because of their unproductiveness, and that therefore became the main target of the annihilation strategy. In other words, whether the Genocide had to be implemented, it would have been convenient, as first step, “getting rid of the most superfluous weights”, preserving for a pure utilitarian purpose, those still able to furnish their working contribution. We remember, in this sense, what Rauca said to Elkes during the selection: ”Wait, you’ll be grateful to me for having rid you of this burden”. In Kaunas the selection took place, certainly not on the basis of alleged, and mythical, “blacklists” – that according to a “reductionist” theory, were aimed to neutralize the most dangerous among the opponents 39 – but rather, by means of a procedure that later would have been used, endless times, on the platform of Auschwitz: that is to say, by grouping the most valid and healty, to exploit until exhaustion; and by forming another group with the “useless”, to be erased immediately. In this way, the massacre of Kaunas was ahead of its times, and adopted methods as in a real extermination camp. In Kaunas the logic and methods of an extermination camp were applied also during the executions, with endless waves of naked Jews, marching through the gates of the Ninth Fort, just for being immediately mowed down by the machine guns at the common graves: a system that had nothing different, apart from the cause of death – bullets instead of gas – from that applied, for example, at Sòbibor and Treblinka, where endless columns of naked Jews, would have crossed the entrance of the tubes, that led to the gas chambers. In this sense, if the Ninth Fort cannot be technically considered a real extermination camp, in practice it was used as such. By extension, the same “Grosse Ghetto” of Kaunas, may be associated, in functional sense, to the Camp nr. 1 of Sòbibor, where all the Jews not intended for immediate gassing, tried to survive in conditions of working slavery. In other words, the organizational and structural system of the Aktion Reinhard camps, had been somewhat anticipated by the detention and extermination complex represented by the ghetto and by the forts of Kaunas 40. In Kaunas, as in Rumbula and in the camps of the Aktion Reinhard, and in several brutal slaughters in Belorussia and Ukraine, there was a substantial collaboration of local auxiliaries, actively used as genocidal workforce in the firing squads, as well as in escorts and rounding-ups. And even though initially, some of them, were probably induced to search some kind of compensation against the Jews, on the basis of political/ideological endogenous motivations, related to the period of the Soviet occupation, well, all of this ended by being confused and levelled when they found themselves merely used by their German controllers, as heterodirect perpetrators, without any degree of authonomy 41. In a more general meaning, also the same hopeful Lithuanian nationalistic administration – that largely contributed to the destruction of the Lithuanian Jewry, although pushed by its own goals – not only did not rejected the genocidal solution imposed by Berlin, but ended up by embracing it in toto 42, so becoming nothing more than a political vassal. In Kaunas there was what we could define a “community of intent”. Infact, it was not just the Sichereitspolizei, through the department IV B 4 of the KdS “Litauen” – institutionally in charge of the Jewish

Affairs – that was involved in the decimation of the ghetto, but also the Ordnungspolizei, the German civil administration headed by Cramer, the Lithuanian authority under Mayor Palciauskas, as well as the ubiquitous militarized auxiliaries of Simkus. It was therefore applied a synergistic strategy, aimed to the optimization of the resources, in which every organization – while pursuing its own goals – was able to furnish its contribution. What we can clearly see, in all of this, it’s the pyramidal decentralization that, from Berlin down to the periphery, was reproduced by cascade, splitted into one thousand of semiautonomous streamlets, but, at the same time, coherent with a common general plan. In Kaunas, there were no operational needs connected with the security of the rear area, nor any pretext of reprisal, related to the perpetration of such a slaughter, not even that ridiculous “justification” that was claimed in occasion of the so-called Aktion-Koslowski of September 26 43. There was just the will to proceed with the progressive annihilation of the ghetto – weed out, was the term they used – based on purely genocidal intentions. And even the statement released by Schmitz to the Prosecutor of Frankfurt, about the principles of utility and good health, confirms this way of thinking: that generation of Jews, over which the Nazis had put their hands, had to be the last one; all the family liaisons, the relationships within the community, the perpetuation of the traditions to the childrens and to the youngest, the memory inherited from the elders, the solidarity between the generations, well, all of this had to be inexorably erased. The river had to be gradually dried up, up to the total disapperance, until when even the last one Jew, deemed as “useful”, would have ceased to be such. According to the various estimates, about the 95% of the Lithuanian Jewry – more than 200.000 on the eve of Barbarossa – did not survived the Final Solution 44: a percentage that is the highest of the whole occupied Europe. Of the about 40.000 Jews present in Kaunas in June 1941, and excluding the few that managed to escape prior the arrival of the Wehrmacht, no more than 2.000 were those still alive in July 1944, after the return of the Red Army 45. The numbers of such a catastrophe let no room for interpretations. We cou ld tal k about the dynamics, the roles and the methods by which all of this took place, but certainly not about the fact that there was a precise political will of destruction, pursued from first to last day of occupation – except for a tactical pause in the period December 1941-March 1943 – for putting an end to the Lithuanian Jewry, for reasons that were nothing but ideological and racial. We coul d qu ib ble about the context in which this crime was perpetrated and about the relationships that existed or not, among the various components of the Lithuanian society, and about the influences that could have received from the outside, but the fact remains that, for over three years, from June 1941 to July 1944, a part of the population, essentially defenceless, and reduced in terms of being not able to react in any way, was scientifically, costantly and relentlessly persecuted and annihilated, also by means of a balance of power that could not be more overwhelming. We coul d de ba te – and certainly sympathize – about the suffering endured by the Lithuanian population subjected to the Soviet yoke on the eve of the WW II, as well as about the feelings of revenge that erupted when this yoke finally ended, but at the same time, it is not certainly acceptable the so-called theory of the “two genocides”, nor, even less, the brutal generalization that, through a sort of collective culpabilization, wanted to extend, to the whole Lithuanian Jewry – basically Ashkenazic and observant – the faults of certain pro-Soviet segments of the same Jewish community in Lithuania, or even, those “imported” through the evil deeds of some Soviet Jews, enrolled with the NKVD or in other Communist repressive organizations – intrinsically atheistic and internationalistic. A brutal and simplistic generalization that find its roots into the Nazi propaganda and that it has been rightly stigmatized as “troglodytic”, by distinguished member of the same Lithuanian culture 46. We coul d dis cuss about all of this. But all of this certainly does not diminish the fact that the Lithuanian Jewry, that for centuries had represented a cultural and economic crossroad among three worlds, namely the Baltic, the Germanic and the Slavic, has been irretrievably erased during the span of 37 months, by hand of a rough, but lucid, destructive will. We want to close this article with a phrase quoted by the book “The Vanished World of the Lithuanian Jews” 47 : ”The remarkable Lithuanian Jewish community, which once occupied a prominent place in the Jewish world and constituted an unique part of of the Jewish world communities, is no more. All that remains is memory”. That is sculpted on the stones of the Valley of the Communities at Yad Vashem.

FOOTNOTES * Source: fair use Yad Vashem. www.yadvashem.org. ** Detail confirmed by the Poblic Prosecutor of Frankfurt: StaW Frankfurt am Main, 50/4 Js 284/71 vom 26.8.1983 gegen Rauca, of by StaW Frankfurt am Main 4 Js 1106/59 vom 27.3.1966, gegen Heinrich Schmitz. 1

Avraham Tory “Surviving the Holocaust. The Kovno Ghetto Diary. Introduction by Martin Gilbert and historical notes by Dina Porat. Cambridge, Massachussets, 1990. 2 Tory was called to give his testimony, and his diary was recognized as a proof, during the proceedings of Wiesbaden against Heinrich Schmitz (commander of the Abt. IV.Gestapo of the KdS “Litauen”), Tampa against Kazys Palciauskas (former Mayor of Kaunas) and Toronto against Helmut Rauca (Adjutant of Schmitz). 3 Tory, page 49. 4

According to the so-called Jäger Report, 534 Jews were shot on August 9 at the Fourth Fort, 1.811 on August 18 at the Fourth Fort, 1.608 on September 26 at Fourth Fort ( Aktion-Koslowski), and 1845 on October 4 at Ninth Fort ( Klein-Ghetto-Aktion). See Bartusevicius/Tauber/Wette, pages 303-308, Longerich, page 398. Actually, as far as the actions of August 9 and 18 are concerned, there are some inaccuracies in the report of Jäger, who would have swapped the dates and included, into those two totals, three main executions at least, happened in that same period: in particular, 1.200 Jews would have been shot on August 7 (Donnerstag-Aktion), 30 on August 15, and probably 534 on August 18 (Intelligenzaktion). Dieckmann, pages 445-446, 465, Stang, pages 101-102. The Donnerstag Aktions is confirmed also by the testimony, released on March 19, 1958, before the ZStL 207 AR-Z 14/1958 (Schmitz), by Gehrart Quittschau, former member of the Polizei-Bataillon 11, who voluntarily, took part in the executions. About the Inteligenzaktion, see also Tory, page. 33. 5 According to the EM 19 of July 11, 1941, 7.800 Jews had been executed until thhat date, by execution squads formed with Lithuanian auxiliaries, especially at the Seventh Fort. Also were included in this total, the about 1.000 Jews, murdered in Kaunas during the pogroms that occurred in those first days. These executions, apart from the Lithuanians of the TDA-Batalionas, were perpetrated by personnel of the SK 1b, as well as by a details of the Polizei-Bataillon 9, attached to the EK 3. See Dieckmann, pagg. 442, 463, Dieckmann/Sužiedėlis, pagg. 55-57. 6 Curilla, page 154, Tory, page 39, Dieckmann, page 443. 7

After an exchange of messages, among Himmler, Prutzmann and the Reichkommissar Lohse, dated August 24, i.e., just a few days after the establishment of the ghetto (August 15), the employment of Lithuanian guards had been authorized in support of the 3/Polizei-Bataillon 11, that already had been charged with the surveillance of the same ghetto. Breitman, pages 78 and 271. 8 The firsts 5.000 working permits were issued on September 15 to the Jewish Council, and by this assigned on the basis of lists compiled by the offices of Fritz Jordan, to an extent of no more than a permit for each family, or married couple. The tragedy was that, being the permits nominative and not transferable to anyone, just the direct recipient of the working permit was protected, while, all around to him, all his blood relatives – sons, spouse, parents – as well as other relatives, could be subjected to “free hunting”, during the selections. Tory, page 36-37. 9 Curilla, page 173, StAw Frankfurt am Main, 50/4 Js 284/71 of 26.8.1983 gegen Rauca. 10

Tory, pages 43-44.

11

According to the reconstruction of the facts, made by the Public Prosecutor of Frankfurt, Rauca ensured the members of the Judenrat about his intention to merely know the ghetto populations, in order to gather informations concerning their working capabilities. Curilla, page 173, StAw Frankfurt am Main, 50/4 Js 284/71 del 26.8.1983 gegen Rauca. 12 In particular, the Jews of the so-called Brigade “Lipzer” were benefited by those special permits, as engaged in repairs at the building of the Gestapo of Kaunas. 13 Bubnys, Vokiečių okupuota Lietuva, page 78. 14

Stang, pages 60, 98.

15

Bubnys, Holocaust in Lithuanian Province, 1941, page 19. Between July and October 1941, the Rollkommando Hamann had sowed destruction among the Jewish communities in Lithuania, killing around 53.000 civilians. See Jäger Report, in Bartusevicius/Tauber/Wette, pages 303-308, Stang, pages 168-160. Mainly formed with Lithuanian auxiliaries, this kommando had, as cadres, a small group of German NCOs: in addition to Hamann, Rauca and Stütz, SS-Hauptscharführer Porst, Salzmann, Mack and Planert are also mentioned. See also Curilla, page 309. The Rollkommando Hamann was disbanded in early October, shortly after having perpetrated its last slaughter in Zagare (October 2, 1941). 16 Stang, page 98. 17

Jordan, who also had the rank of SA-Obersturmführer, was the director of the Hauptabteilung II Politik, and through its role of superintendent of Jewish Affairs, was directly subordinated to SA-Brigadeführer Hans Cramer, chief of the German civil administration of Kaunas (Stadtkommissar). After having been transferred to the eastern front, because of a quarrel with his superior, Jordan was KIA on August 2, 1942. See Dieckmann, pages 443, 463, Neumann, page 147, Tory, page 38. 18 Klaus-Michael Mallmann: Vom Fussvolk der “Endlösung”. Ordnungspolizei, Ostkrieg und Judenmord. Tel Aviv, 1997. 19

This is the description Tory makes in his book, about this officer: “Tornbaum was the enbodiment of a typical German gendarmes. He expressed great interest in art, in philatelic collections, and in valuable in general. He was a sadist, fond of listening to Liszt’s rhapsodies played by an artist, only to rob him afterward of his piano. He was a police dog, who forced women to undress, so that he could then conduct gynecological examination on them, while, at the same time, beating them severely. This police inspector who plundered and looted treasures from the Jews, repaying them with blows on all parts of their bodies; this broad-schouldered man in gray uniform [probably it was green. A/N] and shining boots, feared by his own subordinates; this [was] Tornbaum, who had thougt that his rule over us would be indefinite […]”.Tory, page 403. A testimony about Tornbaum, during a plundering in the ghetto, is given also by Joheved Inciuriene, a survived Jewess, at that time young girl of seventeen: “He came into our room with gun drawn. We were ordered to open the closets, in which we kept our dresses, and to a Jew, who had accompanied him, to load our winter clothes onto the trucks, waiting in the courtyard, plus a couple of my father’s dresses”. [After he was gone out], “I saw through the window, put our stuff onto

the truck and suddenly I heard Tornbaum shouting: ‘Dance you, Jew! Dance!’. The Jew, a middle-aged man, who without hurry had carried our clothes, stood still, not having understood what the German had ordered him. At that point, Tornbaum pointed the gun and shot him on the spot”. Inciuriene, page 203-204. 20 Between Engel, appointed KdO “Litauen” around mid-September, and Lechthaler, commander of the Polizei-Bataillon 11, there was a conflict concerning the auxiliary Lithuanian units, until then controlled by Lechthaler, and that instead, Engel now claimed by virtue of his role. The question was settled by BdO Jedicke, at first with a compromise and then, by transferring Lechthaler to Belorussia (October 6, 1941), along with two battalion companies (2/11 and 4/11). As far as the 1/11 is concerned, it remained in Lithuania, at Marijampole, while the 3/11 of Tornbaum – as already said – was placed at disposal of the Sichereitspolizei. Stang, page 187. 21 We are talking about the TDA-Batalionas, formed in Kaunas on June 28, 1941, with lituanian personnel already drafted into the Red Army. It was later disbanded (August 7) and reorganized into three new battalion, one of which, the 1.PPT-Batalionas (LitauischeHilfspolizei-Bataillon 1), remained under the orders of Simkus. In December 1941, it was definitively renamed Litauische-SchumaBataillon 13. See Bubnys Hilfspolizeibataillone, pages 119-120, Dieckmann/Sužiedėlis, pages 31-32, 50-51. 22 In spite of its name Demokratenplatz was, in autumn 1941, nothing more a large wasteland, near the northern edge of the ghetto. It was later used as agricultural terrain. 23 Curilla, page 175. 24 Curilla, page 173. StAw Frankfurt am Main, 50/4 Js 284/71 vom 26.8.1983 gegen Rauca. According to the Public Prosecutor of Frankfurt, Rauca and the others arrived in the square towards 7 a.m. 25 Tory, pages 52-55. 26 Tory uses the term “partisans”, when he refers to the Lithuanian collaborationist groups, at the German’s service. In this article we have maintained the same meaning, in coherence with the original. 27 Elchanan Elkes (1979-1944), was the chairman of the Judenrat in the ghetto of Kaunas. He died in Germany, in the concentration camp of Landsberg, on October 17, 1944. 28 According to a testimony, at a certain point, towards evening, Rauca left the square and was replaced by Ltn. Iltmann, commander of a platoon of the 3/11, who supervised the selection of the last 5 or 6.000 Jews. Actually, this officer would prove to be quite “generous”, by selecting just about thirty elders, particularly sick and frail. Curilla, pag. 174. 29 According to the Public Prosecutor of Frankfurt, those who died by exhaustion on the square, were about 10 or 15. StAw Frankfurt am Main, 50/4 Js 284/71 of 26.8.1983 gegen Rauca. According to Stang, page. 103, they were 30. 30 See note nr. 4. 31 Curilla, page 175, StaW Frankfurt am Main 4 Js 1106/59 vom 27.3.1966, gegen Heinrich Schmitz. 32 Tory, pages 54-59. 33 The testimony of Kopelman has been published by his childhood friend Solly Ganor (Zalke Genkind), in his book “ Light one Candle. A Survivor’s Tale from Lithuania to Jerusalem” [Germ.ed.: “Das andere Leben. Kindheit im Holocaust”]. Shortly after the publishing, Ganor’s book raised polemics, concerning some points of the narration, that however, were soon set aside, also thanks to the intervention in his favour by Barbara Distel, the well-known historian and director, for over thirty years, of the memorial-museum of Dachau. 34 Ganor, pages 175-176. 35 Margolian, pages 113-114. 36 Dean, pge 282. According to a testimony, Simkus was recognized in 1949 by a young survived Jew, in the refugee camp of Bonegilla, Victoria (AU), from which he immediately disappeared. His name was included within a list of 38 Lithuanians, alleged members of the TDA-Batalionas, who were investigated in Australia, by the Special Investigation Unit. According to the final report, issued in 1993, 18 of the 38 suspects, including Simkus, had passed away in the meantime. 37 Dieckmann, pages 448, 466. 38 Curilla, page 177. LG Wiesbaden, 4 Js 1106/59 – VU 3/61 vom 6.12.71. 39 There is no doubt that, the first target of the Einsatzgruppen were those who, according to the Nazi ideological vision, were considered hostile to the Germany, both active and potential, and first of all the so-called Jewish-Bolsheviks, Communists and the party officials. But all of this – besides having character of an evident preventive repression, quite objectionable in and of itself – soon overflowed, enlarging dramatically its targets, well over those categories initially identified as “hostile”, and ended up by becoming, a mere anti-Semitic persecution. See Dieckmann/Sužiedėlis, pag. 23. 40 About the organization of the Aktion Reinhardt Camps, see Yitzhak Arad: Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. The Operation Reinhard Death Camps. 41 The same Lithuanian pogromists, who acted in the first days of Barbarossa, who were partially absorbed into the auxiliary militarized units (that of Simkus included) and that, according to a theory, should demonstrate an alleged anti-Semitic attitude of the Lithuanian population, independent from the anti-Jewish policies plotted in Berlin, to the point of exploding in parallel with the Soviet withdrawal from the country, well, all of this becomes substantially irrelevant, when considered within the “general economy” of the Jewish Genocide: no more than one thousand infact, were the victims of the pogroms (more organized, than spontaneous), that happened in Kaunas in late June 1941, as confirmed by Dieckmann/Sužiedėlis, page 43. In essence, the theory concerning a so-called political revenge of the Lithuanian natives, against the “Jewish-Bolsheviks” oppressors, seems to us quite specious, as it can be applied just to specific episodes, during a very limited period of time, and, in any case, within a political context, operational and situational in which, the presence on the ground – or, at least, the outer influence – of the Sichereitpolizei units, cannot be underestimated. 42 Bubnys Outline, page 215. 43 The so-called Aktion-Koslowski of September 26, 1941, that caused the death of 1.608 Jews, would have been perpetrated as “reprisal” for a gunshot fired, from the side of the ghetto, in direction of a certain Willi Koslowski, policeman of 3/11 in guard duty at the outer perimeter. Such a retaliation rate – 1.600 victims for a shot that did not reached its alleged target – goes far beyond any conceivable proportionality, and it is monumentally higher than the Sühnequote of 100 hostages for each German killed, applied in Serbia. Hence, it's more than evident the grotesque unreality of such a “justification”. 44 Bubnys Outline, page 214. 45 Dieckmann, page 439.

46

Tomas Venclova, quoted by Leonidas Donskis, in the preface of “The Vanished World of the Lituanian Jews”, page X.

47

Alvydas Nikžentaitis, Stefan Schreiner, Darius Staliūnas: “The Vanished World of the Lituanian Jews”, pag. 1.

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This article is taken from the site www.ordnungspolizei.org