Birds of Prey

III. The Green in the ascendancy

From his mobile headquarters, Göring ordered his train to be stabled in a forest siding in Johannisburger Heide and convened a conference. On or around 1 July 1941 the hunt leadership of Göring as Jagdherr (master of the hunt), his hunt deputy Oberjägermeister Ulrich Scherping, Landjägermeister Friedrich Ostermann (senior hunt official of East Prussia) and Oberforstmeister Walter Frevert the chief game warden of Rominten Heide (and recently artillery captain) discussed the future of Białowieźa under Nazi rule. The priority was to incorporate an extended eastern frontier into Göring’s nation-building mission of the Greater German Reich. The second point was how the forest and associated economies, communities and wild game could be brought under a forestry and hunting administration. What was said and decided in the meeting is unknown, but in December 1941 Scherping published an article about Urwald Bialowies. The contents of the article are the only detailed account of the forest under the German administration during the first stage of occupation.41

Some months before Barbarossa, it is believed Göring requested the files on Białowieźa, but there is no explanation of why.42 This could have been related to the economic planning behind Barbarossa or the proceedings of Wirtschaftsstab Ost (economic staff east). Generalforstmeister Friedrich Alpers ((1901–1944), chief of the RFA, was Göring’s representative in the preparations behind the infamous hunger plan, as reported on 23 May 1941: ‘The population of this area [the forest regions] especially the urban population, will inevitably face a great famine … Many tens of millions of people will be superfluous in this area and will die or have to emigrate to Siberia.’43 On behalf of Göring’s conference, Frevert was recalled from duty with the 1st Cavalry Division and returned via Białowieźa. He reported that Białowieźa had suffered damage, but the former Tsarist’s palace, the bison compound, and the forest industries were still functional. Göring decided Scherping with the others should travel to Białowieźa and conduct a survey of the forest. The Scherping party set off in a military staff car, on 5 July, armed with machine pistols and their hunting rifles. The party included a driver and ‘R’, or Richter an ethnic German gamekeeper, according to Heinrich Rubner.44 Scherping and Richter had known each other from hunting in Białowieźa before 1939. He had escaped Soviet captivity in Bialystok and taken employment as an overseer of a mill in the Warthegau (western Poland). Richter had intimate knowledge of Białowieźa, the inhabitants, and was fluent in Russian (Belorussian dialect) and Polish which made him indispensable. The journey took them on a route, Lomza, Bielsk, Hajnówka and Białowieźa. The party travelled roads littered with the detritus of war; crosses of German dead lined the roadside, with destroyed vehicles, and abandoned Russian artillery. The party arrived in Hajnówka at dusk and were greeted by German troops. They continued to the town of Białowieźa. The 78th Infantry Division headquarters staff were stationed in the former palace and welcomed Scherping’s party.45

Scherping’s article then described his horror at the racial degeneration destroying Białowieźa. He accused every village or settlement of scaping away at the forest through their subsistence lifestyles. The settlement had caused damage before the war and he noted, ‘The forest people were already fully occupied with their usual work and the clean-up of war damage.’ The party counted more than a hundred villages and settlements. Many settlements were on the land of poor soil which forced villagers, ‘to plunder the forest for their livelihood. They didn’t care whether it was right or wrong to steal wood from a state reservation.’ Scherping described how villager’s, when they required space, cleared an area of forest and when they need food, set traps and shot game. A major concern was how domestic animals were allowed to roam the forest, they caused extensive damage to nursery trees, and destroyed natural rejuvenation. Scherping judged the ‘forest people’ brought no added value, and ‘the inhabitants breed like rabbits’.46

Scherping’s racial profiling was scathing about the Poles and Russians, calling them all thieves. The small settlements were known to be disrespectful toward the property of the state. Scherping believed the inhabitants were notorious criminals, all murderers, bandit leaders and poachers. Ironically, he contrasted: ‘the living area of the criminal had become too small beside the living area of the game’. This was Nazi rhetoric for isolating anti-social elements. The evidence came from routine searches of the settlements where the ‘criminals’, mostly professional poachers resided. During the searches, the party received oral evidence from unnamed locals, who expressed deep loathing for the Jews and Soviet commissars. Scherping levelled his venom against the Jews and Bolsheviks. ‘The Jews, if not employed in workgroups doing something useful, gather in crowds in the towns.’ Białowieźa, Narewka Mala and Narew were identified as centres of ‘the worst and lowest kinds of Jews.’ Scherping vilified them as vermin: ‘Their looks and filth can only be compared with rats.’ This racist polemic was intended to stir up tension among the Wild und Hund readership:

The Bolshevist in his childish naivety about matters of human existence is the most devious and most vulgar criminal. It was simply unimaginable what the Bolshevist system, the devil’s own invention, has done to the Russian people over a quarter of a century. Jews and commissars, usually one of the same, have initiated Zersetzung (subversion) and have resisted any sense of order in Białowieźa.47

This narrative reinforced why it was critical to remove the Jews and Communists: ‘so long as they lived in the villages and settlements, they were the cause of passive resistance, strikes, acts of sabotage, and other problems.’ Once the ‘subversive elements’ were removed, Scherping promised normality would return to the forest. He claimed the Germans received ‘sufficient assistance’ from ‘orderly locals’ to combat subversives and removing Jews. He discussed the severity of fighting and the Red Army had not buried their dead and they ‘littered the forest’. The stench of death, especially in the heat and humidity of summer, was overwhelming. The Jews were forced to work on the clean-up, ‘it took us weeks, together with the Semitic inhabitants of the forest, to restore order and fresh air again.’ Scherping led his readers into the vilification of the Jews but did not inform them of the killings.

Accounts of the mass killings, during July–August 1941, come from multiple sources. After the 78th Infantry Division moved out, responsibility for the area passed to the 221st Security Division stationed in Bialystok. On 6 July the division initiated security operations in the Bialystok and Białowieźa area. The mission was ‘to secure two major highways and to pacify the area of Bialystok and Białowieźa forest so that Reich Marshal Göring could convert the forest into a game park’.48 On 8 July, the diary of the 221st Security Division noted that mopping operations in Białowieźa were increasingly hazardous because the local Jews supported the partisan bands.49 On the same day Major Karl Haupt, the division’s operations officer, ordered: ‘The immediate and complete evacuation of all male Jews from the villages north of Białowieźa has therefore been ordered.’50 There is evidence that locals denounced Red Army stragglers and Soviet functionaries in hiding. Another report noted how the Division made Jews ‘toil in the mid-summer heat improving roads.’51 In his diary for the 14 July, SS-Gruppenführer Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski recorded discussions with General Max von Schenckendorff and confirmed receipt of ‘Generalforstmeisters’ Göring’s’ order to clear the forest. The contents of Göring’s order remain unknown. Bach-Zelewski lampooned Göring as a mere forestry general, but he might have confused him with Alpers. Then on 30 July, Bach-Zelewski received a Fieseler Storch reconnaissance aeroplane from Göring’s Luftwaffe. This kind of benefit was granted to few army commanders and reflected the importance Göring and the Nazi leadership placed in Bach-Zelewski’s mission.52

Bach-Zelewski’s diary also noted his primary responsibility was securing Rollbahn I. The Rollbahnen were improvised strategic roads that the German Army depended upon for their logistics.53 Rollbahn I was the major supply and lines of communication highway for Army Group Centre. The route of Rollbahn I eastwards followed in an arc through Brest-Kobrin-Bereza-Baranowicze-Minsk-Orsa-Smolensk. Feeder roads, running along a north/south axis, which connected to the east-west central highway. A typical feeder was the Bialystok-Hajnówka-Białowieźa-Prużany road that connected with Rollbahn 1 at Bereza. The road opened between Pruzhany and Białowieźa in 190354 and continued north to Bialystok and Königsberg. This became the main highway for the Nazi administration connecting East Prussia with Ukraine.55 Bach-Zelewski began resettlement actions against the forest communities in the vicinity of the transport system. He followed military occupation regulations: villages close to railways were routinely placed under martial law or even cleared. A second road, south-east from Bialystok, skirted the northern and eastern edge of the forest in parallel with the railway line to Baranowicze. The Imperial Russian railways constructed the Brest-Moscow line in 1861 as part of the main Moscow-Warsaw railway line. Both railway depots, in Hajnówka and Narewka Mala, became essential to the strategic railway network installations in the Białowieźa area. These networks were the core of the Wehrmacht’s strategic transportation system, and Białowieźa was a central hub for the military operations. The geopolitical-environmental duality of Białowieźa, under Nazi occupation, later caused turf wars and rivalries.

The SS-Police documentation detailed the next stage in the occupation. Several police battalions had piggybacked on the 221st Security Division as it arrived in Bialystok. Their job was to initiate SS-Police actions, in the wake of the Wehrmacht, and as a precursor to turning over the area to the civil administration.56 Police Battalion (PB) 309 raised in Cologne in September 1940 was assigned to follow the 221st Security Division into Bialystok.57 The city was barely under German occupation on 27 June when PB 309 became embroiled in an alcohol induced killing spree. Upwards of 3,000 Jews (men, women and children) were slaughtered in extreme acts of savagery, culminating with hundreds of Jews being locked in the Great Synagogue and burned alive.58 On 3 July, PB 309 were ordered to collect, and stockpile captured Russian weapons in the Stoczek and Białowieźa areas. The following day it led 150 Jews on a work detail to clean up the Pruzhany road and was also involved in a cleansing action in the Chwojnik area. According to Peter Longerich, on 8 July Himmler ordered his SS-Police troops to treat every Jew as a partisan. Then on 11 July, the senior police formation in the sector (Polizeiregiments Mitte) issued a general order to its three PBs (307th, 316th and 322nd) to shoot all Jewish males aged 17–45 under arrest for looting.59 The arrival of Police Bicycle Battalion 322 initiated a change of modus operandi. This battalion was mustered in Vienna in April 1941, served in Warsaw, and was ordered east cycling ninety-four kilometres on paved roads. Over the period 10–14 July, the war diary recorded killing seventy-one Jews and two Red Army PoW’s. This battalion briefly served as guard of Dulag 185 (prison camp) and shot five Jews ‘while trying to escape’. Then it participated in searches of Bialystok’s Jewish quarter. From 19–21 July, the PB 322 transferred to Bereza on Rollbahn I for transport security duties.

On 23 July 1941, Polizeiregiments Mitte issued further instructions about the forest’s inhabitants. The order explained that all locals (excluding Jews) were friendly and should be treated correctly. The locals had been ‘patient’ during searches and had remained ‘nice’ even when contraband was removed from their homes. Many locals accepted paid work for the Germans. The instructions were followed by an order from OKW, recorded in PB 322’s war diary, regarding the burial of the Russian dead.60 The burial process did not allow priests or any religious service and denied any salutes or decorations. This was justified on the grounds of Soviet war crimes, the order alleged they had used illegal ‘dum-dum’ bullets. The police diary referred to difficult internal issues, including signals problems and insufficient sanitary facilities for the ninth company. They were not allocated showers until they arrived in Baranowicze (Baranovichi: Belarus). GIS Map 4 illustrates the area of deportations in the northwest corner of the forest. This area contained the highest concentration of Jews in the forest and in particular the town of Narewka Mala.

GIS Map 4: Police Battalion 322—the village deportations 25 July–15 August 1941

The map was generated from the diary in PB 322’s war diary. The layers were drawn from specific locations in the diary, as well as Scherping’s article and Bech-Zelewski’s diary. The concentrations reflected the area covered by Scherping’s party.

Deportations from Białowieźa started on 25 July 1941 (GIS Map 4). Bach-Zelewski issued a proclamation, posted in each town centre for persons bound for deportation. Every inhabitant brought their property on carts; they had two hours to pack; there was a warning if the people returned, they would face capital punishment; they had to leave behind all tools, and cattle.61 PB 322 began deporting people from villages from ten kilometres northwest of Białowieźa town (see map 4). The police used twenty-four trucks to deport 921 persons (103 families) and transported them to villages eleven kilometres beyond the forest border. Nothing is known about how these people were received, housed or integrated into these villages. The next day 200 families (1,210 people) were deported from villages fifteen kilometres northeast of Białowieźa. They were transported forty-five kilometres northeast to Laski (a common village name in that region). During the process, they shot a communist and a ‘Jew for plunder’. On 27 July the police burned down the empty villages. The following day they deported 160 families (945 persons) from villages twenty kilometres northeast of Białowieźa. On 29 July they deported a hundred families (570 persons) from villages also twenty kilometres northeast of Białowieźa. They transported the people to the Porosow area. The next day they deported 1,135 persons (320 families) from villages eighteen kilometres north of Białowieźa to Sabludow about fifty kilometres to the northwest.62

A report from the third company’s diary (PB 322) described how the deportations were conducted, and official photographers were on hand to record the process (note the illustrations). The company removed people from Zabrody, using twenty-eight horse-drawn carts to convey fifteen families, a total of a hundred people. They also carried people from Lesna, with sixty-six horse-drawn carts conveying thirty families, a total of 180 persons. The diary recorded four families of twenty-eight persons had departed the day before, indicating the police were not restricting all movements to set schedules. The police report explained their lorries were being maintained and could not be used. The carts were loaded with pregnant and old women, old men and children. They took along seventy-two cattle but handed over twenty-three cows, forty-four calves and forty-four horses to the Germans. The people were warned if they returned, they would face a death sentence. The carts were formed into a column and led away with the last gone by 10.30 am. The company commander reported the shooting of two communists. The company remained in Lesna overnight before moving on. They deported 1,619 persons from twelve villages in the Narewka Mala area on 31 July. The deportees were taken fifty kilometres beyond forest borders. The total deportations for the period 24–31 July was 6,446 persons and thirty-four villages destroyed.63

In Berlin in the early evening of 31 July 1941, Reinhard Heydrich (Himmler’s deputy) presented Göring with a letter for official signature. The appointment in Göring’s diary was marked with “Heydrich” 18.15–19.15hrs, and the letter stated:

To supplement the task that was assigned to you on 24 January 1939, which dealt with the solution of the Jewish problem by emigration and evacuation in the most suitable way. I hereby charge you with making all necessary preparations with regard to organisational, technical and material matters for bringing about a complete solution of the Jewish question within the German sphere of influence in Europe. Wherever other governmental agencies are involved, these are to cooperate with you. I request you further to send me, in the near future, an overall plan covering the organisational, technical and material measures necessary for the accomplishment of the final solution of the Jewish question which we desire.64

The letter was Göring’s direct culpability to the Holocaust. Many Holocaust scholars regard this as the key document that led to the ‘final solution’ of the extermination of European Jewry. In his masterwork, Raul Hilberg explained that the letter granted Heydrich a ‘mandate’ for the extermination process.65 Adolf Eichmann’s prison confession included a reference to the paragraphs he drafted that Göring signed.66 Peter Longerich in The Unwritten Order (2002) reduced the letter’s importance and linked it to a more important draft from March 1941. In that version, Göring requested an amendment to include the territories planned to fall under Alfred Rosenberg’s civilian administration of Soviet Russia and Ukraine. In a subsequent study, Longerich explained that Göring’s amendment included Rosenberg’s territory indicating the ‘final solution’ was planned for the east.67 In Saul Friedländer’s opinion, the letter sealed Himmler and Heydrich’s authority over the Jewish question.68 Mark Roseman connected the letter to an earlier order by Göring to Heydrich to form the Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration in 1939. The 1941 letter was an extension of the mandate leading to the infamous Wannsee Conference.69 Christopher Browning initially agreed with Longerich over the March 1941 draft which Göring agreed in principle, but then required the amendment.70 Browning later argued that the final document was the go-ahead to prepare a ‘feasibility study’ for mass extermination. He added that Heydrich required the document because ‘he now faced a new and awesome task that would dwarf even the systematic murder program emerging on Soviet territory.’71 Another explanation was how the letter granted official approval, even in the illogical polycracy of the Third Reich. On 10 February 1941, Göring became vice-chancellor of Germany, or deputy Führer, and in that capacity, his signature represented the state approval for Himmler and Heydrich to proceed.

Probably coincidental to the Göring-Heydrich letter, but the next day (1 August) Scherping met with Bach-Zelewski in Białowieźa—a critical meeting of perpetrators. The only record of the meeting is a PB 322 war diary entry. The detail confirmed the meeting, in Białowieźa, and the agreement to shoot seventy-two locals. We can assume with certainty that this killing action signified the Scherping’s party pivotal role in the police killing actions, because they knew the locations of the Jews and Communists. From Bach-Zelewski’s perspective, his war diary is highly reliable on his military activities, but woefully unreliable regarding the Holocaust. His diary has no reference to the meeting on 1 August, but there are indications of his presence in a busy travel schedule (see table 1). The Fiesler Storch enabled Bach-Zelewski to keep constant track of the killing process. It also meant he could coordinate the assault against the Jews across the entire rear area of Army Group C. Apart from Minsk and Mogilev, his two visits of Białowieźa were significant markers in the killing period. The schedule highlights his centrality to the killing process and the importance Białowieźa.

Table 1: Bach-Zelewski’s travel itinerary

PB 322’s war diary and supplementary correspondence recorded a period of sustained killings. On 2 August, seventy-two people (including five Jews and six women) were rounded up and shot. They also included nineteen persons having been arrested for participating in an illegal labour action in a factory in Hajnówka.72 Among the diary’s papers, there is a ‘daily report’ that temized third company from the assembly at 3.00 am in Białowieźa to the ‘blitz’ hunt for communists forty minutes later. They searched houses, arrested people, and took prisoners to a collection camp under the command of Order Police Lieutenant Giebner, who was part of the local garrison. The company arrested four Poles, eleven Byelorussian men, three Byelorussian females, six male Jews and a Jewish woman. They were searched and the Jews were accused of holding occupation money vouchers, which the Germans confiscated. The second company, from the PB 322, rounded up more prisoners. The Germans shot all of them and the final report confirmed no one had tried to escape.73 Writing later, Kossak claimed Scherping had handed a letter to the SS identifying the persons he wanted to be arrested and shot, but this may be based on rumour.74 Interestingly, on 3 August the commander of PB 322, recorded receipt of correspondence from Scherping which was passed on to Polizei-Regiment Mitte that confirming actions taken but there is no known copy of the letter.75

The remaining companies PB 322 departed from Bezirk Bialystok, on 4 August, but the third rifle company remained behind in Białowieźa. The company wholly relied on Scherping and Frevert to complete the mission. On 4 August, the third company executed those persons arrested on 2 August. The company then literally worked through the Bodbiala area killing fifty-one men and three women. On 8 August they shot another nineteen people. All male Jews, aged 16–45, were rounded up on 9 August, and the next day seventy-seven persons were killed in Białowieźa prison camp (location unknown). Some photographic evidence indicates the police adopted the ‘sardine packing’ killing method. The victims were made to lay face down in a long ditch as the police fired a single shot to the back of their necks. The next group of victims were made to lie on the dead bodies and were then shot. This continued until all were dead. There were several shootings on 11 August, including a Jewish man and two ‘Belorussian plunderers’. Third company and army troops were ordered to participate in a fruitless action to hunt for ‘bandits’ on 14 August. The order came from Kreiskomman­dantur Pruzhany (district level garrison) and took place east of Białowieźa near Suchopol. A daily report excused their failure for starting too late, and then the police regiment commander ordered it halted.76 On 14 August 1941, Göring was overheard saying there would be a great loss of life through a lack of nutrition in the east and added, ‘the Jews in the territories dominated by Germany had nothing more to seek.’77

Goring’s timing preceded events in Białowieźa by just twenty hours. The third company conducted a Judenaktion (Jew action) in Narewka Mala, on 15 August. They corralled 282 Jewish males (aged 16 to 65) and a Pole. Their families (259 women and 162 children) were immediately taken to a holding facility in Kobryn (Belarus) about 90 kilometres away. The men were forced to walk 2 kilometres through the high street, a public display of degradation, and led to a remote place beside a railway line. They crossed the line and made to dig ditches in the axis of a second branch line were shot. There are no precise details of the killings, but the task was completed by the end of the day. Christopher Browning described the scenes of a police company conducting a mass shooting. The process included the identification of a remote site, digging mass grave pits in advance, bringing the Jews to the place of execution, and forcing them to disrobe. Browning noted there was the consumption of alcohol by the troops, with as many as twenty per cent trying to avoid the shooting by doing ‘other’ duties. The NCOs walked around selecting firing squads of eight to ten men. Small groups of Jews were then made to run through a police cordon of about thirty metres to the pits where they were lined up and shot. The rotation between firing squads was kept to five or six shots per man. Based upon Browning’s findings the shootings were normally completed in three hours.78 After the killings, the police held a convivial campfire party with beer and beef on the roast.79 On 18 August, the third company conducted a ‘communist hunt’ and accounted for twenty-six shot dead.80 The last daily report by the third company was issued on 19 August when they departed from their strongpoints in Olschewka, Skubewo, Masiewo I and Chichowola handing over duties to the second company of PB 323.81 Today the site of the Narewka Mala killings is remote but there is a monument above the mass grave, incorrectly dated 5 August 1941, and the area has been largely planted over with pine trees. The destruction of the Jewish community marked the end of a two-hundred-year Białowieźa history.