Archive for August 2009
Rivka Yosselevska-witness to Einsatzgruppen massacres!
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Rivka Yosselevska
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Rivka Yoselewska testifying at the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem |
On the evening of 14 August 1942, the first day of the Hebrew month of Ellul, a Friday, the SS surrounded the ghetto in the village of Zagrodski, near Pinsk in Belarus (Belorussia), home to five hundred Jewish families. “The commotion and noise on that night”, recalled Rivka Yosselevska, “was not customary, and we felt something in the air.”
On Saturday morning 15 August 1942, the Germans entered the ghetto, ordering the Jews to leave their houses for a roll call. All day, the Jews were kept standing, waiting. Towards sunrise, the children screamed, demanding food and water. But the Germans would allow no one back into their homes.
That evening a truck arrived at the ghetto gates. The Jews were ordered on to it, and drove out of the ghetto. Those for whom there had been no room on the truck were ordered to run after it. “I had my daughter in my arms”, Rivka Yosselevska recalled, “and ran after the truck. There were mothers who had two or three children and held them in their arms – running after the truck. We ran all the way. There were those who fell – we were not allowed to help them rise. They were shot – right there – wherever they fell.”
On reaching the destination, Rivka Yosselevska saw that the people from the truck had already been taken off, and were undressed, “all lined up.” It was some three kilometres from the village, by “a kind of hillock”. At the foot of the hillock was a ditch. The Jews were ordered to stand on the hillock, where four SS men stood “armed to the teeth.”
“We saw naked people lined up”, Rivka Yosselevska recalled, “and we hoped this was only torture. Maybe there is hope – hope of living.”
Her account continued:
“One could not leave the line, but I wished to see – what are they doing on the hillock? I turned my head and saw that some three or four rows were already killed – on the ground.
There were some twelve people amongst the dead. I also want to mention that my child said while we were lined up in the ghetto, she said `Mother, why did you make me wear the Shabbat dress, we are being taken to be shot’-; and when we stood near the dug-out, near the grave, she said, `Mother, why are we waiting, let us run!’
Some of the young people tried to run, but they were caught immediately, and they were shot right there. It was difficult to hold onto the children. We took all children, not ours, and we carried – we were anxious to get it all over- the suffering of the children was difficult- we all trudged along to come nearer to the place and to come nearer to the end of the torture of the children. The children were taking leave of their parents and parents of their elder people.
We were driven; we were already undressed; the clothes were removed and taken away; our father did not want to undress; he wanted to keep his underclothes on. He did not want to stand naked. Then they tore the clothing off the old man and he was shot. I saw it with my own eyes. And then they took my mother, and she said, let us go before her, but they caught my mother and shot her too; and then there was my grandmother, my father’s mother, standing there; she was eighty years old and she had two children in her arms. And then there was my father’s sister. She also had children in her arms and she was shot on the spot with the babies in her arms.
And finally my turn came. There was my younger sister, and she wanted to leave, she pleaded with the German; she asked to run, naked- she went up to the Germans with one of her friends; they were embracing each other; and she asked to be spared, standing there naked. He looked into her eyes and shot the two of them. They fell together in their embrace, the two young girls, my sister and her young friend. Then my second sister was shot and then my turn came.
We turned towards the grave and then he turned around and asked, `Whom shall I shoot first?’ We were already facing the grave. The German asked, `Whom do you want me to shoot first?’ I did not answer. I felt him take the child from my arms. The child cried out and was shot immediately. And then he aimed at me. First he held onto my hair and turned my head around; I stayed standing; I heard a shot, but I continued to stand and then he turned my head again and he aimed the revolver at me, ordered me to watch, and then turned my head around and shot at me. Then I fell to the ground into the pit amongst the bodies – but I felt nothing.
The moment I did feel I felt a sort of heaviness and then I thought may be I am not alive anymore, but I feel something after I died. I thought I was dead, that this was the feeling which comes after death. Then I felt that I was choking; people falling over me. I tried to move and felt that I was alive and that I could rise. I was strangling. I heard the shots and I was praying for another bullet to put an end to my suffering, but I continued to move about.
I felt that I was choking, strangling, but I tried to save myself, to find some air to breathe, and then I felt that I was climbing towards the top of the grave above the bodies. I rose, and I felt bodies pulling at with me with their hands, biting at my legs, pulling me down, down. And yet with my last strength I came up on top of the grave, and when I did I did not know the place, so many bodies were lying all over, dead people; I wanted to see the end of this stretch of dead bodies, but I could not. It was impossible. They were lying, all dying; suffering; not all of them dead, but in their last sufferings; naked; shot, but not dead. Children crying, `Mother, Father’; I could not stand on my feet.
The Germans had gone. There was nobody there, no one standing up. “I was naked, covered with blood, dirty from other bodies, with the excrement from other bodies which was poured on me.” Riivka Yosselevska had been wounded in the head, but she managed to crawl out of the grave, then she recalled;
Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/einsatz/rytest.html
The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team
www.HolocaustResearchProject.org
Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2009
Einsatzgruppen Commander Paul Blobel
Einsatzgruppen Commander
Sonderkommando 1005
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Paul Blobel was born on 13 August 1894 in Potsdam. He served in First World War where he was awarded the Iron Cross First Class. After the Great War Blobel studied architecture and practised this profession from 1924 until 1931 upon losing his job he joined the Nazi Party and the SS on 1 December 1931.
Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union Blobel took command of Einsatzkommando 4a of Einsatzgruppe C that operated in the Ukraine. As well as shooting the Nazis murdered Jews in gas-vans, Eimsatzgruppe C was issued at least five gas vans and gave two to Sonderkommando 4A, two to Einsatzkommando 6 and one to Einsatzlommando 5.
A member of the group testified after the war:
Two gas vans were in service I saw them myself. They drove into the prison yard, and the Jews – men, women and children – had to get straight into the vans from their cells.
I know what the interior of the vans look like. It was covered with sheet metal and fitted with a wooden grid. The exhaust fumes were piped into the interior of the vans. I can still hear the hammering and the screaming of the Jews – “Dear Germans let us out!”
The Jews went through our cordon and into the van without hesitating. As soon as the doors were shut, the driver started the engine. He drove to a spot outside Poltava. I was there when the van arrived.
As the doors were opened, dense smoke emerged, followed by a tangle of crumpled bodies. It was a frightful sight. The driver for Paul Blobel, testified after the war regarding the unloading of one of these gas-vans:
The use of the gas vans was the most horrible thing I have ever seen. I saw people being led into the vans and the doors closed. Then the van drove off. I had to drive Blobel to the place where the gas vans were unloaded.
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The back doors of the van were opened, and the bodies that had not fallen out when the doors were opened were unloaded by Jews who were still alive. The bodies were covered with vomit and excrement. It was a terrible sight. Blobel looked then he looked away, and we drove off, on such occasions Blobel always drunk schnapps, sometimes even in the car.
Blobel organised the infamous massacre of 33,771 Kiev Jews which took place in the Babi Yar ravine, the Einsatzgruppen reports give the full credit for the massacre to Blobel, but at the War Crimes Trial in Nuremburg Blobel protested his absence from Kiev, and declared further that only fifteen of his fifty-three men could be detailed for the executions.
In March 1942 Albert Hartel, a Gestapo expert on church affairs, was driving with Blobel towards a country villa outside Kiev used by Brigadefuhrer Thomas, the Higher SS and Police Leader. At the Babi Yar ravine, Hartel noticed small explosions, which threw up columns of earth. It was the thaw, releasing the gases from thousands of bodies, and Blobel explained – “Here my Jews are buried.”
Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/einsatz/blobel.html
The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team
www.HolocaustResearchProject.org
Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2009
Holocaust Ghettos- Kutno
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Kutno is located 33 miles north of Lodz, and is roughly in the centre of Poland. A Jewish community existed in the mid 15th Century. A synagogue was built in 1766 and survived until 1939. In 1753, a fire destroyed the town including all documents of the Jewish community.
Therefore, not much is known of the history of Jewish community of Kutno until mid-18th century.
What is known is that the Jews were established in commercial activity, extending all the way to Germany and the Netherlands. The Jewish population in 1897 was 10,356 this was approximately 50% of the total population.
The city enjoyed long years of success under the reigns of diligent and enlightened owners; it also struggled with crises following turbulent history of Poland and the disintegration of feudal structures.
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Kutno was a centre of rabbinical learning and prominent personalities such as Nahum Sokolow and Sholem Asch studied at the Yeshiva. Asch was born in Kutno 1880 and immortalised the town in his works.
Zionist activity began in 1898 and most of the Zionist political parties and youth movements were founded prior to the First World War. A Yiddish school was founded in 1916 and this existed until 1935. The majority of the community was employed as salaried workers during the 19th Century and they increased proportionally during the next Century, mainly in the textile and food industries.
The income of Jewish shop owners and artisans was adversely effected by the boycott imposed by the Endecja Party between the two World Wars. Shortly after World War One a trade union was established by the Bund and a Jewish Labour union was organised while a Jewish merchants association was set up in 1932.
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In the 1924 community council elections the Zionists won 50% of the seats and Jewish representatives were elected to the municipal council. A Jewish government elementary school opened in 1926 and two years later a school with Yiddish instruction opened its doors, one year earlier a University was opened.
Before the onset of the war, 8000 Jews were living in Kutno. Once the Germans entered Kutno on the 15 September 1939 Jewish males were rounded up and sent to forced labour camps in Piatek and a group of seventy to a prison camp in Leczyca.
Jews were persecuted daily and Jewish property was plundered, the Jewish synagogue was burned down, and only the walls remained. A Judenrat was established in November 1939 and on the 15 June 1940 8,000 Jews were incarcerated in the ghetto.
Read more about Kutno here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ghettos/kutno.html
The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team
www.HolocaustResearchProject.org
Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2009
Babi Yar!
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Babi Yar
Mass Murder in Kiev
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The ravine at Babi Yar |
On 19 September 1941 the German XXIXth German Army Corps and the 6th Army entered Kiev, after a stiff Soviet defence that had lasted forty five days.
Over 875,000 people lived in the city, of whom 20 percent were Jews (175,000). Some factories important for military purposes and their workers, among them approximately 20,000-30,000 Jews were evacuated by the Soviets. The exact number of evacuated Jews is unknown since no count was taken at that time. Perhaps 130,000 Jews fell into Nazi hands.
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The population remembered the last German occupation in 1918 and were convinced that the occupiers would act in a civilized manner. It was anticipated that the Germans would restore the rights and property of the populace abolished by the Soviets.
The citizens of Kiev were not aware of the risks involved in falling into German hands, and could not imagine their ultimate fate.
Jews had already been persecuted and killed during the first days of the occupation. However, for reasons still unknown, a ghetto was not established in Kiev.
On 24 September 1941, and in the following days, several bombs were detonated in Kiev (Kreshchatik and Prorizna Streets), and destroyed some buildings in the centre of the town, including the army headquarters and the Hotel Continental, where German officers resided.
Hundreds of German soldiers and officers were killed. The resulting fire also destroyed some further buildings. These bombs had been placed by a special command of NKVD agents who intentionally remained in Kiev for this purpose.
Alfred Jodl Chief of the Operations Staff of the High Command of the Armed Forces testified at his trial in Nuremberg: "hardly had we occupied the city when one tremendous explosion after another occurred. The major part of the inner city burned down, 50,000 people were made homeless. German soldiers were used to fight the flames, and suffered considerable losses, because further large amounts of explosives detonated during the fire…
At first, the local commander in Kiev thought that it was sabotage on the part of the population, but then we found a demolition chart, which had already been prepared a long time ago, listing 50 or 60 objectives in Kiev for destruction.
This chart was, in fact, correct, as investigation by engineers at once proved. At least 40 more objectives were ready to be blown up; for the most part, remote control was to set off the explosion by means of radio waves. I myself had the original of this demolition chart in my hands."
German troops caught and executed a Jew on Kreshchatik Street, when he cut a water hose that was being used for fighting the fire. That may have been the excuse the Germans needed to accuse the Kiev Jews of being responsible for the explosions.
The German military commander of Kiev Generalmajor Eberhardt, attended a meeting with the Höherer SS- und Polizeiführer SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln, the commanding officer of Einsatzgruppe C, SS-Brigadeführer Dr Otto Rasch, and the commanding officer of Sonderkommando 4a, SS-Standartenführer Paul Blobel.
Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/einsatz/babiyar.html
The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team
www.HolocaustResearchProject.org
Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2009
