The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact - ELTE BTK Történelem Szakos Portál

German Reactions
A last point that must not be underestimated is the output the Germans took
from these incidents. On the one hand they started a large propaganda-campaign in
which the Soviets were depicted as murderers, on the other hand they could easily
gain the local people‘s support in persecuting Jews from the start on. When the
German units took over control they had to rely on the population‘s help because,
as Martin Dean noticed, they would not have been able to identify Jews on their
own. 56 The Germans did not put an end to the riots but let them go on or even
motivated them. 57 Initially the Wehrmacht had been ordered to shoot political
commissioners and the Einsatzgruppen had to persecute Soviet political personnel
and especially Jewish cadres. After they discovered the NKVD‘s victims, the range
of victims grew and it was no longer only certain groups within the Jewish
population but the Jews as a group of their own. 58
The German propaganda used the NKVD‘s crimes to justify their own crimes.
but after the first wave of violence slowed down, they restricted further riots because
they feared to otherwise lose control. 59 It was now solely the Einsatzgruppen‘s duty
to persecute the Jewish population, even though they had help of local volunteers.
The further atrocities against the Jews were carried out according to plans and can
not be compared to the initial spontaneity of actions. 60
Final statements
As the controversy of Bogdan Musial‘s theses shows, it is still not easy to
discuss violence against Jews during the Second World War. The Holocaust‘s
shadow often prevents a view on the local population‘s part in the persecution of
their Jewish neighbours. One must not compare one phenomenon with another,
but rather regard the Ukrainian and White Russian‘s pogroms as something that
happened independent from the later German crimes against the Jews. - And by
independent I do not mean on their own initiative, as stated above, but without
initial connection to the later events, as they could not be foreseen.
56
DEAN, Martin: The ‚Local Police‘ in Nazi-occupied Belarus and Ukraine as the ‚Ideal
Type‘ of Collaboration - in Practice, in the Recollection of its Members and in the Verdicts of the
Courts. In: TAUBER, Joachim (Ed.): ‚Kollaboration‘ in Nordosteuropa - Erscheinungsformen
und Deutungen im 20. Jahrhundert. Wiesbaden, 2006. 418.
57
POHL, Dieter: Nationalsozialistische Judenverfolgung in Ostgalizien 1941-1944 -
Organisation und Durchführung eines staatlichen Massenverbrechens. München, 1996. 59.
58
Ibidem. 138.
59
Ibidem. 66. HILBERG, Raul: Täter, Opfer, Zuschauer - Die Vernichtung der Juden 1933-
1945, Frankfurt am Main, 1992. 198.
60
OVERY, Richard: Russlands Krieg - 1941-1945, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 2003. 221.
POHL, Dieter: Ukrainische Hilfskräfte beim Mord an den Juden. In: PAUL, Gerhard (Ed.):
Die Täter der Shoah - Fanatische Nationalsozialisten oder ganz normale Deutsche?,
Göttingen, 2002. 212-219, 224.
180