Police Battalion 309

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The police battalion 309 was a military unit of the NS- Ordnungspolizei during the Second World War . The battalion was actively involved in the Holocaust . It is particularly responsible for a massacre of Jews in Białystok on June 27, 1941, in which 2,000 to 2,200 people were killed.

history

Police Battalion 309

With the circular of the Reichsführer SS and chief of the German police , Heinrich Himmler , of October 11, 1939, the armed forces were supposed to secure the need for police forcesoccupied territories 26,000 unserved conscripts and members of older age cohorts are recruited as police recruits. A total of 38 police training battalions were created for training purposes, in which the recruits were admitted separately according to age group. The recruits of the later police battalions 301 to 325 came from the older age groups 1909 to 1912. They were referred to as so-called "Wachtmeister battalions". The leading positions in the battalions were mostly occupied by professional police officers who trained the recruits. The recruits were promised exemption from military service and rapid advancement opportunities.

The police battalion 309 was formed on September 19, 1940 from the police training battalion "A" in Cologne . On September 23, 1940, the battalion was transferred to Radom in the then General Government and guarded the Radom ghetto from October 1940 to May 1941 .

After Ostrolenka in Mazovia laying in late May 1941 was carried out in preparation for the attack on the Soviet Union . On June 27, 1941, the troops of Police Battalion 309 moved into Białystok. At this point in time the battalion was subordinate to the 221st Security Division . On the orders of the battalion commander, Major Ernst Weis, the Jewish quarter of the city was searched in order to arrest all Jewish men. First the Jews were rounded up on the market square. This resulted in humiliations and the first shootings. While some of the Jews were taken to a park and executed in groups there, others were ordered to go to the Great Synagogue . After 700 to 800 Jews had gathered there, the building was set on fire. Refugees were shot. The fire spread from the synagogue to the Jewish quarter, in the flames of which another 1,000 people died. A total of around 2,000 to 2,200 Jews fell victim to Police Battalion 309. The next day, 30 truckloads of bodies were transported to a mass grave.

Then the battalion appeared on July 8, 1941 in the area around Białowieża , where it arrested hundreds of Jews by July 10, 1941, who were then deported to Hajnówka . The prison camp established there was guarded by Police Battalion 309 in the first half of July 1941.

On 16 July 1941 the battalion were commissioners to be shot in accordance with the Commissar Order passed.

Then the battalion was used against dispersed troops in Slonim . From July 24, 1941, the mission took place in the Sluzk area , then in Babrujsk . From August 12 to 30, 1941, the battalion was deployed in the Smolensk region for a "pacification operation". An unknown number of people fell victim to the measures here.

From the end of August the battalion was subordinated to the Korück 580 and arrived in Babrujsk on August 30th . On September 1, 1941, the battalion was deployed in the area around the town of Shlobin , where the headquarters were located.

On September 6, 1941, the battalion was transferred to Gomel .

On September 11th, the battalion was active in Lyubetsch and Ripky in northern Ukraine . Numerous arrests took place here as well. An unspecified number of people fell victim to reprisals by the police unit. On September 16, the battalion searched forests near Chernigov .

The 3rd company of the battalion was stationed in Dobryanka from September 17th to October 3rd . A village in this room was surrounded in those days by the 4th platoon of this company, the 25 male Jewish residents rounded up and shot.

On October 1, 1941, the 1st Company of the Police Battalion was relocated to Kletnja in the Russian Oblast of Bryansk , while the staff and the 2nd Company arrived in Novosybkow .

13 Jews were executed by the police unit in Kletnja on October 5th, between October 6th and 17th, 1941 another 13 Jews were shot, on October 24th another 32 people alleged to have been partisans.

From October 20, 1941, the battalion was used to secure the road Brjansk - Roslavl . Between October 20 and 30, 1941, around 700 Russians were arrested by the battalion in the Letoschniki and Brjansk areas. In the course of November there were executions in the same region, killing both Russians and Jews.

From February 1942, the battalion was deployed west and northwest of Bryansk. The 1st company was deployed on the road in the area between Wekuljewo and Letoschniki. The 2nd company was in Zhukovka . The 3rd Company was stationed in Potschep .

From February 26 to March 1, 1942, dozens of people were executed in the Bryansk - Letozhniki region, allegedly as part of the fight against partisans . Another two to three hundred people were deported.

Between March 3 and March 10, 1942, another 145 civilians, allegedly partisans, fell victim to the battalion in the Bryansk region. On May 14, 1942, another 58 civilians were executed as alleged partisans in the same region.

On March 12, 1942, the places Owstug and Retschiza were occupied by the 2nd company. On March 16, 1942, this company undertook smaller patrols in the Rzhanitsa area. On March 27, 1942, Ordzhonikidsegrad was occupied by two companies of the battalion in order to secure the railway line to Roslavl from here. On March 31, 1942, the battalion burned down 5 abandoned places. On April 2 and 3, the battalion was used against partisans north of Beshanj and southeast of Bagotowo. On April 20, 1942, the order was issued to comb the vicinity of Selzo. On April 22nd, the battalion was subordinate to Korück 532.

Until May 12, 1942, two companies were deployed on the Brjansk - Prolowka runway. In an "action" on May 14, 1942, 45 alleged partisans, 8 "partisan women" and 5 residents of two villages were killed.

At the end of May 1942 the battalion was relocated to Cologne, and then two companies were deployed in Luxembourg .

1st Battalion of the Police Regiment 7

In July 1942, Police Battalion 309 was renamed the 1st Battalion of Police Regiment 7 . The 2nd Battalion of Police Regiment 7 was made up of Police Battalion 317 and the III. formed from the police battalion 123 (both based in Wuppertal).

In 1943 the battalion was relocated to Norway , where it remained until the end of the war.

Commanders

  • Sep. 19, 1940 - unknown: Major Ernst Weis

War crimes investigation

Investigations were initiated against members of Police Battalion 309 in the Federal Republic of Germany after the end of the Second World War. All of the unit's former officers lied when they were questioned; Among other things, they stated that they had not seen a burning synagogue, although there is evidence that the entire battalion was involved in the operation.

In 1968, the Wuppertal District Court sentenced the chief of the 3rd company, members of the 4th platoon and the company troop leader of the 1st company to life imprisonment in the Wuppertal Białystok trial . Six other battalion members were found guilty but not sentenced. However, the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) largely overturned the judgments in 1971. In the second trial in 1973, the Wuppertal district court re-sentenced two defendants; these judgments were final. Against a third accused, after the appeal at the BGH, the proceedings were dropped by the Darmstadt Regional Court in 1977. None of the defendants served the minor sentences, which were only suspended on probation in any case. Many or most of the members of the battalion were reinstated in the police service after the war, as far as could be verified.

The defendant Heinrich Schneider , platoon leader in Police Battalion 309, hanged himself on October 14, 1967 before the start of the trial in Wuppertal.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Harald Buhlan & Werner Jung (eds.): Whose friend and whose helper? The Cologne Police under National Socialism (=  writings of the NS Documentation Center of the City of Cologne . Volume 7 ). Emons, Cologne 2000, ISBN 3-89705-200-8 (monograph with a focus on battalion 309).
  2. ↑ Torsten Schäfer: "In any case, I also shot", the NSG proceedings against Johann Josef Kuhr and other former members of Police Battalion 306, Police Rider Department 2 and the SD Office of Pinsk at the Frankfurt am Main Regional Court 1962–1973, series of dissertations by the Evangelical Studienwerk e. V. Villigst, Vol. 11, LIT-Verlag Dr. Hopf Hamburg, 2007, p. 59 f.
  3. ^ Stefan Klemp : Cologne Police Battalions in Eastern Europe: You Police Battalions 69, 309, 319 and the Cologne Police Reserve Company . In: Harald Buhlan & Werner Jung (eds.): Whose friend and whose helper? The Cologne Police under National Socialism (=  writings of the NS Documentation Center of the City of Cologne . Volume 7 ). Emons, Cologne 2000, ISBN 3-89705-200-8 , p. 277–298 (overview of the activities of battalion 309 during the war).
  4. ↑ See also the overview on this and the following in: Stefan Klemp: "Not determined". Police battalions and the post-war justice system. A manual . 2nd edition, Klartext Verlag, Essen 2011, ISBN 978-3-8375-0663-1 , p. 272 ​​ff.
  5. ↑ Christopher R. Browning / Jürgen Peter Krause: Completely normal men: The Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the "Final Solution" in Poland. With an afterword, 1998, pp. 31–32.
  6. ↑ Heiner Lichtenstein: A Tangle of Lies - The Wuppertal Trial against Members of Police Battalion 309 . In: Harald Buhlan & Werner Jung (eds.): Whose friend and whose helper? The Cologne Police under National Socialism (=  writings of the NS Documentation Center of the City of Cologne . Volume 7 ). Emons, Cologne 2000, ISBN 3-89705-200-8 , p. 619–632 (Contains court descriptions and statements by Battalion 309 on synagogue fires and the killings that took place).
  7. ↑ Wolfgang Curilla, The German Ordnungspolizei and the Holocaust in the Baltic States and in Belarus, Schöningh-Verlag Paderborn, 2nd edition 2006, p. 518.
  8. ↑ a b c Wolfgang Curilla, The German Ordnungspolizei and the Holocaust in the Baltic States and in Belarus, p. 519.
  9. ↑ Wolfgang Curilla, The German Ordnungspolizei and the Holocaust in the Baltic States and in Belarus, p. 520
  10. ↑ Wolfgang Curilla, The German Ordnungspolizei and the Holocaust in the Baltic States and in Belarus, p. 521.
  11. ↑ a b Wolfgang Curilla, The German Ordnungspolizei and the Holocaust in the Baltic States and in Belarus, p. 525.
  12. ↑ a b Wolfgang Curilla, The German Ordnungspolizei and the Holocaust in the Baltic States and in Belarus, p. 526.
  13. ↑ Heiner Lichtenstein: A Tangle of Lies - The Wuppertal Trial against Members of Police Battalion 309 . In: Harald Buhlan & Werner Jung (eds.): Whose friend and whose helper? The Cologne Police under National Socialism (=  writings of the NS Documentation Center of the City of Cologne . Volume 7 ). Emons, Cologne 2000, ISBN 3-89705-200-8 , p. 623–632 ( Verbatim quotes from the district court director (here: presiding judge) Dr. Norbert Simgen, who expressly spoke of mass murder during the trial): “If we have police officers here, we hear the untruth. (...) The whole unit was (...) busy killing as many Jews as possible. What you are telling us is a lie from start to finish. Only your name is correct. You lie barbarically. We are very reluctant to be lied to by a police officer. "
  14. ↑ CF Rüter and DW de Mildt: Justice and Nazi crimes. Collection of German criminal judgments for Nazi homicidal crimes since 1945 , Amsterdam 1968ff, Volume XXXVIII, Case No. 792
  15. ↑ Wolfgang Curilla, The German Ordnungspolizei and the Holocaust in the Baltic States and in Belarus, p. 509 f.
  16. ↑ Heiner Lichtenstein: A Tangle of Lies - The Wuppertal Trial against Members of Police Battalion 309 . In: Harald Buhlan & Werner Jung (eds.): Whose friend and whose helper? The Cologne Police under National Socialism (=  writings of the NS Documentation Center of the City of Cologne . Volume 7 ). Emons, Cologne 2000, ISBN 3-89705-200-8 , p. 632 : "The evidence had become weaker in the meantime, the legal situation had changed so that the now extremely low custodial sentences, which were suspended on probation, no longer had to be taken by the convicted."
  17. ↑ Heike Wüller: "Use before 1945" . In: Harald Buhlan & Werner Jung (eds.): Whose friend and whose helper? The Cologne Police under National Socialism (=  writings of the NS Documentation Center of the City of Cologne . Volume 7 ). Emons, Cologne 2000, ISBN 3-89705-200-8 , p. 633–668 (Contains, among other things, the biographies of some members of the battalion; quotation from p. 635 given here): "The first goal for most of the police officers was to get them back into service."
  18. ↑ Wolfgang Curilla, The German Ordnungspolizei and the Holocaust in the Baltic States and in Belarus, p. 509.