Frank Buscher's Holocaust Paper

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Investigating Nazi Crimes in Byelorussia:
Challenges and Lessons
by
Frank Buscher

Since May 1992 I have worked as a historian for the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Section of Canada's Department of Justice. Like my colleague Howard Margolian, I have been in the fortunate position to research the Holocaust and other Ger man crimes as a historian and as a member of an official war crimes investigations team. One of the first lessons I learned was that, while there are many similarities, considerable differences exist between the two occupations. Prosecutors and courts a re not interested in historiographical schools and erudite speculation; they want the facts of a case. After a few weeks at the Section, I began to write like a policeman or a prosecutor, dealing exclusively with what could be proven on the basis of witn ess testimony and documentary evidence and paying attention to the minutest detail rather than speculating what might have been and identifying historical trends. To be sure, like the other historians, I have continued to write more traditional research papers. However, these have been written as historical background reports for the Section's attorneys and always with a view toward obtaining convictions or denaturalizations instead of making contributions to the body of academic knowledge.

It is now almost 51 years after the end of the Second World War. It is safe to say that the era of war crimes investigations spawned by this conflict is nearing its end. At this time, Australia has already closed its Special Investigations Unit. Its Canadian, U.S. and German counterparts are still operating, although they will undoubtedly close their doors within the next few years. British authorities recently filed suit against Serafimovich, the chief of a Byelorussian indigenous police unit. His case may well be the last western war crimes trial. Therefore, this conference offers us an opportunity to take stock of what has been learned during the past five decades and to discuss what remains to be discovered. The territory for which I hav e been responsible as a war crimes researcher is Byelorussia and I would like to use this territory as the basis for my paper. Consequently, I think it would be best if I provided you first with some general information about Byelorussia under Nazi occup ation and the crimes committed by the occupiers and their indigenous helpers.

Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, without warning or justification, along a front stretching in excess of 1,000 miles. The German attack - code-named Operation "Barbarossa" - was carried out by three Army Groups: North, Cente r and South. Based on the premise that Germany's forces would inflict a crushing defeat on the Soviet Red Army by the fall, the plans called for Army Group Center to take Byelorussia and its capital Minsk on the way to the final conquest of Smolensk and Moscow. Successfully employing blitzkrieg tactics, German tank and motorized armored divisions did in fact inflict humiliating defeats on the enemy and conquer vast amounts of Byelorussian territory within a matter of days. Minsk fell to the invaders as early as the end of June and by mid-July almost the entire Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic was under German control. (1)

Administratively, the territory of Byelorussia, which the Germans called "Weißruthenien (White Ruthenia)," was divided into two main areas for most of the German occupation. (2) Roughly the eastern third co mprised the rear area of Army Group Center and was administered by the military. The western two-thirds was put under civilian administration by the Reichs Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (RmfdbO) in September 1941 and named the Generalkommissariat Weißruthenien. The dividing line between civil and military administration ran north to south approximately 50 km east of Minsk, roughly from Disna to Borisov to Petrikov. Expecting that the front would continue to move eastward, civilian officials believed that they would soon take over the eastern districts from the military as well. However, military reality, i.e. the failure of the German forces to advance farther to the East for any extended period of time, prevent ed the Generalkommissariat's take-over of Byelorussia in its entirety and thus the eastern third remained in Army Group Center's rear area. In this manner, Byelorussia endured three years - from June 1941 until August 1944 - of Na zi occupation.

Byelorussia's Jewish population numbered almost 1.1 million on the eve of the German invasion. In fact, many of Byelorussia's largest cities - Minsk, Vitebsk, Mogilev, Gomel, Bobruisk, Orsha - had Jewish majorities. The invading Germans began the murder of Byelorussian Jews soon after their arrival. Jews who were not killed during the initial operations were forced to move into ghettos. These ghettos were systematically liquidated from the fall of 1941 to the fall of 1943. German authorities a lso accused the Jews of being the driving force behind the Soviet partisan movement, whose members began to operate in growing numbers behind German lines in the spring of 1942. For example, Wilhelm Kube, the Commissar General for White Ruthenia, equated Jews with partisans in the same report in which he proudly told his superiors about the murder of 55,000 Byelorussian Jews during a ten-week period in the spring and summer of 1942. (3)

Most Nazi crimes in Byelorussia, particularly the murder of Byelorussian Jewry, were committed by mobile forces. Units belonging to two of Heydrich's Einsatzgruppen - A and B - were operating in Byelorussia. They received assistance from regular German police battalions and Waffen-SS units. To be sure, some of the Einsatzgruppen headquarters became stationary at the end of 1941 for the purpose of establishing an SS/police structure in the occupied Soviet Union. Yet, the occupiers' killing opera tions never really lost their mobile character throughout the occupation owing to the expanse of the areas to which these forces were assigned. After the war, members of the Einsatzgruppen were the subjects of several trials, most notably that of Otto Oh lendorf and 20 other officers before a U.S. military tribunal from July 1947 to April 1948. (4) Beginning in 1950 West German courts also tried Einsatzgruppen men. (5) In addit ion to the courts, historians also began to investigate the Einsatzgruppen and publish their findings. (6)

While the history of the Einsatzgruppen is by now well-documented, the same cannot be said for most of the indigenous units who assisted the Germans in the murder of Soviet Jews and gentiles. Some - like the Arjas Commando, the Kaminsky Brigade an d the SS unit "Druzhina" - have attained great notoriety. However, historians have paid little attention to the large numbers of lesser-known indigenous "security" forces without which the Germans would have encountered greater difficulty in liquidating entire ghettos and staging massive murder and pillage operations disguised as anti-partisan actions. The Germans established two types of local units: the Schutzmannschaft and the Ordnungsdienst. The forme r generally operated in areas under civilian administration and fell within the SS/police command structure; the latter was established in army and army group rear areas and placed under the authority of local and district military commanders. Historians have only recently begun to study the Schutzmannschaften and the Ordnungsdienst. (7)