CHOLTITZ: There’s a man here, General KITTEL, who was the subject of a whole evening’s broadcast.
ROTHKIRCH: He was at LVOV. He had some sort of local ‘Kommandanturen”—
CHOLTITZ: Surely he didn’t permit executions to take place, did he?
ROTHKIRCH: If you’re in charge of villages and towns and the SS comes along and takes the people away, what can you do? Of course masses of people were shot at LVOV. Thousands of them![314] First the Jews, then Poles who were also shot in thousands, non-Jews, the whole aristocracy and great landed proprietors and masses of students. It’s all very difficult.
CHOLTITZ: How dreadful!
Document 128
CSDIC (UK), GRGG 271
Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 10, 11, 12 Mar. 45 [TNA, WO 208/4177]
BRUHN: If you were to ask me: ‘Have we deserved victory or not?’ I should say: ‘No, not after what we’ve done. After the amount of human blood we’ve shed knowingly and as a result of our delusions and also partly instigated by the lust of blood and other qualities, I now realise we’ve deserved defeat; we’ve deserved our fate, even though I’m accusing myself as well.’ Even if you take the indubitable courage and achievement of the population into account, we are not suffering an undeserved fate; we are being punished for letting a national resurrection which promised so well, go to the devil.
BROICH: We shot women as if they had been cattle. I was at ZHITOMIR the day after it happened, while moving forward when the second offensive was about to start. The ‘Kommandant’, an Oberst von MONICH(?)[315] happened to be there and he said, quite appalled: ‘We might drive out afterwards; there is a large quarry where ten thousand men, women and children were shot yesterday.’ They were all still lying in the quarry. We drove out on purpose to see it. The most bestial thing I ever saw.
CHOLTITZ: One day after SEBASTOPOL had fallen – whilst I was on my way back to BERLIN – I flew back with the Chief of Staff,[316] the CO of the airfield was coming up to me, when he heard shots. I asked whether a firing practice was on. He answered: ‘Good Lord, I’m not supposed to tell, but they’ve been shooting Jews here for days now.’
BROICH: The most ridiculous story is the one WILDERMUTH (PW) tells about CROATIA when he was there. Some incident had happened in a factory somewhere or other; maybe someone was shot; in any case nothing of any importance. The ‘Bataillonskommandeur’ had the six hundred workers shot, including the German foremen, without establishing their identity! Just imagine it! It all came out afterwards. The man concerned, who was in charge of it all, came along and said: ‘Good gracious, they have shot my son as well!’ WILDERMUTH experienced that incident himself.[317]
CHOLTITZ: Once I went to OLDENBURG and visited Gauleiter RÖVER[318] who said to me on parting: ‘I must congratulate you, Sir, on your “Regiment”. You are now in command of the “Oldenburger Regiment”. How are things in the field?’ I said: ‘Well, the soldiers’ morale is high, everything is in order. It’s just the home front that doesn’t satisfy our men.’ He asked why ever not. ‘Well, we can’t stand this shooting of Jews.’ The man couldn’t understand that. ‘And we cannot stand – I stress this fact in the name of my men – we won’t stand the persecution of churches and religious houses.’ In SOUTH OLDENBURG, which is Catholic, nuns and monks were being turned out of their houses and were not permitted to remain within a radius of 60 km, to prevent them from being assisted by the population.[319] He looked very amazed and then started shouting like a madman, saying: ‘What! Is that what your men are concerned about? It’s incredible! The FÜHRER gave orders, shouting at me furiously, that a report be sent him every day in which not at least a thousand Jews were shot.’
ROTHKIRCH: Only in GERMANY, or where?
CHOLTITZ: No – everywhere. I presumed he meant POLAND. 36,000 Jews from SEBASTOPOL were shot.
Document 129
CSDIC (UK), GRGG 272
Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 13–16 Mar. 45 [TNA, WO 208/4177]
ROTHKIRCH: All the gassing institutions are in POLAND, near LVOV.[320] I know that there are large gassing centres there but I don’t know any more. Let me tell you though, the gassings are by no means the worst.
RAMCKE: I first heard about all those things here in this PW camp.[321]
ROTHKIRCH: I’m an ‘Administration General’ and the people here have already interrogated me. It was near LVOV. Actually we washed our hands of it all because these atrocities took place in a military area. At LVOV in particular I was always receiving reports of those shootings and they were so bestial that I wouldn’t care to tell you about them.
RAMCKE: What happened?
ROTHKIRCH: To start with the people dug their own graves, then ten Jews took up their position by them and then the firing squad arrived with tommy-guns and shot them down, and they fell into the grave. Then came the next lot and they, too, were paraded in front of them and then fell into the grave and the rest waited a bit until they were shot. Thousands of people were shot. Afterwards they gave that up and gassed them. Many of them weren’t dead and a layer of earth was shovelled on in between. They had packers there who packed the bodies in, because they fell in too soon. The SS did that, they were the people who packed the corpses in.
RAMCKE: Were they ‘Waffen-SS’? What did the Security Police do?
ROTHKIRCH: I believe they were Security Police.
RAMCKE: Where were they recruited from?
ROTHKIRCH: I can’t tell you that, they were typical – they were SS men. There are photographs in this newspaper, you can see them. We received a description. I don’t know to this day why I got it. The SS leader wrote that he had shot the children himself – women were shot as well – because it was so repulsive; they didn’t always die immediately; he actually wrote that, I have the thing at home. He described how he grasped the children by the neck and shot them with his revolver because that way he had the greatest certainty of their dying instantaneously. This thing, which I had not asked for at all, I sent home.
The Governor at LVOV, a Dr LASCH,[322] invited me to go to the opera with him. After the long interval he suddenly said to me: ‘You know, Graf ROTHKIRCH, it was terrible. It’s so dreadful it’s indescribable. Just imagine what I have done. If only I hadn’t done it. I attended one of those shootings today.’ The man was completely out of his mind. A year ago I was in charge of the guerrilla school where men were being trained in guerrilla warfare; I went on an exercise with them one day and I said: ‘Direction of march is that hill up there.’ The directors of the school then said to me: ‘That’s not a very good idea, sir, as they are just burning Jews up there.’ I said: ‘What do you mean? Burning Jews? But there aren’t any Jews any more.’ ‘Yes, that’s the place where they were always shot and now they are all being disinterred again, soaked with petrol and burnt so that their bodies shan’t be discovered.’ ‘That’s a dreadful job. There’s certain to be a lot of loose talk about it afterwards.’ ‘Well, the men who are doing the job will be shot directly afterwards and burnt with them.’ The whole thing sounds just like a fairy story.[323]
314
Up to January 1942 in Lvov alone about 11,000 Jews were killed. For the extermination of Jews in the Eastern Galician region of Oberfeldkommandantur 365 see Pohl, ‘National-Sozialistische Judenverfolgung’. In this post, Rothkirch apparently had a rather reserved attitude towards the SS. Alongside the civilian administration and the SS apparatus within the General-Gouvernement, as Wehrmacht representative Rothkirch had only a subordinate role in the region. Ibid., p. 93. For the role of the Oberfeldkommandantur see Krannhals, ‘Die Judenvernichtung in Polen’.
315
In July and August at Zhitomir, 5,000 Jews were murdered. Those not caught up in the first massacres were killed on 18 September 1941 when 3,145 Jews were executed 10 kilometres outside the city. Broich was probably referring to this occurrence. Why he came to Zhitomir as CO, Reiter-Reg.22./1.Kav.Div. subordinated to Pz.Gr.2, Army Group Centre, is not known. Between 12 and 20.9.1941 while the division was out of the line to rest and repair, Broich apparently took the opportunity to visit Zhitomir. War Diary, 1.Kav.Div., BA/MA RH29/1-4. There is no trace of an Oberst von Monich in the Army List.
316
Choltitz flew to Berlin on 4.7.1942 to deliver a radio broadcast on the fighting at Sevastopol; a facsimile of the speech is published by Timo von Choltitz at www.choltitz.de. The Chief of Staff referred to here is Oberst Freidrich Schulz (15.10.1897–30.11.1976) who was Chief of Staff, 11.Armee between 12.5.1942 and 27.11.1942. In his memoirs, Choltitz did not mention the shooting of Jews in the vicinity of Simferopol airfield. Choltitz, ‘Soldat unter Soldaten’, p. 217. A total of about 40,000 Jews and Crimean hussars were murdered in the Crimea. ‘Enzyklopädie des Holocaust’, Vol. 2, p. 822.
318
Karl Röver (12.2.1889–15.5.1942) was Gauleiter of Weser-Ems from 1.10.1928 until his unexpected death.
319
For the general context see Heuzeroth, ‘Verfolgte aus religiösen Gründen’ and Pohlschneider, ‘Der NS-Kirchenkampf in Oldenburg’.
320
The Janovska camp was at Lvov. It had no gas chambers but estimates range from 10,000 to 200,000 persons murdered there. ‘Enzyklopädie des Holocaust’, Vol. 2, p. 657ff. The nearest gas chambers were at Belzec camp, about 70 kilometres north-west of Lvov, where 600,000 Jews, Gypsies and Poles were murdered between mid-March and December 1942. For the murder of Jews in Galicia see Sandkühler, ‘Endlösung in Galizien’.
321
What knowledge Ramcke had of the Holocaust can no longer be ascertained. Since he spent only four weeks from February 1944 on the Eastern Front in Ukraine it is possible that he knew little of it.
322
Dr Karl Lasch (29.12.1904–3.6.1942), Governor, Galicia district of General-Gouvernement with his seat at Lvov, 1.8.1941–24.1.1942. Lasch was recalled peremptorily on 14.1.1942 and executed on 3.6.1942 for corruption. For Lasch see Sandkühler, ‘Endlösung in Galizien’, esp. p. 447f; and Pohl, ‘NS-Judenverfolgung’ esp. p. 76f.
323
Rothkirch also mentions this in SRGG 1133(C), 9.3.1945, TNA, WO 208/4169. Under the cover name ‘Aktion 1005’ from June 1943 the SS began removing the evidence of mass murders in the East by opening the graves and burning the corpses. Spector, ‘Aktion 1005’.