Reserve Police Battalion 3rd

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The Reserve Police Battalion 3 was a military formation of the Ordnungspolizei . During the German occupation of large parts of the Soviet Union, the unit was initially assigned to the Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and the SD , which it actively supported in the murder of Jews and other population groups. The battalion, along with the 310 police battalion, has the highest death rates in Belarus . From the summer of 1942, the greater part of the battalion was deployed at the front, where it was almost completely wiped out. The 1st Company, on the other hand, formed the basic structure of the Schutzmannschafts Battalion 57 , which was used to fight partisans .

Lineup

The Reserve Police Battalion 3 was set up in Berlin in 1939 . It was initially used as Police Battalion II / 6 in the attack on Poland . The units of the Ordnungspolizei were supposed to secure industrial plants, prevent the migration of parts of the Polish population, close the Polish-Hungarian border to refugees, help set up local administrations and reorganize the supply of the city population. The addition of reserve indicates that the unit was mainly formed from reservists .

commitment

Poland, Norway and Yugoslavia

At the end of 1939 the battalion was stationed in Warsaw , where it was assigned to the Warsaw Police Regiment in December 1939 . On January 16, 1940, the battalion was replaced by the Reserve Police Battalion 7 and relocated back to Berlin. From April to October 1940 the battalion was deployed in Norway . In September / October 1941 it took part in a special mission to "fight gangs" in southern Carinthia / Yugoslavia . After returning to Berlin, it was then to be used as a unit in the Soviet Union in December 1941 . But the transport train was rerouted to Zamość at short notice . There the commander Arthur Seidel was ordered to split up his unit in order to relieve the Reserve Police Battalion 9 .

Soviet Union

Like Reserve Police Battalion 9, Reserve Police Battalion 3 was split up and assigned to various task forces of the Security Police and the SD or their task forces. The police battalions played an important role in the implementation of the task force's murder assignment. They performed logistical tasks in the case of mass shootings, evacuations of the ghetto and deportation transports , took part in the shootings and also carried out murders on their own.

The 1st Company under Captain Hans Siegling was the Einsatzgruppe B assumes the 2nd Company under Captain Franz Zipperling of Einsatzgruppe C , the 3rd Company of the Einsatzgruppe D , and the 4th Company of the Einsatzgruppe A . At the turn of the year 1942/43 the battalion was deployed in the central section of the Eastern Front and almost completely wiped out there. The police officers assigned to Einsatzgruppe D were taken over by the 36th Police Rifle Regiment after its dissolution . Few of them survived the war. According to some statements, the battalion was gathered in the Molodechno area in 1943 and then transferred to the 36th Police Rifle Regiment; According to other statements, the battalion was initially withdrawn as a closed unit and then assigned to the 36th Police Rifle Regiment.

In a few cases the law enforcement officers were given the choice of whether to participate in the executions . A member of the 1st Company later stated in an interrogation that the leader of the Einsatzkommando 8 had declared before the first mass shooting that nobody should suffer from the "destruction of this subhumanity". A similar offer in Simferopol has come down to us from Otto Ohlendorf , the leader of Einsatzgruppe D. Another member of Reserve Police Battalion 3 testified that no police officer had made use of such an offer. On the other hand, there is evidence that Zipperling refused to help the chief of Einsatzgruppe C to participate in an execution.

1st company

The 1st company, subordinate to Einsatzgruppe B, was assigned to Einsatzkommando 8 (EK 8), where it replaced the 2nd company of Reserve Police Battalion 9. On December 5, 1941, the unit reached the location of the task force in Smolensk . While the staff stayed there, the 1st and 3rd platoons were moved to Mogilev . The 2nd train was split up. One half was deployed first in Bryansk and later in Bobruisk , the other half in Orsha . Investigations after the Second World War revealed that the police were involved in numerous mass shootings of Jews by EK 8. A witness from the 1st Company stated that members of the company had participated in the killing of 48,000 Jews. The staff, however, claimed to have been largely uninvolved. Siegling, for example, claimed to have seen only one mass shooting himself.

Many of the acts can hardly be distinguished today and the specific participation of the company members can hardly be determined. Usually the police officers mainly carried out barrier services during actions of EK 8. First of all, the respective location was cordoned off over a large area, while members of the commando, together with the local security service, searched the houses of the Jews and brought the victims to a collection point, provided they were not shot on the spot. At the scene of the shooting, police officers formed a chain of guards and also took part in the executions as shooters.

There is evidence that members of Reserve Police Battalion 3 participated in at least one execution near Mogilew in December 1941 / January 1942. Relatives took part in a mass shooting in January 1942 in which 400 to 500 Jewish men, women and children were murdered 1st Company as a rifleman. Police officers also took part as shooters in the murder of more than 100 inmates in an institution for the mentally ill, who were shot in tank trenches on February 22, 1942 . The half-platoon of the 1st Company, which was assigned to a part of EK 8 in Bobruisk to exterminate the Jews of the district, also deployed riflemen, especially the subordinate commanders, during executions. According to some statements, the police officers mainly shot. The other half platoon of the 1st Company, which was assigned to another sub-command of EK 8 in Orsha, also provided riflemen for the mass executions of Jews. From December 1941 to March 1942 at least 600 Jews were shot in several actions.

During the German occupation, Jews were constantly picked up and taken to the SD prison in Mogilew. Once the prison was full, it was evacuated. For this purpose, all Jewish prisoners and those non-Jewish prisoners who were to be “ treated specially ” were taken to the anti-tank ditch outside the city and shot there. From December 1941 to May 1942 the prison is said to have been evacuated at least six times. It is estimated that there will be at least 150 victims per prison eviction. When, from June 1942, the prison was occupied more quickly after major actions, EK 8 also used gas vans to kill the prisoners. By September 21, 1942, about ten missions had taken place. The security police secured the shooting site during the executions and also participated in the gas truck operations. From the summer of 1942 they were also part of the prison guards.

In the association of EK 8, members of the Reserve Police Battalion 3 were also used to fight partisans . Thousands of civilians were shot dead during these actions. A scouting party of the 1st Company with one officer and 31 men was wiped out by partisans on February 22, 1942. When the deployment of Reserve Police Battalion 3 with the Einsatzgruppen ended in the summer of 1942, the 1st Company transferred to Schutzmannschaftsbataillon 57 .

2nd company

The 2nd company under Captain Frank Zipperling came to Einsatzgruppe C. It was involved in the murder of 750 to 1,000 people in Kharkov by Sonderkommando 4a, at least four emptying of the Kremenchug prison using gas vans, executions and the murder of several hundred Jewish men, Women and children involved in Khorol at Easter 1942 . Here, too, the police officers were not only assigned to collect and cordon off, but also took part in the executions as shooters.

3rd company

The 3rd Company was assigned to Einsatzgruppe D, where it remained until the summer of 1943. She took part in the shooting of 7,500 Jews in Simferopol from December 11-13, 1941. The police provided two execution squads with 40 men. They also took part in the search for hidden Jews and their subsequent killing by gas vans in January / February 1942 in Simferopol and the surrounding area. At Christmas 1941 they took part in the murder of around 300 Jews in Yalta , in autumn 1942 in the murder of 800 to 1,000 Jews from Pyatigorsk by Einsatzkommando 12, the liquidation of 200 Jews from Mineralnye Vody, and the murder of at least 300 Jews by means of gas vans in Cherkessk and the murder of approx. 1,000 Jews in Anmawir also by means of gas vans.

4th company

The 4th Company was assigned to Einsatzgruppe A. First she was moved to Krasnogwardeisk in the containment ring around Leningrad and divided into groups there. In Krasnogwardeisk itself the company staff remained with 30 to 35 police officers. The first train was used in the area of ​​the enclosure ring until it came to Tosno in December 1941 . SD assumed the police were from there to the field offices Tschudowo , Mga and Schlüsselburg distributed. 19 police officers remained in Tosno. Other locations were Sablino, Nikolskoje and other places.

A smaller group of six to eight police officers came to Kaunas and a week later to Vilnius , where they were assigned to the Einsatzkommando 3 / KdS Lithuania and stayed until around June 1943. Another group of 10 to 12 men came from Krasnogwardeisk to Kaunas also to the task force 3 / KdS Lithuania. This group came to Riga in the summer of 1942 and was transferred 14 days later to the Danowka-Mala base to the 36th Police Rifle Regiment, where they were supposed to secure a taxiway against partisan attacks. Another group of 4th Company came to Riga.

A platoon of the 4th Company was moved to Minsk in the spring of 1942 and placed there under the command of the Belarusian security police. In this office, which was made up of Sonderkommando 1b and a remainder of the Einsatzkommando 8, the police officers were distributed to various departments. For this reason, the participation of the police in murder operations against the Jewish population can only be proven in relatively few cases.

One of these crimes was a large-scale operation that the then service commander Walter Hofmann had carried out from March 1-3, 1942 against local Jews from the Minsk ghetto . On the morning of March 1, evacuation teams drove the residents of a sub-district of the ghetto to the Minsk freight yard and transported them to Koidanow in freight cars . There the Jews were unloaded on March 2nd and driven in small groups to prepared pits, where they were murdered with shots in the neck. The executions continued on March 3rd. At least 3,000 people were shot dead. A corresponding incident report names 3,412 victims. In the judgment of the Koblenz Regional Court of May 21, 1963 against Georg Heuser , Head of Division IV ( Gestapo ) of the KdS Belarus, who was involved in the massacre as a shooter , it was established that a police officer assigned as a shooter had refused to participate in the action. Heuser then had the police reload his pistol during the execution. According to Christian Gerlach , the evacuation took place on March 2, 1942; several hundred children were partly shot and partly buried alive in a large pit in the middle of the ghetto.

At least one of the police officers reportedly took part in an action in Vilejka on the night of March 3, 1942, in which at least 302 Jews were shot, and in another in Radoschkowitschi , on March 11, 1942, which killed at least 800 Jews as well as the murder of the Jews of the town of Ilja on March 17, 1942 with 520 victims.

Between May and October 1942, a total of 15,000 Jews from the Reich and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia were deported to Minsk in freight trains. At least 13,500 Jews were murdered there immediately. The then commanding officer of the agency, Eduard Strauch , had chosen a small wood near the Trostinez estate as the execution site . As a rule, 80 to 100 men were required to carry out the shootings and all members of the agency, including the police reserve officers, were called in. From mid-May / early June 1942, gas vans were also used by the office to murder the Jews. Christian Gerlach puts the number of deported Jews at over 17,000, almost all of whom were murdered immediately. In Trostinez and Petrashkewitschki, a total of 9,000 Jews from the Minsk ghetto were murdered from July 28 to 30, 1942 .

Casualty numbers

The number of victims of the executions in which units of the battalion took part is estimated by Stefan Klemp at 100,000. Daniel Goldhagen's estimate , however, who estimated the number of victims of the battalion at several hundred thousand, is exaggerated. Wolfgang Curilla calculates the number of Jewish victims at 58,980. In addition to the Police Battalion 310, the Reserve Police Battalion 3 has the highest death rates in Belarus.

Prosecution

The investigations against the members of the 1st company of the 3rd Reserve Police Battalion were stopped on June 18, 1967 by the central office in Dortmund . The central office came to the conclusion that participation in the murder could have been refused. But she found that the charge of guilt against the members of the 1st Company involved in the shootings was “relatively low”, which was all the more fair, “as in the other proceedings against members of the Einsatzkommando 8 no charges were brought against those involved who were much more heavily charged or no condemnation has been pronounced. "

literature

  • Wolfgang Curilla: The German Ordnungspolizei and the Holocaust in the Baltic States and Belarus, 1941–1944. F. Schöningh, Paderborn 2006, ISBN 3-506-71787-1 .
  • Wolfgang Curilla: The murder of Jews in Poland and the German Ordnungspolizei 1939–1945. Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2011, ISBN 978-3-506-77043-1 .
  • Stefan Klemp: "Not determined". Police Battalions and the Post War Justice. A manual. 2nd Edition. Klartext Verlag, Essen 2011, ISBN 978-3-8375-0663-1 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolfgang Curilla: The murder of Jews in Poland and the German Ordnungspolizei 1939–1945. Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2011, ISBN 978-3-506-77043-1 , p. 38f.
  2. ↑ Curilla, Judenmord , p. 675.
  3. ↑ Wolfgang Curilla: The German Ordnungspolizei and the Holocaust in the Baltic States and in Belarus, 1941-1944. F. Schöningh, Paderborn 2006, ISBN 3-506-71787-1 , p. 272.
  4. ↑ Stefan Klemp: "Not determined". Police Battalions and the Post War Justice. A manual. 2nd Edition. Klartext Verlag, Essen 2011, ISBN 978-3-8375-0663-1 , p. 78.
  5. ↑ Curilla, Ordnungspolizei , p. 272 ​​f.
  6. ^ Curilla, Ordnungspolizei , p. 933.
  7. ^ Curilla, Ordnungspolizei , p. 931.
  8. ↑ a b Klemp, “Not determined” , pp. 88–90.
  9. ↑ Curilla, Ordnungspolizei , pp. 449f.
  10. ↑ Curilla, Ordnungspolizei , p. 451.
  11. ↑ Curilla, Ordnungspolizei , p. 452.
  12. ↑ Curilla, Ordnungspolizei , pp. 454–457.
  13. ^ Curilla, Ordnungspolizei , p. 457.
  14. ↑ Curilla, Ordnungspolizei , p. 404.
  15. ↑ Klemp, “Not Determined” , p. 90.
  16. ↑ Curilla, Ordnungspolizei , pp. 811f.
  17. ^ Curilla, Ordnungspolizei , p. 801.
  18. ^ Curilla, Ordnungspolizei , p. 812.
  19. ^ Curilla, Ordnungspolizei , p. 823.
  20. ↑ Curilla, Ordnungspolizei , p. 272 ​​f.
  21. ^ Curilla, Ordnungspolizei , pp. 476, 478.
  22. ↑ Curilla, Ordnungspolizei , pp. 480f.
  23. ^ Christian Gerlach: Calculated murders. The German economic and extermination policy in Belarus 1941 to 1944. 1st edition. Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 1999, ISBN 978-3-930908-54-7 , p. 691.
  24. ↑ Curilla, Ordnungspolizei , pp. 482–484.
  25. ↑ Curilla, Ordnungspolizei , pp. 484–487.
  26. ↑ Christian Gerlach, Calculated Morde , pp. 704f .; Curilla, Ordnungspolizei , p. 488f.
  27. ↑ Klemp, “Not Determined” , p. 92.
  28. ↑ klemp, “Not determined” , p. 545; Curilla, Ordnungspolizei , pp. 826, 828-831.
  29. ^ Curilla, Ordnungspolizei , p. 826.
  30. ↑ Klemp, “Not Determined” , p. 91; Curilla, Ordnungspolizei , p. 404.