Hunter report

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A detailed summary of the executions carried out between July 4 and November 25, 1941 in Lithuania and Vilnius by Einsatzkommando 3 with Lithuanian helpers, dated December 1, 1941 and stamped as a secret Reich affair , is referred to as the Jäger Report . The SS-Standartenführer and commander of the security police and SD of Kaunas , Karl Jäger , lists more than 130,000 mostly Jewish victims, mostly women and children. Jäger emphasizes that "the goal of solving the Jewish problem for Lithuania" is from the EK. 3 has been achieved.

Hunter report (copies)
(Evidence in the Globke Trial )
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overview

With the German attack on the Soviet Union , the Wehrmacht invaded Lithuania in June 1941. It was followed by units of Einsatzgruppe A under Walter Stahlecker , including Einsatzkommando 3 under SS-Standartenführer Karl Jäger. In north-western parts of Lithuania, Einsatzkommando 2 murdered an estimated 30,000 Jews. In the larger part of the country, Jäger had more than 130,000 Jews executed within just five months and reported that the "Jewish problem" in Lithuania had been resolved with the exception of 34,500 working Jews including their families.

No other report by a task force traces the geographic course and the increasing involvement of women and children in the murder scene so precisely. Therefore, the Jäger report is seen as a "key document" in Holocaust research . Two short messages from Jäger that were found, however, are limited to the communication of sums.

According to Jäger, he wanted to shine with his "success numbers" and promote his career. The initiative of perpetrators in the individual regions was “an indispensable part of a centrally controlled policy”, but at the same time it was only the “competition between the various officials” that ensured the center's leadership role.

Source transmission and publication history

The “complete list of the EK. 3 executions carried out up to December 1, 1941 ”has been handed down as the fourth of five copies with nine sheets, complete and signed by Jäger himself. It fell into the hands of the Red Army when Lithuania was retaken in 1944 , but remained unknown in the West. It was not until 1963 that the Jäger report was made available by the Soviet Foreign Ministry to the Central Office of the State Justice Administrations for the investigation of National Socialist crimes in Ludwigsburg . There the source was examined and the content was found to be authentic by experts. This document is kept in the branch office of the Federal Archives in Ludwigsburg. The original is in the Moscow Special Archives .

Adalbert Rückerl published the complete content as a facsimile in 1971 , making it known to a wider public. Which is also in the Ludwigsburg Central Office acting Heinz Artzt took the facsimile document in 1979 in his book. In 1987 , Reinhard Rürup included an excerpt from the document in a documentation. Ernst Klee published a complete transcribed print version in 1988. Together with a short report that Jäger wrote by hand at Stahlecker's request on February 9, 1942, the Jäger report of December 1, 1941 was reprinted as a facsimile in 2003 by Vincas Bartusevičius. In addition, the complete document - together with a short report by Jäger dated September 10, 1941 - was published in 2006. In 2011 Wolfram Wette published a monograph on Karl Jäger ; This paperback in the series Die Zeit des National Socialismus also contains a facsimile of the Jäger report.

At the moment, all incident reports for the deployment in the USSR were collected in Section IV A1 in the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) and edited; According to one employee, "the points of interest were bracketed in red". "Jäger's unbearable problem-solving phraseology was cut out ('organizational question, thorough preparation, nerve-wracking work, parade shooting, skillful use of time'.)"

The Jäger report served as evidence in numerous German, Canadian and US court cases, including in a GDR show trial of Hans Globke in 1963 and in 2000 in the trial of the Holocaust denier David Irving . Irving pointed out that there were missing SS runes, which are rarely found in such documents, but accepted with reservation that it was an authentic document. The Jäger report offers hardly any points of attack, since many actions can be proven otherwise: For example, through transport lists and train routing plans for the 4,934 German Jews murdered on November 25 and 29, 1941, as well as reports from contemporary witnesses.

Contents overview

On the first six sheets of the Jäger report lists all the shootings he initiated between July 4 and November 25, 1941. The total of 137,346 includes around four thousand Jews who were murdered by Lithuanian militias immediately before and after July 2, 1941 - some without the order of Jäger - as well as around 3,000 people murdered by a sub-command of the EK. 3 in Minsk . The report names 71 Lithuanian towns and villages in which executions have been carried out, some of them multiple times. In Kaunas there were 13 murders, in Vilnius as many as 15. The list gives the exact date and place and the number of those executed, sometimes supplemented with references to nationality or communist activities, sometimes justified as reprisals or punitive actions, as well as arson or agent activities. In the vast majority of cases, figures are explained with the addition of “Jews”, “Jewish women” and “Jewish children”.

Christoph Dieckmann points out three "stages in the escalation of murder" for the provinces. From July 8, 1941 to April 26-27. July, the arrival of the civil administration, 450 Jews and communists were murdered in the province of Lithuania. From July 28, the number of victims increased among Jewish men and increasingly also among Jewish women. By August 14, 6,911 Jews and communists had been shot. From August 15 until the end of the report, 54,981 Jews were executed outside the larger cities; entire communities were systematically wiped out. The "decisive threshold for genocide " was thus crossed. The list also shows the regional focus of the murders. Until August 26, 1941, the murder was almost exclusively confined to the Schaulen district commissioner. From August 26 to September 4, 1941, the Kaunas -Land regional commissioner was added; From September 9th, extensive mass murders began in the Vilnius Land Commissioner's Office.

In the Lithuanian cities, the German occupiers endeavored to murder as many Jews as possible without, however, impairing the production of goods essential to the war effort. The Jewish population fit for work should be grouped together in ghettos and get along with a minimum of food; Jewish property was confiscated. In this area of ​​tension between extermination, work, hunger and robbery, Germans and their Lithuanian helpers murdered around 53,000 of the 100,000 city Jews by November 1941. Karl Jäger had "absolutely not to be softened", "to let the Jews live"; only orders from the Reich Ministry for the occupied eastern territories ensured that some ghettos remained in existence for the time being.

In the second part, pages seven to nine of the report, Jäger prides itself on having solved the “Jewish problem” for Lithuania. However, the civil administration and the Wehrmacht had forbidden him to “kill” the working Jews and their families as well, so that there were still 34,500 Jews left. He could only achieve his goal by creating the "Rollkommando" equipped with motor vehicles under Joachim Hamann . For the mass murders in the provinces, cooperation with the responsible civil authorities and with so-called “Lithuanian partisans” was essential. - " Partisan " was the self-designation of Lithuanian radical anti-Semites who were also known as "white ribbons" because of their armbands and who collaborated with the German security police as a "TDA battalion" of 1755 men .

In the report, Jäger describes in detail how the murders were prepared and carried out; the mass murders were "primarily an organizational question". The "Jewish actions" are thus concluded; the remaining male Jews should be sterilized whenever possible .

Jäger gives ample space to describe how he amnesties Lithuanian prison inmates and thus allegedly arouses unrestrained joy, gratitude and enthusiasm among the population. He has other detainees flogged or shot.

Contents of two short reports

Two short reports by Jäger were found, which his superior, now also the commander of the security police and security service in Riga , Walter Stahlecker had requested. A list of the EK. 3 executions carried out, dated "Kauen, 10 September 1941", put the number of victims at 76,355; most of them were Jews. An updated figure of a comparable magnitude can be found in a list of Einsatzgruppe A, the “General Report up to October 15, 1941”.

On February 6, 1942, Stahlecker requested the Einsatzkommandos 1 A in Reval , EK 1 B in Minsk and EK 3 in Kaunas to immediately report the number of those executed by them. With the given scheme, only total numbers and sums for certain groups of victims were queried. In a handwritten report, Jäger stated for the reference date February 1, 1942: Jews 136,421, Communists 1064; Partisans 56, mentally ill 653, Poles 44, Russian prisoners of war 28, Gypsies 5, Armenians 1, total 138,272, including women 55,556 and children 34,464.

On the importance of the source

From Stahlecker's report dated January 31, 1942

The minutes of the Wannsee Conference , which took place on January 20, 1942, contain, on page 6, a compilation by Adolf Eichmann on the number of Jews in European countries. There, Estonia is already described as " Jew-free " and the number of Jews living in Lithuania is given as only 34,000. According to his own information, Eichmann updated his statistical material after evaluating the task force reports, partly also through targeted inquiries. A map in the “Second Report of the Leader of Einsatzgruppe A on the Actions of Einsatzgruppe A for the Period from October 16, 1941 to January 31, 1942” shows a synopsis of the mass murders carried out by the Einsatzgruppen and their local helpers in the Baltic States. The figures for Kaunas, Vilnius and Schaulen were apparently taken from the Jäger report in this “ USSR incident report” of January 1942. These figures can also be found in Heydrich's activity and situation report of Einsatzgruppen No. 9 of February 27, 1942.

The information in the Jäger report dated November 25 and 29, 1941, that 4934 German “resettlers” were immediately executed in Fort IX of Kaunas by five deportation trains from Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt am Main, Vienna and Breslau, can be found in no other surviving report by the security police, and the sources do not provide any indication of a reaction by the authorities involved in the deportation of Jews from Germany . These victims were the first German Jews to be murdered immediately at the destination. Previously, around 26,000 German Jews had been deported to Ghetto Łódź or Ghetto Minsk in 36 transports ; after the executions in Kaunas, another 9,000 were moved to ghettos and camps near Riga.

Many historians doubt that Heinrich Himmler was aware of the shootings of German and Austrian Jews mentioned in the Jäger report or that he had even issued an order to do so. They refer to another deportation train from Berlin that was diverted and surprisingly arrived outside Riga on November 30, 1941 , before the ghetto could be “cleared” by the murder of local Jews. All of these 1,053 deportees were shot. Neither in Latvia nor in Lithuania were reception camps prepared for the German Jews deported from the Reich. Obviously, the Higher SS and Police Leader Friedrich Jeckeln solved this self-inflicted problem amicably with Hinrich Lohse by including the "resettlers" in the ongoing mass murder. Knowing about the deportation plans, Lohse had already considered liquidating German Jews who were unfit for work at the beginning of October, thus showing “a barbaric attitude”. Since Viktor Brack from the Fuehrer's office had promised him Brack's aids for gassing Jews unfit for work, he assumed that there were no objections to the murder of Reich German Jews.

In fact, however, in a telephone conversation with Reinhard Heydrich at noon on November 30, 1941, according to the service calendar, Himmler had ordered the train arriving in Riga: “Transport of Jews from Berlin - no liquidation”. Gerald Fleming suspects the reason that medals and persons over 65 years of age were also included with this transport, who according to the guidelines should actually be brought to the “Theresienstadt retirement home”. Friedrich Jeckeln had already had all the Jews on the transport shot. Himmler warned Jeckeln in a radio message: “The Jews who were resettled in the Ostland area are only to be found after the to deal with guidelines given by the Reich Security Main Office on my behalf. I would punish arbitrariness and negligence. ”Dieckmann assumes that because of this intervention, the mass execution of German Jews in Fort IX recorded in the Jäger report was concealed in further reports.

Christopher Browning admits that it “cannot be fully clarified how, when, why and by whom it was decided” to murder the German Jews in Fort IX of Kaunas. Nonetheless, Browning emphasizes that there is “not the slightest indication” that the murders in Kaunas did not result from Himmler's policies. In view of the increasingly uncertain phase of the war , he could have decided to postpone the further killing of “Reich Jews”.

Several statements by Adolf Hitler , which are testified after the declaration of war on the United States in December 1941, contained the barely veiled message that all European Jews should now be included in the extermination campaign. Not until May 1942, however, did other deportation trains from the German Reich end in Minsk, Maly Trostinez or Auschwitz ; Jews who were unfit for forced labor were regularly selected and killed.

Peter Longerich concludes from the information in the Jäger report that an order must have reached the roll command between August 5 and 16, 1941 at the latest, according to which in principle there was no longer any distinction made between the murder of men and women and the killing of children was released. Wolfram Wette interprets the mass shootings in Lithuania as an " overture " of the genocide before its mechanization through the gas chambers and high-performance crematoria of the stationary death factories .

literature

Web links

Commons : Hunter Report  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Michael MacQueen: Mass extermination in context: perpetrators and conditions of the Holocaust in Lithuania. In: Wolfgang Benz , Marion Neiss: Judenmord in Lithuania. Studies and documents , Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-932482-23-9 , p. 15.
  2. ↑ Wolfgang Scheffler: Die Einsatzgruppe A 1941/42. In: Andrej Angrick: The Einsatzgruppen in the occupied Soviet Union 1941/42. The activity and situation reports of the chief of the security police and the SD. Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-89468-200-0 , p. 50 with note 39.
  3. ^ Wolfram Wette: Karl Jäger. Murderer of the Lithuanian Jews , Frankfurt / Main 2011, ISBN 978-3-596-19064-5 , p. 20.
  4. ^ Peter Longerich : On the situation of Holocaust research in Germany. In: Michael Brenner , Maximilian Strnad (Hrsg.): The Holocaust in German-language history. Balance sheet and perspectives. Göttingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-8353-1149-7 , p. 17.
  5. ^ Wolfram Wette: Karl Jäger. Murderer of the Lithuanian Jews , Frankfurt / Main 2011, ISBN 978-3-596-19064-5 , p. 28 with note 27 on p. 206.
  6. ^ Christoph Dieckmann: German occupation policy in Lithuania 1941-1944. Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-8353-0929-6 , vol. 2, p. 804 (complete list EK 3, September 10th; December 1, 1941 BArch, R 70 Soviet Union / 15 sheets 77-89)
  7. ↑ Wolfgang Scheffler : Die Einsatzgruppe A 1941/42. In: Andrej Angrick : The Einsatzgruppen in the occupied Soviet Union 1941/42. The activity and situation reports of the Chief of the Security Police and the SD Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-89468-200-0 , p. 48 with note 29 (Sign 500-1-25; Bl. 109-117) / Roland Headland: “ Messages of Murder - A Study of the Reports of the Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and the Security Service, 1941-1943 ". Rutherford, New York / London 1992, p. 155 erroneously locates the original in the Central Lithuanian Archives in Vilnius.
  8. ↑ Adalbert Rückerl (Ed.): Nazi trials after 25 years of prosecution - possibilities, limits, results . Karlsruhe 1971, ISBN 3-7880-2011-3
  9. ^ Heinz Artzt: Murderer in Uniform. Munich 1979, ISBN 3-463-00766-5 , pp. 185-193. Paperback edition 1987 by Moewig, ISBN 3-8118-3237-9 .
  10. ↑ see Reinhard Rürup (Ed.): Topography of Terror: Gestapo, SS and Reich Security Main Office on the “Prinz Albrecht site” - a documentation . Arenhövel Verlag, 4th verb. Ed., Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-922912-21-4 .
  11. ↑ Ernst Klee; Willi Dreßen ; Volker Rieß: 'Nice Times' - the murder of Jews from the perspective of the perpetrators and onlookers. Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-10-039304-X , pp. 52-62.
  12. ↑ Vincas Bartusevičius, Joachim Tauber, Wolfram Wette: Holocaust in Lithuania. War, murder of Jews and collaboration in 1941. Böhlau Verlag Köln and Weimar 2003, ISBN 3-412-13902-5 , pp. 303-311.
  13. ↑ Christoph Dieckmann, Saulius Sužiedelis: The Persecution and Mass Murder of Lithuanian Jews. Vilnius 2006 (not open)
  14. ^ Wolfram Wette: Karl Jäger. Murderer of the Lithuanian Jews . Fischer TB 19064, Frankfurt / Main 2011, ISBN 978-3-596-19064-5 .
  15. ↑ Klaus-Michael Mallmann, Andrej Angrick, Jürgen Matthäus, Martin Cüppers: The "event reports USSR" 1941. For Konrad Kwiet on the 70th birthday. Darmstadt 2011, ISBN 978-3-534-24468-3 , pp. 15-16.
  16. ↑ Yale F. Edeiken: Historical Note on the Jaeger Report . accessed January 8, 2014
  17. ↑ Holocaust Denial on Trial, Trial Transcripts, Day 4: Electronic Edition here p. 58, line 24; accessed January 9, 2014
  18. ↑ Alfred Gottwaldt , Diana Schulle: The "Deportations of Jews" from the German Reich 1941–1945: A commented chronology. Marix, Wiesbaden 2005, ISBN 3-86539-059-5 , pp. 98-109.
  19. ↑ Document VEJ 7/273. In: Bert Hoppe, Hiltrud Glass (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 (source collection) Volume 7: Soviet Union with annexed areas I - Occupied Soviet areas under German military administration, the Baltic States and Transnistria. Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-58911-5 , here p. 715.
  20. ↑ There are errors in the subtotals on pages 2 and 6; the correct total is 137,447
  21. ^ Christoph Dieckmann: German occupation policy in Lithuania 1941-1944. Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-8353-0929-6 , Vol. 2, p. 804.
  22. ↑ Bert Hoppe , Hiltrud Glass (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 (source collection) Volume 7: Soviet Union with annexed areas I - Occupied Soviet areas under German military administration, the Baltic States and Transnistria. Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-58911-5 , p. 29.
  23. ^ Christoph Dieckmann: German occupation policy in Lithuania 1941-1944. Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-8353-0929-6 , Vol. 2, p. 929.
  24. ^ Christoph Dieckmann: German occupation policy in Lithuania 1941-1944. Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-8353-0929-6 , Vol. 2, p. 930.
  25. ^ Wolfram Wette: Karl Jäger. Murderer of the Lithuanian Jews . Frankfurt / Main 2011, ISBN 978-3-596-19064-5 , p. 105.
  26. ↑ Wolfgang Scheffler: Die Einsatzgruppe A 1941/42. In: Andrej Angrick: The Einsatzgruppen in the occupied Soviet Union 1941/42. The activity and situation reports of the chief of the security police and the SD . Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-89468-200-0 , pp. 35 and 48.
  27. ↑ IMT: The Nuremberg Trial of the Major War Criminals ... fotomech. Emphasis. Munich 1989, Volume 37, ISBN 3-7735-2527-3 , Document 180-L, p. 702. / for Lithuania, Kauen area, Schaulen area and Wilna area = 81,171
  28. ↑ Vincas Bartusevičius, Joachim Tauber, Wolfram Wette: Holocaust in Lithuania. War, murder of Jews and collaboration in 1941. Cologne and Weimar 2003, ISBN 3-412-13902-5 , Appendix: Part V Documents: Document 3: Handwritten report from the Commander of the Security Police and the SD Kauen, SS-Standartenführer Karl Jäger, to Einsatzgruppe A in Riga on the number of executions (facsimile and transcription) carried out by the Einsatzkommando up to February 1, 1942 - Federal Archives Branch Office Ludwigsburg, inventory R 70 SI / 15
  29. ↑ Eichmann's interrogation on July 5, 1960 by Avner Werner Less In: Kurt Pätzold, Erika Schwarz: Agenda: Judenmord. The Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942 - a documentation on the organization of the "Final Solution" . Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-926893-12-5 , pp. 172f.
  30. ↑ Doc. 2273-PS in: IMT: The Nuremberg Trial against the Major War Criminals ... fotomech. Reprint Munich 1989, vol. 30, ISBN 3-7735-2523-0 , p. 77.
  31. ↑ Event report USSR No. 155 of January 11, 1942. s. Yitzhak Arad, Shmuel Krakowski, Shmuel Spector, Stella Schossberger: The Einsatzgruppen reports - selections from the dispatches of the Nazi Death Squads' campaign against the Jews July 1941-January 1943 Unites States Holocaust, 1989, ISBN 0-89604-058-5 , P. 277 / at the same time Document 2273-PS
  32. ↑ Document 3876-PS in: IMT: The Nuremberg Trial against the Major War Criminals ... , fotomech. Reprint Munich 1989, vol. 33, ISBN 3-7735-2525-7 , p. 287 f. / 3876-PS on the Internet
  33. ↑ Klaus-Michael Mallmann , Andrej Angrick u. a. (Ed.): “The reports of events in the USSR” 1941 - For Konrad Kwiet on his 70th birthday . Darmstadt 2011, ISBN 978-3-534-24468-3 ; P. 844 with note 1 on p. 846.
  34. ^ Christoph Dieckmann: German occupation policy in Lithuania 1941-1944. Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-8353-0929-6 , vol. 2, p. 961 / holocaustcontroversies: list of names of those murdered there
  35. ↑ Alfred Gottwaldt, Diana Schulle: The "Deportations of Jews" from the German Reich 1941–1945: A commented chronology. Marix, Wiesbaden 2005, ISBN 3-86539-059-5 , p. 121.
  36. ^ Christoph Dieckmann: German occupation policy in Lithuania 1941-1944. Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-8353-0929-6 , Vol. 2, p. 966.
  37. ^ Andrej Angrick, Peter Klein: The 'Final Solution' in Riga: Exploitation and Destruction 1941–1944. Darmstadt 2006, ISBN 3-534-19149-8 , p. 201.
  38. ^ Christoph Dieckmann: German occupation policy in Lithuania 1941-1944. Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-8353-0929-6 , Vol. 2, p. 966.
  39. ↑ Gerald Fleming: Hitler and the Final Solution. It is the Führer’s wish ... (first edition 1982) Ullstein Taschenbuchverlag, 1997, ISBN 3-548-33083-5 , p. 89 in note 184.
  40. ↑ Quoted from Christoph Dieckmann: German occupation policy in Lithuania 1941–1944. Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-8353-0929-6 , Vol. 2, p. 962.
  41. ↑ Christopher Browning: The Unleashing of the Final Solution - National Socialist Jewish Policy 1939-1942 . Munich 2003, ISBN 3-549-07187-6 , p. 565.
  42. ↑ Christopher Browning: The Unleashing of the Final Solution - National Socialist Jewish Policy 1939-1942 . Munich 2003, ISBN 3-549-07187-6 , p. 567.
  43. ↑ Saul Friedländer : The Third Reich and the Jews. Seen through. Special edition in one volume, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-56681-3 , pp. 661–664 / Christoph Dieckmann: German occupation policy in Lithuania 1941–1944. Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-8353-0929-6 , Vol. 2, p. 967.
  44. ↑ Peter Longerich: Politics of extermination - an overall representation of the National Socialist persecution of the Jews . Munich 1998, ISBN 3-492-03755-0 , p. 392.
  45. ^ Wolfram Wette: Karl Jäger. Murderer of the Lithuanian Jews . Frankfurt / Main 2011, ISBN 978-3-596-19064-5 , p. 11.