Newsgroups: alt.revisionism Subject: Holocaust Almanac - Paul Blobel & Babi Yar Organization: The Nizkor Project, Vancouver Island, CANADA Keywords: Blobel,Babi Yar,Kiev,Sonderkommando Archive/File: places/poland/einsatzgruppen blobel.01 Last-modified: 1996/02/05 "The commander of Sonderkommando 4a, which had reached Kiev just behind the army, was Paul Blobel. Even among a crowd of mass murderers, Blobel distinguished himself through his crudity and bloodthirstiness. Early in the Russian campaign he had suffered from dysentery, which he attempted to treat with liquor. In spite of his cure, Blobel was able to carry out his duties; and his unit left a trail of blood along its route to Kiev. Perhaps his most barbaric action before Kiev was his execution of Jewish children from an orphanage in Bjala Zerkow in late August. Nor was Blobel the only guilty party there; the army became involved as well. After Colonel Groscurth tried to block the action in Bjala Zerkow, General von Reichenau, commander of the German Sixth Army, allowed the completion of the executions. <19> If Reichenau had no objections to the killing of Jewish children, he would not blanch at broad actions to deal with the percieved Jewish threat to German security. So Blobel knew he had a free hand in Kiev. After a meeting with Einsatzgruppe A Commander Rasch, Blobel recognized what had to be done. First he had explosives placed under the nearly nine-hundred-year-old Dormtion Cathedral at the Perchersk Monastery and blew up a good portion of that building. On September 28 he had the Ukrainian auxiliary police post notices on the walls of buildings ordering all Jews to appear at 8:00 a.m. at a designated location on Dekhyarevskaya Street. He gave out word orally that the entire Jewish population was to be resettled. Actually there was to be a mass execution of a large number of Jews, as Blobel informed a few police drivers who had just arrived in Kiev and were waiting for their vehicles to be repaired. These Jews he described as asocial, without worth, and intolerable for Germany. In addition, there would be executions of patients in mental asylums and other `useless eaters.' Because of the lack of manpower, Blobel said, the drivers would have to participate in the action too.<20> More than thrity thousand Jews showed up on the morning of September 29 in spite of cold weather. A German minister stayed behind with the kitchen staff to make tea for the troops of the commando unit and the units of Police Regiment South, which had been called in to help. German forces blocked off the streets as Jews were led in long lines in the direction of a ravine in the northwest part of Kiev, which was called Babi Yar. As they walked, the Jews chanted religious songs. One German policeman present thought that they knew what was in store for them.<21> Blobel had his driver bring him to the top of the ravine, where he stood and watched as the Jews were marched in below, by this time clad only in underwear. They were forced to lie face down, and the executioners, also at the base of the ravine, equipped with Schmeisser automatic rifles, tried to shoot them in the back of the head, per instructions. Because of the mass of victims, some were shot several times over, others only wounded. Then the next batch came in and lay down on top of the first. According to one of the executioners, Blobel yelled frequently to his men below, complaining that the killings were not going fast enough. The killers worked in shifts, and they were kept supplied with ammunition and rum. At the end of the day lime chloride was spread on top of the layers of bodies. <22> After two days' work by Blobel's men and their helpers, Blobel proudly reported executing 33, 771 Jews in an operation that had goine quite smoothly.<23>" <19> Interrogations of Julius Bauer, 2 Aug. 1965, and Rudi Paltzo, 27-28 July 1965, Callsen Trial, Ludwigsburg 207 AR-Z419/62, 85-87, photo- copies in my possession. <20> Interrogation of Heinrich August Bernhard Huhn, 16 March 1966, Trial of Kuno Callsen et al, Ludwigsburg 207 AR-Z419/62, photocopies in my possession. EM #106, 7 Oct 1941, NA RG 242, T-175/R234/2722806. Interrogation of Viktor Trill, 25 June 1960, Trial of Kuno Callsen, Ludwigsburg 207 AR-Z419/62, 12-13, photocopies in my possession. Based on the course of events Trill described, Blobel's remarks to the drivers occured on the evening of 29 Sept, after the first day's executions. <21> Interrogation of Huhn, 16 March 1966. <22> This description is based primarily on the highly detailed testimony in the interrogation of Viktor Trill, 25 June 1960. Other participants provide support for some particulars - see, for example, the interrogation of Huhn, 16 March 1966; interrogation of Erich von Heidborn, 13 Jan. 1966, Callsen Trial, Ludwigsburg 206 AR-Z419/62, 687-88. <23> EM #106, 7 Oct. 1941, NA RG 242, T-175/R 234/2722806 Work Cited: Breitman, Richard. The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution. New York: Alfred E. Knopf, 1991 == See also: Browning, Christopher. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. New York: HarperCollins [1992], 18, for general comments about Police Battalion 45 and the massacre at Babi Yar, which references: Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen, Ludwigsburg, II 204 AR-Z 1251-65 (Landgericht Regensburg, judgment Ks 6/70): 9-35; and 204 AR-Z 1251/65, 2:230-77 (report of Bavarian State Criminal Office, Munich, September 10, 1968. See also p. 135 and p. 160. These are all brief mentions of Babi Yar, without details, as the book is focused more on the police battalions themselves and the men in them than in the events in which they participated.
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