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Situation
Report by the Commander of the Security Police and SD
for Lithuania for the Month of
July 1943
July
31, 1943
...Jews
In
the month under consideration enemy propaganda dealt with the
Jews to an increased degree. Rumors were spread in the various
ghettos that Grossaktionen would take place within a
short period in which not only children, old people and the
unfit would be shot by the Security Police, but all the
inmates of the ghettos without exception. It went so far that
Moscow radio named those responsible for carrying out the
alleged Aktionen, SS Standartenfuehrer Jaeger and SS
Obersturmfuehrer Neugebauer. As a result there was
something like panic in the various ghettos, particularly in
the Vilna Ghetto. In two peat-cutting camps near Vilna the
Jews tried to escape and to join a group of bandits.* In a
third peat camp an atonement measure** was carried out, and
the rest of the camp, together with the entire fourth Jewish
peat camp, were transferred to the Vilna Ghetto. This measure
became necessary because the Gebietskommissar for the
Vilna area was unable, despite repeated requests, to provide a
permanent, satisfactory guard. The Commander of the Security
Police and SD for Lithuania had agreed to the housing of the
Jews in four peat camps for the sake of the energy supply. In
addition to the four Jewish peat camps that have now been
dismantled there are still, outside the Vilna Ghetto, two
Jewish camps of the OT [Organization Todt], which must
complete the important connecting road between Vilna and Kovno
by September 1, 1943. As soon as this work is finished these
Jewish camps will also be dismantled and [the occupants] moved
to the central ghetto in Vilna.
The
exposed situation of the Vilna area, with respect to the
neighboring area of partisans and the activities of the PW,***
necessitates the withdrawal of the Jews from the Vilna area
and their continued placement in concentration camps
elsewhere. An incident that took place on July 25, 1943, near
Vilna demonstrates that such measures are essential: On this
day a group of about 30 Jews succeeded for the first time in
leaving the city and acquiring arms in order to join the
bandits. The group was stopped by a Commando of an
anti-Partisan unit of the German and Lithuanian Sipo (Security
Police) and the Lithuanian Order Police, and most of them were
shot....
YIVO
Archives, OccE3ba-96.
*
This was the word used by the Germans for partisans and armed
underground fighters.
**
Murder.
***
The reference is apparently to the Polnische
Widerstandsbewegung Polish Resistance Movement, units of
the AK which operated in the neighborhood of Vilna. |
