Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- List of tables
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Glossary
- Introduction
- 1 ‘I went to school with quite a number of Jewish co-religionists and never knew hatred for Jews’: childhood, youth and early adulthood, 1905–1932
- 2 ‘In terms of his character he is irreproachable in every respect’: Nazi Party membership and career in the SS Security Service, 1932–1939
- 3 ‘Pity that the scoundrel didn't perish’: brother's imprisonment and career stagnation, 1939–1941
- 4 ‘So, we've finished off the first Jews’: SS-Einsatzkommando 9 and deployment in the East, June–July 1941
- 5 ‘In Vileyka, the Jews had to be liquidated in their entirety’: genocide of Belarusian Jewry, July–October 1941
- 6 ‘Was it thinkable that I, a jurist and a soldier, would do such a thing?’: suspension from the Reich Security Main Office and reinstatement until the war's end, 1941–1945
- 7 ‘My son, who has not yet returned home from the war’: post-war submergence and reintegration into West German society, 1945–1959
- 8 ‘A trial of this magnitude has never previously taken place before a German court’: arrest and trial, February 1959–June 1962
- 9 ‘A limited, lower middle class, status-and-promotion seeking philistine’: imprisonment and early release, 1962–1975
- 10 ‘A chess game of egos’: Wundkanal and aftermath, 1975–1990
- Concluding thoughts
- Notes
- Sources and literature cited
- Index
5 - ‘In Vileyka, the Jews had to be liquidated in their entirety’: genocide of Belarusian Jewry, July–October 1941
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2016
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- List of tables
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Glossary
- Introduction
- 1 ‘I went to school with quite a number of Jewish co-religionists and never knew hatred for Jews’: childhood, youth and early adulthood, 1905–1932
- 2 ‘In terms of his character he is irreproachable in every respect’: Nazi Party membership and career in the SS Security Service, 1932–1939
- 3 ‘Pity that the scoundrel didn't perish’: brother's imprisonment and career stagnation, 1939–1941
- 4 ‘So, we've finished off the first Jews’: SS-Einsatzkommando 9 and deployment in the East, June–July 1941
- 5 ‘In Vileyka, the Jews had to be liquidated in their entirety’: genocide of Belarusian Jewry, July–October 1941
- 6 ‘Was it thinkable that I, a jurist and a soldier, would do such a thing?’: suspension from the Reich Security Main Office and reinstatement until the war's end, 1941–1945
- 7 ‘My son, who has not yet returned home from the war’: post-war submergence and reintegration into West German society, 1945–1959
- 8 ‘A trial of this magnitude has never previously taken place before a German court’: arrest and trial, February 1959–June 1962
- 9 ‘A limited, lower middle class, status-and-promotion seeking philistine’: imprisonment and early release, 1962–1975
- 10 ‘A chess game of egos’: Wundkanal and aftermath, 1975–1990
- Concluding thoughts
- Notes
- Sources and literature cited
- Index
Summary
Einsatzkommando 9 arrived no later than 25 July in the town of Vileyka, where it remained for several days. Up to this point, during the first five weeks of Germany's military campaign against the Soviet Union, EK 9 – like the other commandos of the four Einsatzgruppen – had targeted primarily Jewish men of military service age. This would change dramatically from Vileyka onwards. According to post-war testimony by Gerhard Schneider and Wilhelm Greiffenberger, it was here, on 29 July, that Filbert gave a talk to the officers of his commando, during which he explained that – on the orders of higher authorities – Jewish women and children were to be included in future shooting operations. The reason Filbert cited was that the unit's execution figures had been criticised as too low. Schneider testified after the war:
Coming from Vilnius, we had just arrived in Vileyka when Dr Filbert, returning from a meeting of commando heads at another location, called a meeting of the officers. One could sense that he was himself agitated, bitter and very serious. He informed us that he was returning from a meeting of commando heads, at which either Heydrich himself must have been present or new orders of Heydrich's were announced. In any case, he was given a dressing down. EK 9 had attracted the negative attention of Heydrich in particular because its activity in fulfilling the shooting order had been far too limited. Furthermore, as the inclusion of women and children in the shooting operations had been ordered, he could now simply no longer avoid mandating the intensified deployment of his commando. Pointing at me, he then ruled: ‘You assume command tomorrow.’ He likewise ordered one or two other officers to participate.
Greiffenberger's post-war testimony corroborated Schneider's statement regarding timing, context and nature of the new orders and the location of their communication to the commando:
We had been in Vileyka only a few days when Filbert held a staff meeting with a small group of officers. I believe that, aside from Filbert and me, Schneider and Klein were present at this meeting. During the course of this staff meeting, Filbert disclosed to us that he had received the order from a higher authority to shoot Jewish women and children as well in the future.
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- Information
- The Making of an SS KillerThe Life of Colonel Alfred Filbert, 1905–1990, pp. 57 - 77Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2016