Osarichi death camp

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The Osaritschi death camp was located near the Belarusian village Osaritschi, Kalinkawitschy district , north of the city of Mazyr . From March 12 to 19, 1944 , the German Wehrmacht operated a camp complex of three organizationally related individual camps for disabled civilians . At least 9,000 people were killed there in just one week. The mass deaths in these camps are characterized by Dieter Pohl , historian at the Munich Institute for Contemporary History , as “one of the most serious crimes of the Wehrmacht against civilians at all”.

Military background and planning

The General of the Panzer Troop Josef Harpe (1887–1968) gave the order in March 1944 to set up the death camp.

Due to the hopeless military situation in the spring of 1944, the 9th Army of the Wehrmacht had to prepare for its retreat. In March 1944, their commander-in-chief Josef Harpe ordered civilians able to work to be forcibly recruited and taken away; At the same time, their relatives who were unable to work and who could no longer take care of themselves had to be deported . They were all to be concentrated in three emergency camps near the Belarusian town of Osaritschi, north of the city of Mazyr. The aim of the campaign was to get rid of or no longer have to care for people with epidemics, cripples, old people and women with more than two children under ten years of age as well as other incapable of working in all areas of the corps. "In the war diary of the 9th Army of March 8, 1944, it says it to this:

“It is planned to bring all the indigenous people who are not able to work from the area near the front of the army to the area to be surrendered and to leave them there when they are withdrawn from the front, especially the numerous spotted fever sufferers who have previously been housed in special villages in order to endanger the health of the troops if possible turn off. The decision to free oneself from this, also nutritionally considerable burden in this way, was made by the AOK after careful consideration and examination of all the resulting conclusions. "

Camp and sacrifice

Monument to the fallen of the 35th Division, which was significantly involved in the crimes in Osaritschi, in Karlsruhe.

By March 12, 1944, the three camps were built as areas fenced with barbed wire without buildings or sanitary facilities in this swamp near the front. Infantry divisions subordinate to the 9th Army , namely the 35th Infantry Division under Lieutenant General Johann-Georg Richert and the special command 7a of SS Einsatzgruppe B , drove at least 40,000 civilians into these improvised camps. In addition to the 35th ID, the 36th ID , 110th ID , 129th ID , 134th ID , 296th ID and the 5th and 20th Panzer Divisions were involved in the registration of the civilians affected . Many people died on the transport, which was only partially carried out with railway wagons: "At least 500 of them, including children, were shot by the escort teams because they could no longer walk." According to the German security service, the camps were occupied by 46,000 civilians unable to work. The High Command of the 9th Army rated this a success:

“The acquisition action brought a significant relief to the entire battle area. The residential areas were considerably loosened up and made available for troop accommodation. No more food is consumed for useless eaters. By deporting the disease sufferers, the sources of infection were significantly reduced. "

Not only during the transport, but also after internment, the guards of the 35th Infantry Division "often shot at the slightest cause or for no reason, even at children (...) even at attempts by internees to drink from the swamp water."

Since the people in the camps were completely inadequately supplied with food and a large number of typhus patients came to the camp, 9,000 people had already died by the arrival of the Red Army on March 19. According to Belarusian sources, the total death toll could have been 20,000. How many people died of typhus or exhaustion after March 19, 1944 can no longer be determined. A Soviet commission of inquiry states that by March 31, 1,526 cases of typhoid had occurred among the survivors.

Prosecution

In its final report of May 6, 1944, the “ Extraordinary State Commission for the Establishment of the Crimes of the German-Fascist Conquerors” accused the Wehrmacht of deliberately bringing typhus patients to the camps in order to spread the epidemic. The Soviet prosecution presented the report in the Nuremberg trial of the main war criminals as "Evidence Document USSR-4". In the USSR , Generals Harpe and Richert, among others, were to be brought to justice. Richert, who, unlike Harpe, had been taken prisoner by the Soviets, was sentenced to death in the Minsk Trial at the end of January 1946 and executed. Precisely because the Soviet war crimes trials, as part of the Soviet jurisprudence, did not correspond to liberal Western legal conceptions, it seems remarkable that Richert was convicted solely because of his joint responsibility for the deaths of thousands of people in the Osaritschi camps, while the prosecution's allegations of joint responsibility for " deliberately biological warfare ”by means of systematically induced typhoid infections were not confirmed in the judgment.

Historical classification

In the historical scholarly literature, the "greatest crime in retreat, the murders of exhausted civilians in the evacuation camps around Osaritschi", in which the "security police were more peripheral", has meanwhile found a relatively broad reception. The internment, concentration and death character of the camps allow several names. While Dieter Pohl speaks of “evacuation camps ” for civilians, the Eastern European historian Hans-Heinrich Nolte calls them concentration camps . In addition to the mass deaths caused by hunger and epidemics, many people were arbitrarily shot, so that the murders also had the character of a massacre . Christian Gerlach explicitly sees this internment of civilians as a “death camp”. The official website of the Khatyn memorial site , which devotes a separate page to Osarichi, writes inconsistently "camp", "concentration camp" and "death camp". Hans-Heinrich Nolte sums up: “The crime corresponds to the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war by the Wehrmacht in winter. It also has similarities with the starvation of Jews and people who are 'unable to work' when workers were forcibly brought into the Reich during partisan actions . The crime corresponds in many respects to the general character of the German war against the USSR , precisely also in the desire not to feed 'useless' people. ”In this respect, Osaritschi is in a long chain of measures taken by the hunger policy against“ calculated ” before the attack on the USSR. useless eaters ”and those unable to work, who were prepared to starve to death from alleged economic constraints.

literature

  • Christian Gerlach : Calculated murders. The German economic and extermination policy in Belarus 1941 to 1944. Study edition. Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2000, ISBN 3-930908-63-8 (also dissertation at TU Berlin 1998).
  • Hans Heinrich Nolte : Osarici 1944. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär (Ed.): Places of horror. Crimes in World War II. Primus, Darmstadt 2003, ISBN 3-89678-232-0 , pp. 186-194.
  • Dieter Pohl : The rule of the armed forces. German military occupation and local population in the Soviet Union 1941–1944 . Oldenbourg, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-486-58065-5 (= sources and representations on contemporary history. Volume 71, also habilitation thesis at the University of Munich, 2007).
  • Christoph Rass: "Human material". German soldiers on the Eastern Front. Interior views of an infantry division 1939–1945 Schöningh, Paderborn u. a. 2003, pp. 386–402: Chapter “ Anatomy of a War Crime ”, ISBN 3-506-74486-0 (= War in History. Volume 17, also dissertation at RWTH Aachen 2001) ( online ).
  • Christoph Rass: Ozarichi 1944. Levels of decision-making and action in a war crime . In: Timm C. Richter (Ed.): War and crime. Situations and content: case studies . Martin Meidenbauer, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-89975-080-2 , pp. 197-206.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dieter Pohl: The Rule of the Wehrmacht: German Military Occupation and Local Population in the Soviet Union 1941–1944 Munich 2008, p. 328.
  2. ↑ Christoph Rass: "Menschenmaterial": German soldiers on the Eastern Front. Interior views of an infantry division 1939–1945, Paderborn 2003, chapter “Anatomy of a war crime”, pp. 386–402, quotation p. 390; see. also Christian Gerlach: Calculated murders. The German economic and extermination policy in Belarus from 1941 to 1944 . Hamburg 1998, p. 1097 ff.
  3. ^ BA-MA Freiburg, RH 20-9 / 176, quoted from Hans Heinrich Nolte: Osarici 1944. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär (Ed.): Orte des Grauens. Crimes in World War II. Darmstadt 2003, pp. 186–194, here p. 186.
  4. ↑ René pipe Kamp : Ozarichi 1944 - Participation of the 35th Infantry Division in a war crime against civilians . In: Ernst Otto Bräunche (ed. On behalf of the Karlsruhe City Archives): The Second World War - Last or Chance of Remembrance? Opposition to the memorial of the 35th Infantry Division in Karlsruhe; Symposium on November 6, 2014 in the Ständehaus memorial . Info-Verlag, Karlsruhe 2015, ISBN 978-3-88190-823-8 , pp. 15-28. ( PDF)
  5. ↑ Christoph Rass: "Human Material". German soldiers on the Eastern Front. Interior views of an infantry division 1939-1945. Schöningh, Paderborn 2003, p. 395.
  6. ↑ Dieter Pohl: The Rule of the Wehrmacht: German Military Occupation and Local Population in the Soviet Union 1941–1944 , p. 328.
  7. ↑ Hans-Heinrich Nolte, Osarici 1944, p. 190.
  8. ↑ BA-MA Freiburg, 20–9 / 197, p. 122, quoted from: Hans-Heinrich Nolte, Osarici 1944, p. 189.
  9. ↑ Christian Gerlach, Calculated Morde , p. 1088.
  10. ↑ Hans-Heinrich Nolte, Osarici 1944, p. 190, assumes up to 13,000 dead; Christian Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde , p. 1098, names around 9,000 dead; also Christoph Rass: “Menschenmaterial”: German soldiers on the Eastern Front , p. 386 and Dieter Pohl: The rule of the Wehrmacht: German military occupation and native population in the Soviet Union 1941–1944 , Munich 2008, p. 329.
  11. ↑ Article in Belorusskaya Voennaya Gazeta , March 15, 2013.
  12. ^ Christian Gerlach, Calculated Morde , p. 1099.
  13. ↑ Christoph Rass: "Menschenmaterial": German soldiers on the Eastern Front, p. 387 f .; Long passages from Document USSR-4 read aloud by the Soviet Chief Justice Councilor Smirnov in: The Trial of the Major War Criminals at the International Military Tribunal. Vol. 7. Minutes of the negotiation February 5, 1946 to February 19, 1946. Nuremberg 1947, p. 635 ff.
  14. ↑ Hans-Heinrich Nolte: Osarici 1944, p. 190.
  15. ↑ Dieter Pohl: The cooperation between the army, SS and police in the occupied Soviet territories. In: Christian Hartmann , Johannes Hürter , Ulrike Jureit (eds.): Crimes of the Wehrmacht. Balance of a debate. Publishing company. CH Beck Munich 2005, pp. 107–116, here p. 116.
  16. ↑ a b Hans-Heinrich Nolte, Osarici 1944, p. 187.
  17. ^ Christian Gerlach: Calculated Morde, p. 1098.
  18. ↑ Information on Osarichi on the Khatyn Memorial website
  19. ↑ Christian Gerlach: Calculated Morde, p. 46 ff. And P. 1097 ff .; Hans-Heinrich Nolte, Osarici 1944, p. 192.

Coordinates: 52 ° 7 ′ 59.9 ″  N , 29 ° 19 ′ 59.9 ″  E