the holocaust and colonialism in ukraine - Apple

4 • THE HOLOCAUST AND COLONIALISM IN UKRAINE
town of Vinnytsia, Sonderkommando 4b and Jeckeln’s Order Police Battalions 45 and
314 began to massacre about 15,000 Jews. Thus, in a matter of weeks, the Germans
expanded the killing with unprecedented aggression, demonstrating their intent to
destroy the Jews as a so-called race, and not the Communist Party and state apparatus
per se. 13
The dramatic increase in the numbers of Jews killed in August and September is
indeed startling and indicates a change. But the source of this change is still unclear.
What developments incited Nazi leaders in the center of the Reich and periphery of the
occupied territories to intensify their murderous campaign?
In the Zhytomyr region, the transition from killing male Jews to killing Jewish
women and children did not occur automatically. Reich leaders and their regional
deputies had to place extra pressure on their subordinates to, as they put it, “kill more
Jews” or “act more aggressively” against all Jews. To achieve this genocidal aim,
Wehrmacht and SS-Police leaders had to provide the necessary manpower and
material. They also needed help from the local population of non-Jews.
Although somewhat sketchy, there is some evidence of senior officials
pressuring subordinates to expand the massacres from male Jews to entire communities.
SS-Sturmbannführer Erwin Schulz, commander of a mobile killing unit
(Einsatzkommando 5, EK5) operating in Berdychiv and Vinnytsia, testified at
Nuremberg that in early August 1941 he was summoned to Zhytomyr. There, his
superior, Dr. Rasch, informed him that the higher-ups were displeased because the
SS-Police was not acting aggressively enough against the Jews. 14 It was in Zhytomyr,
a member of Sonderkommando 4a (SK4a) recalled after the war, that his commander
Paul Blobel announced for the first time that their aim was the total destruction of the
city’s Jewish population. 15 Although some individual SS-Police leaders had already
taken the initiative to kill women and children, from the Nazi leadership’s view such
sporadic massacres were not sufficient to totally “solve” the Jewish problem. When
Jeckeln met with Himmler on August 12, 1941, the former was also urged to act more
aggressively and to report daily about the killings. 16
As for the manpower and material needed to carry out such orders, between late
July and early September the Wehrmacht advance halted before Kiev, allowing for the
accumulation of thousands of SS, Order Police, and Army security personnel, many of
whom became involved with or witnessed the Holocaust. Shortly after Hitler appointed
Himmler the chief of all security and police matters in the Occupied Eastern Territories