Ordinary Men (10 page)
Authors: Christopher R. Browning
Some policemen who did not request to be released from the firing squads sought other ways to evade. Noncommissioned officers armed with submachine guns had to be assigned to give so-called mercy shots “because both from excitement
as well as intentionally
[italics mine]” individual policemen “shot past” their victims.
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Others had taken evasive action earlier. During the clearing operation some men of First Company hid in the Catholic priest’s garden until they grew afraid that their absence would be noticed. Returning to the marketplace, they jumped aboard a truck that was going to pick up Jews from a nearby village, in order to have an excuse for their absence.
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Others hung around the marketplace because they did not want to round up Jews during the search.
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Still others spent as much
time as possible searching the houses so as not to be present at the marketplace, where they feared being assigned to a firing squad.
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A driver assigned to take Jews to the forest made only one trip before he asked to be relieved. “Presumably his nerves were not strong enough to drive more Jews to the shooting site,” commented the man who took over his truck and his duties of chauffeuring Jews to their death.
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After the men of First Company departed for the woods, Second Company was left to complete the roundup and load Jews onto the trucks. When the first salvo was heard from the woods, a terrible cry swept the marketplace as the collected Jews realized their fate.
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Thereafter, however, a quiet composure—indeed, in the words of German witnesses, an “unbelievable” and “astonishing” composure—settled over the Jews.
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If the victims were composed, the German officers grew increasingly agitated as it became clear that the pace of the executions was much too slow if they were to finish the job in one day. “Comments were repeatedly made, such as, ‘It’s not getting anywhere!’ and ‘It’s not going fast enough!’ “
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Trapp reached a decision and gave new orders. Third Company was called in from its outposts around the village to take over close guard of the marketplace. The men of Lieutenant Gnade’s Second Company were informed that they too must now go to the woods to join the shooters. Sergeant Steinmetz of Third Platoon once again gave his men the opportunity to report if they did not feel up to it. No one took up his offer.
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Lieutenant Gnade divided his company into two groups assigned to different sections of the woods. He then visited Wohlauf s First Company to witness a demonstration of the executions.
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Meanwhile, Lieutenant Scheer and Sergeant Hergert* took the First Platoon of Second Company, along with some men of Third Platoon, to a certain point in the woods. Scheer divided his men into four groups, assigned them each a shooting area, and sent them back to fetch the Jews they were to kill. Lieutenant Gnade arrived and heatedly argued with Scheer that the men were not being sent deep enough into the woods.
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By the time each group had made two or three round trips to the collection point and carried out their executions, it was clear to Scheer that the process was too slow. He asked Hergert for advice. “I then made the proposal,” Hergert recalled, “that it would suffice if the Jews were brought from the collection point to the place of execution by only two men of each group, while the other shooters of the execution commando would already have moved to the next shooting site. Furthermore, this shooting site was moved somewhat forward from execution to execution and thus always got closer to the collection point on the forest path. We then proceeded accordingly.”
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Hergert’s suggestion speeded the killing process considerably.
In contrast to First Company, the men of Second Company received no instruction on how to carry out the shooting. Initially bayonets were not fixed as an aiming guide, and as Hergert noted, there was a “considerable number of missed shots” that “led to the unnecessary wounding of the victims.” One of the policemen in Hergert’s unit likewise noted the difficulty the men had in aiming properly. “At first we shot freehand. When one aimed too high, the entire skull exploded. As a consequence, brains and bones flew everywhere. Thus, we were instructed to place the bayonet point on the neck. “
49
According to Hergert, however, using fixed bayonets as an aiming guide was no solution. “Through the point-blank shot that was thus required, the bullet struck the head of the victim at such a trajectory that often the entire skull or at least the entire rear skullcap was torn off, and blood, bone splinters, and brains sprayed everywhere and besmirched the shooters.”
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Hergert was emphatic that no one in First Platoon was given the option of withdrawing beforehand. But once the executions began and men approached either him or Scheer because they could not shoot women and children, they were given other duties.
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This was confirmed by one of his men. “During the execution word spread that anyone who could not take it any longer could report.” He went on to note, “I myself took part in some ten shootings, in which I had to shoot men and women. I
simply could not shoot at people anymore, which became apparent to my sergeant, Hergert, because at the end I repeatedly shot past. For this reason he relieved me. Other comrades were also relieved sooner or later, because they simply could no longer continue.”
52
Lieutenant Drucker s Second Platoon and the bulk of Sergeant Steinmetz s Third Platoon were assigned to yet another part of the forest. Like Scheer’s men, they were divided into small groups of five to eight each rather than large groups of thirty-five to forty as in Wohlauf’s First Company. The men were told to place the end of their carbines on the cervical vertebrae at the base of the neck, but here too the shooting was done initially without fixed bayonets as a guide.
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The results were horrifying. “The shooters were gruesomely besmirched with blood, brains, and bone splinters. It hung on their clothing.”
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When dividing his men into small groups of shooters, Drucker had kept about a third of them in reserve. Ultimately, everyone was to shoot, but the idea was to allow frequent relief and “cigarette breaks.”
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With the constant coming and going from the trucks, the wild terrain, and the frequent rotation, the men did not remain in fixed groups.
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The confusion created the opportunity for work slowdown and evasion. Some men who hurried at their task shot far more Jews than others who delayed as much as they could.
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After two rounds one policeman simply “slipped off” and stayed among the trucks on the edge of the forest.
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Another managed to avoid taking his turn with the shooters altogether.
It was in no way the case that those who did not want to or could not carry out the shooting of human beings with their own hands could not keep themselves out of this task. No strict control was being carried out here. I therefore remained by the arriving trucks and kept myself busy at the arrival point. In any case I gave my activity such an appearance. It could not be avoided that one or another of my comrades noticed that I was not going to the executions to fire away at
the victims. They showered me with remarks such as “shit-head” and “weakling” to express their disgust. But I suffered no consequences for my actions. I must mention here that I was not the only one who kept himself out of participating in the executions.
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By far the largest number of shooters at Józefów who were interrogated after the war came from the Third Platoon of Second Company. It is from them that we can perhaps get the best impression of the effect of the executions on the men and the dropout rate among them during the course of the action.
Hans Dettelmann,* a forty-year-old barber, was assigned by Drucker to a firing squad. “It was still not possible for me to shoot the first victim at the first execution, and I wandered off and asked … Lieutenant Drucker to be relieved.” Dettelmann told his lieutenant that he had a “very weak nature,” and Drucker let him go.
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Walter Niehaus,* a former Reemtsma cigarette sales representative, was paired with an elderly woman for the first round. “After I had shot the elderly woman, I went to Toni [Anton] Bentheim* [his sergeant] and told him that I was not able to carry out further executions. I did not have to participate in the shooting anymore…. my nerves were totally finished from this one shooting.”
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For his first victim August Zorn* was given a very old man. Zorn recalled that his elderly victim
could not or would not keep up with his countrymen, because he repeatedly fell and then simply lay there. I regularly had to lift him up and drag him forward. Thus, I only reached the execution site when my comrades had already shot their Jews. At the sight of his countrymen who had been shot, my Jew threw himself on the ground and remained lying there. I then cocked my carbine and shot him through the back of the head. Because I was already very upset from the cruel treatment of the Jews during the clearing of the town and was completely
in turmoil, I shot too high. The entire back of the skull of my Jew was torn off and the brain exposed. Parts of the skull flew into Sergeant Steinmetz’s face. This was grounds for me, after returning to the truck, to go to the first sergeant and ask for my release. I had become so sick that I simply couldn’t anymore. I was then relieved by the first sergeant.
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Georg Kageler,* a thirty-seven-year-old tailor, made it through the first round before encountering difficulty. “After I had carried out the first shooting and at the unloading point was allotted a mother with daughter as victims for the next shooting, I began a conversation with them and learned that they were Germans from Kassel, and I took the decision not to participate further in the executions. The entire business was now so repugnant to me that I returned to my platoon leader and told him that I was still sick and asked for my release.” Kageler was sent to guard the marketplace.
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Neither his pre-execution conversation with his victim nor his discovery that there were German Jews in Józefów was unique. Schimke, the man who had first stepped out, encountered a Jew from Hamburg in the marketplace, as did a second policeman.
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Yet another policeman remembered that the first Jew he shot was a decorated World War I veteran from Bremen who begged in vain for mercy.
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Franz Kastenbaum,* who during his official interrogation had denied remembering anything about the killing of Jews in Poland, suddenly appeared uninvited at the office of the Hamburg state prosecutor investigating Reserve Police Battalion 101. He told how he had been a member of a firing squad of seven or eight men that had taken its victims into the woods and shot them in the neck at point-blank range. This procedure had been repeated until the fourth victim.
The shooting of the men was so repugnant to me that I missed the fourth man. It was simply no longer possible for me to aim accurately. I suddenly felt nauseous and ran away from the
shooting site. I have expressed myself incorrectly just now. It was not that I could no longer aim accurately, rather that the fourth time I intentionally missed. I then ran into the woods, vomited, and sat down against a tree. To make sure that no one was nearby, I called loudly into the woods, because I wanted to be alone. Today I can say that my nerves were totally finished. I think that I remained alone in the woods for some two to three hours.
Kastenbaum then returned to the edge of the woods and rode an empty truck back to the marketplace. He suffered no consequences; his absence had gone unnoticed because the firing squads had been all mixed up and randomly assigned. He had come to make this statement, he explained to the investigating attorney, because he had had no peace since attempting to conceal the shooting action.
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Most of those who found the shooting impossible to bear quit very early.
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But not always. The men in one squad had already shot ten to twenty Jews each when they finally asked to be relieved. As one of them explained, “I especially asked to be relieved because the man next to me shot so impossibly. Apparently he always aimed his gun too high, producing terrible wounds in his victims. In many cases the entire backs of victims’ heads were torn off, so that the brains sprayed all over. I simply couldn’t watch it any longer.
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At the unloading point, Sergeant Bentheim watched men emerge from the woods covered with blood and brains, morale shaken and nerves finished. Those who asked to be relieved he advised to “slink away” to the marketplace.
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As a result, the number of policemen gathered on the marketplace grew constantly.
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As with First Company, alcohol was made available to the policemen under Drucker and Steinmetz who stayed in the forest and continued shooting.
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As darkness approached at the end of a long summer day and the murderous task was still not finished, the shooting became even less organized and more hectic.
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The forest was so full of dead bodies that it was difficult to find places
to make the Jews lie down.
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When darkness finally fell about 9:00 p.m.—some seventeen hours after Reserve Police Battalion 101 had first arrived on the outskirts of Józefów—and the last Jews had been killed, the men returned to the marketplace and prepared to depart for Biłgoraj.
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No plans had been made for the burial of the bodies, and the dead Jews were simply left lying in the woods. Neither clothing nor valuables had been officially collected, though at least some of the policemen had enriched themselves with watches, jewelry, and money taken from the victims.
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The pile of luggage the Jews had been forced to leave at the marketplace was simply burned.
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Before the policemen climbed into their trucks and left Józefów, a ten-year-old girl appeared, bleeding from the head. She was brought to Trapp, who took her in his arms and said, “You shall remain alive.”
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