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Kolomyja and District Belzec Transports (3)
Kolomyja: 3-6 April 1942 June 1942 7-8 September 1942 11-13 October 1942 Gwozdziec via Kolomyja: April 1942 Horodenka: April 1942 September 1942 Jablonow via Kolomyja: April 1942 September 1942 Kosow via Kolomyja: April 1942 September 1942 Kuty via Kolomyja: April 1942 Obertyn via Horodenka: September 1942 Peczenizyn Belzec Transports: April 1942 Pistyn via Kolomyja: Sniatyn: April 1942 September 1942 Zablotow: April 1942 Zabie: September 1942
No sooner had the Russians decamped, the first excesses against local Jews commenced. Ukrainian nationalists caught Jewish men and women in the streets, or dragged them out of their houses. They were being led fettered through the streets of Kolomyja and the local population beat and abused them. They were taken to public places where monuments of Soviet personalities had been erected. They were then yoked to the monuments which they were forced to pull down while being beaten. The Jews were ordered to break the monuments with their bare hands. During these proceedings many Jews were seriously injured. Jewish houses were ransacked and robbed. The Ukrainian intelligentsia took over the town administration.
After the entry of the Hungarians, comparative order returned to the town. Jews were ordered immediately to wear special arm-bands. The Hungarian authorities demanded labourers from the local council. The council listed only Jews who worked without payment.
The first German officials to arrive in the town were: Volkmann, who was appointed Kreishauptmann (Chief of District), the Stadthauptmann (Town Commissioner), Michael, head of the Labour Office, Dr. Jordon, Landwirtschaftsrat (Head of Supply Department) and Oberleutnant Haertl as Chief of a detachment of Schutzpolizei (City Police). Hans Kruger in Stanislawow ordered in reinforcements of Schupo into the Kolomyja districts to assist in resettlement operations. In October, 1941, 35 men of the Vienna Schutzpolizei arrived in Kolomyja (5).
There were a number of 'murder squads' drawn from a number of
agencies. Initially, Einsatzgruppen, Waffen SS and Wehrmacht
personnel. Once the area was secured, internal security forces
took over. Although working at times on different agendas, their
tasks were identical: the extermination of all political adversaries
to the 'New Order', and Jews {perce}. These units were drawn
from: Sipo-SD (Gestapo Kripo etc.), Schutzpolizei (policemen
from Vienna District), Ukrainian Police Auxiliaries, Local militia (Ukrainian
and Polish). These forces were also supplemented by Railway Police
and Council employees.
Sites of extermination
The transports to Belzec
and murder of Jews in the Scheparowce forest is central to the extermination
of the Jews in the Kolomyja and we have some first hand accounts from the
Schutzpolizei of how these executions took place. Other locations
of mass murder in Kolomyja were the Jewish cemetery, the Jewish abattoir
and the Prison under the command of Leopold Winkler.
Police Battalion 133 (Police Regiment 24)
Identified Schutzpolizei of Kolomyja who were responsible for
mass slaughter of the Jews in this district. They were divided up
into two groups: A and B. There was an officer section, a quartermaster
section and the police station personnel:
Captains Doppler and Gross
Lt. Hertl and Kleinbauer (check ranks)
Sergeants: Pernek, Kneissl, Hofstetter, Steiner
Corporals: Gallhart, Straka
Constables: Gall, Harko, Kroegner, Layer, Mauritz, Reisenthaler,
Ruprechtsofer, Stanka Schipany, Wittich, Uitz
Katzmann (Lvov), Kruger (Stanislawow), Brandt (Stanislawow)
Kolomyja:
Leideritz (6), Goedds, Weissman, Frost, Volkmann, Rebkoff, Hack,
Petsch, Koenig, Birsch, Schwebe, Hubert, Wahrmann, Schwenker,
Schubert
Winkler (7)
Individual confiscation of Jewish property was forbidden. Only the
Kreishauptmann and the Chief of the 'SD. und Sipo' were authorised
to confiscate Jewish property. Special officials of the Judenrat
collected the requested objects and handed them over to the authorities.
In August, 1941, Volkmann ordered the Jews to hand over all their gold,
silver, jewellery and all furs and woollens, and refusal would be immediate
death. It was accepted that much of this property was pilfered by the operators.
Once, an order was issued for all Jews to hand in their furs. They were collected and sorted in the Horowitz factory. Kleinbauer was in charge of this operation. I admit that I received a fur coat from the post. The furs were loaded and sent to Lemberg (Lvov). On the orders of the Gestapo, the Judenrat also took in precious stones and jewelry. (9)
At the end of August and the beginning of September, 1941, detachments of the German Security Services began to arrive in Kolomyja from Stanislawow. On the 21st September, 1941, the staff of the 'Sicherheitsdienst und Sicherheitzpolizei', commanded by SS-Obersturmführer Peter Leideritz rounded up 250 Jews. Three days later they were taken to neighbouring Korolowska to be shot, but were prevented from carrying out these executions by the Hungarians. (10)
On the 22nd September, 1941, houses of the wealthy
Jews were evacuated with immediate effect. The owners were not
permitted to take any objects with them. The German authorities
expropriated Jewish buildings in entire streets for their own purposes
without payment or compensation. These seizures were accompanied
by arrests, beatings and abuse of the Jewish population.
A centralised Judenrat operated in most districts, Kolomyja taking in the towns of Kuty and Kosow etc., which resulted in much argument between their representatives. (12) The German Authorities only dealt with the President of the Judenrat. They remitted to him their demands and he was wholly responsible for their strict execution. There was to be no compromise. The establishment of the Judenrat restricted arbitrary action. Persecution became organised and was carried out according to a predetermined plan.
The Judenrat organised the supply of Jewish labourers for
the town administration. The Jews would officially receive wages
amounting to 80% of the scale fixed for the Aryan population.
In reality, the Jews received much less. The wages were paid
direct to the Judenrat who distributed a small
amount to the actual worker, after taxes and other expenses. To protect
the Jewish intelligentsia for as long as possible, many were employed by
the Judenrat. The German Tax Authorities, headed by Dr. Lorens
demanded the payment of all taxes even those that had been outstanding
over many years.
Record of 'Actions in Kolomyja' (13)
In the Scheparow Forest
On the 11th October, 1941, all Jewish teachers were arrested by the SD and removed to the prison to join many other Jews already detained. Lists of names and addresses had been complied by Ukrainian and Polish informers.
In the local prison, the Germans asked the Jewish prisoners for volunteers for work. Many answered this call to get away from the bad conditions in the prison. A small group of young Jews were selected and taken to Szeparowce, a forest near Kolomea where they were forced to dig deep ditches. In the evening all of them were shot. The detainees in the prison were given neither food or water, provisions sent into the prison by the Judenrat were stolen by the guards or given to non-Jews. The following day, the 12th October, (a Jewish holyday) all became clear: The SD, Schutzpolizei, and Auxiliary Police hunted down Jews in the streets and arrested them. Armed German Security Forces went to the Synagogue and stopped the service, then set it on fire. Everyone was removed, men, women and children. They were all taken to the Scheparowce forest just outside of the town where over 3.000 were all shot into the pits which had been previously prepared by the Jewish prisoners.
We are able know the Modus Operandi of these 'Aktions' by the interrogation of some of the perpetrators who were arrested after the war. (15) The background to these arrests are of importance as they detail individual responsibility in the manner of execution, and not the usual defensive obfuscation. Their apprehension came about as the result five Jewish survivors from Kolomyja. (16)
Those arrested (17) acted very much like the norm, i.e., when they knew their precarious situation, they implicated others to lessen their own actions, and so to speak, spread the blame as a barrier to a more severe justice. There was no honour among this selection of thieves and murderers, as they crumpled under interrogation and 'spilled the beans' to save their own skin.
Ex Schupos Stanka and Straka were the first to break and detail the systematic weekly killing of Jews in Kolomyja in the Scheparowce forest, the cemetery and abattoir. Uitz stated that his police detachment shot over 15.000 Jews in Kolomyja. (18) Pernek tried to hang himself in the prison cell, but later he was so overcome with remorse, he requested pen and paper to record what had happened in Kolomyja and confirmed the forest liquidations and the use of dogs to tear at Jewish throats. (19) An interesting fact emerged that has been discussed elsewhere, was that Lt. Gross refused to participate in killing actions and there had been a row with Hertl. Gross was not included in further actions, and no disciplinary action was taken against him. (20) All admitted shooting of Jews and complicity in Belzec transports in the districts of Kuty, Kosow, Jablonow, Pistyn, Peczenizyn, Horodenka, Czernilicia, Gwozdiec, Zablotow and Zabie.
The accused Steiner when under interrogation, acted out a typical shooting:
Describing a shooting in the Scheparowce forest, he took his coat off and lay down on the floor as though expecting to be shot in the neck the next minute. When I touched his neck with a pencil, Steiner screamed, "Please, please, don't shoot me." I was embarrassed and asked him what the matter was. "Well," Steiner said, "I was thinking about all that happened in Kolomyja and Schaparowce." (21)
Kleinbauer:
"In the year 1942, I was in command of an 'action' in the Jewish cemetery in Kolomyja when men, women and children were liquidated. Pernek gave the order to the Jews to take all their clothes off and the old to go to the front of the pit. Pernek shouted, "Come on, lie down in the pit here, it doesn't hurt. The quicker you are, the better for you." The order was that the people always lie down on their stomachs in the pit and were then killed by a bullet in their head. I saw the results of the explosive dumdum bullets which shattered the heads of this killed beyond recognition. Again, about 40 persons, elderly men and women were taken to the cemetery. I gave the order for everybody to undress and go into the pit. They had to lie down on the edge, not inside the pit, and were then shot with a bullet in the neck." (23)
"In the Autumn of 1941, the Jews were surrounded in the ghetto, driven to the prison. From there they were marched to the Scheparowce forest about 2 kms. away where they were liquidated by the SD. The Jews had to go naked into a sand pit, lie on their stomachs and were shot in the head by myself. (24) I carried out other liquidations in Jewish cemetery and prison and also outside Kolomyja, in Sabladov, Sniatyn, Ottynia and Hordenka." (25)
Firearms and ammunition used in the majority of the Jewish 'liquidations' in Kolomyja and elsewhere, were Russian. The preferred weapons were the Russian machine pistol, ten shot rifles and machine-guns. Why this was so, is not clear. A German defeat at this time was inconceivable to the Nazis, so concern of any subsequent forensic examination of weapons to point at German implication was an unlikely reason. Maybe it is as simple as using obsolete ammunition to murder a disgarded people at no cost to the Reich. This view is supported by events in Horodenka after the first action as we shall see. (27)
At the end of October, 1941, the Judenrat
was ordered by the SD to pay a contribution of 100.000 Reichmarks
and 50 kg of gold. (28) The Judenrat,
believing that payment would ease the fate of those arrested on the 12th
October, collected the money and gold together and paid up. Of the
1500 Jewish prisoners, only 150 were released. The rest were taken
to Scheparowce and murdered. The Judenrat had been told that
the young Jews who had been taken previously, had gone to work in
Germany. Seven weeks later, the Judenrat found out the truth –
Scheparowce.
In late December, 1941, Himmler ordered the confiscation of
all furs in possession of Jews. On the 26th
December, the SD arrested 16 prominent Jews. The Judenrat
were informed that these Jews would be held as hostage subject
to the surrender of all furs held by the Jews. Failure to hand
over the furs would result in the 16 Jews being executed. Within
a few days all furs were handed over. SS-Leideritz told the
Judenrat that the order to collect furs in August by
Volkmann had been unlawful.
Food was now very scarce and there were many cases of
starvation, disease and outbreaks of epidemics. Acute famine
was apparent at the end of 1941, which effected everyone,
there were no rich Jews left to barter their property. Jews in the
prison were not fed at all by the authorities and had to rely on
the Judenrat.
By March, 1942, their number of Jews had been reduced to 17.000. The rest had been killed in Scheparowce, the cemetery and the prison, or died of disease or starvation. It was the Germans intention to allow only 9.000 Jews to remain in a Ghetto marked out in the poorest part of the town. They demanded that the Judenrat hand over all old and sick Jews, and those not fit for work. Failure to reduce the Ghetto by this means would mean more drastic action by the Germans. The Judenrat, backed by Jewish public opinion, refused to consider any action of this kind.
Volkmann and Leideritz were on bad personal terms and each man
tried to score off the other when it came for the establishment of the
Ghetto. As they could not agree on any procedure, they ordered
Hohlmann, the Stadthauptmann, to carry out the transfer. Hohlmann
issued special decrees for the transfer. On the 23rd and
30th March, 1942 respectively. Every Jew was allowed
to take only what he could carry. Jews found outside the Ghetto enclosure
would be shot. On these dates the Jews had to assemble at special
locations and enter the Ghetto by special gates under the control of the
German authorities. By the 23rd March, all the Jews were in
the Ghetto – one week early.
On the 3rd April, Ghetto 'A' was surrounded by troops of the SD and Ukrainian Police. Other members of the SD commanded by Leideritz, augmented by local Schutzpolizei from Tarnopol entered the Ghetto. All Jews were dragged out of their houses. The sick and those unfit for transport were killed on the spot. The remaining Jews were concentrated in the Synagogue. There was another selection, those fit for work were removed and sent home. Those that remained were kept in small rooms where many of them suffocated. That same evening they were taken to the rail station for transport.
On the 4th April, the same proceedings were repeated in Ghetto 'B' – Jews old and unfit for work were taken for transport.
On the 6th April, came the turn of Ghetto 'C'. Many hid as they knew the course of events. Jews found hiding were killed on the spot without regard to age or fitness. Parts of the Ghetto were set on fire to prevent Jews from escaping. SS and auxiliaries stood on guard near the burning houses to hinder attempts to fight the fires and killed every Jew trying to leave his house. Many Jews were burned alive.
During these proceedings more than 100 Jews were killed in the Ghettos. 5000 were taken for transport to Belzec. On the 7th April, 1942, all the Jews held over the past few days, were taken to the railway station and loaded onto cattle trucks. Up to 140 Jews were put into one wagon which caused many cases of suffocation. The train was sent to the extermination camp Belzec via Janowska. There were no survivors.
Between the 22nd to the 26th
April, 1942, 4000 Jews were brought from smaller towns of the sub-district
of Kolomea to the city. (30) Approximately
1000 were immediately sent to the prison for deportation to Belzec. The
others remained in the Ghetto to await their turn for selection.
The Jewish affairs were directed by a triumvirate composed of SS-Leideritz, Volkmann and Hohlmann. SS-Leideritz was in charge of all Jewish executions. The civil authorities directed by Volkmann and Hohlmann were in charge of the administration of Jewish affairs. Dr. Jordan, director of the Supplies Department (Landwirtschaftsrat) was in charge of food supplies for the local population. According to an official decree by the Generalgouvernement Jews were allowed special fixed rations. In fact, however, only a small portion of the official ration rations were handed over to the Judenrat which had to be distribute it among the community. The policy of Dr. Jordon, acting in co-operation with Volkmann and Hohlmann, and those who replaced them later, was to cause the starvation of the Jews.
It was forbidden under pain of death to buy illegally any food. Nevertheless the Judenrat succeeded in buying some additional food on the black market. It organised restaurants and people's kitchens. This effort, however, could not stem the famine. 40-50 Jews died daily from starvation. The officer of the Judenrat had to keep current lists of the Jewish population and had to register all cases of deaths. The lists were examined weekly by the German authorities which watched the progress of the hunger campaign. By accepting bribes and robbing Jewish property for their personal benefit, many German officers succeeded in accumulating large fortunes, among them especially Volkmann, Dr. Jordon, his successor, Hohlmann and his successor, Michael, Dr. Lorens., SS-Leideritz and Untersturmführer Frost. (31)
The individual arrests
of Jews continued in the Ghetto. Up to 150 Jews were arrested monthly
and taken to the prison. When the prison was full, the Jews were
taken to the Szeparwoce forest and murdered. Every Jew was compelled
to work. Jews found outside the Ghetto were shot. The SD would
carry out private murder actions against particular Jews. Two particular
CID officers, Wahrmann and Knackendoerfer, took great delight in killing
Jews.
On the 7th September, 1942, all Jewish labourers were ordered again to appear for registration together with their families. The Judenrat had been assured by Michael (Labour Office), that nothing would happen to the Jews on registration. 8000 Jews assembled, most of them young and fit for work. They were surrounded by the SD, Schutzpolizei, auxiliaries, special squads of the Tarnopol Schutzpolizei, Sonderdienst, Ukrainian Police and many German civilians who participated voluntarily. The labourers together with their families were divided into groups according to their place of work. Out of every group a small number of specialists were selected and put to one side, altogether approximately 1600. They were kept in special buildings.
Those Jews not selected, remained standing where they were all day. The Germans abused them, making them do exercises: to stand up, to run, to sit down, and all manner of abusive actions. Those not being quick enough or were not fit, were badly beaten, including pregnant women and children. Those trying to escape were shot dead. Every Jew was searched for valuables. The women had to undergo abusive searches. At 5 pm, under heavy guard, all the Jews were brought to the railway station. They were packed into rail wagons and deported to Belzec. (32)
It is now proposed to outline the Kolomyja Death Transport of the 10th September, 1942, as reported by a Lt. of the Schutzpolizei Reserve Company commander to the commander of the Public Order Police, Lvov, Galicia dated 14th September, 1942:
On the 9th September, Detectives Knackendoerfer and (Kripo) assisted by the SD, entered the Jewish Orphan's Home. The orphanage housed approximately 400 children whose parents had already been murdered. It was located in Ghetto 2, and when this was liquidated it was planned to remove the children into ghetto 1. In the night, before the transfer could take place, Hertl arrived with several Schupo men and shot all the children. The wife of SS-Peter Leideritz was present and assisted in this massacre. (33)
On the 19th September,
3000 Jews from the sub-district of Kolomea were brought to Kolomea railway
station and deported to Belzec. When the train passed Lvov, young
and strong Jews were taken out and sent to the Janowska Camp.
On the 15th October, 1942, Untersturmführer
Gay assisted by CID-Knackendoerfer gave orders to arrest 105
Jews and to bring them to the local slaughter houses. There the
Jews were ordered to lie down and were shot by Gay and Knackendoerfer.
On the 5th November, 1942, all labourers of this Hallerbach group were told to assemble for inspection. They were told that a special commission from Lvov had arrived and had demanded that all work had to be completed by the 1.3.43. Most of the Jewish labourers being assured that at least until the end of the year they would be safe obeyed the order.
The group was surrounded by the SD commanded by Hallerbach. They were taken to the prison and all their property was taken away from them. On the same day the Ghetto was searched. Many Jews were killed and others were brought to the prison. A part of the Ghetto was set on fire and many Jews were killed. The Jews in the prison were deported to Belzec.
Once the liquidation of the Kolomea ghetto had been completed,
the whole process was repeated. Jews living in adjacent towns and
villages were driven into the Kolomea ghetto to undergo selections,
killings and transport.
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