BooksBarbecue
Back The One from the Other
Chapters (50)
  1. Praise
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Dedication
  5. Epigraph
  6. ONE
  7. TWO
  8. THREE
  9. FOUR
  10. FIVE
  11. SIX
  12. SEVEN
  13. EIGHT
  14. NINE
  15. TEN
  16. ELEVEN
  17. TWELVE
  18. THIRTEEN
  19. FOURTEEN
  20. FIFTEEN
  21. SIXTEEN
  22. SEVENTEEN
  23. EIGHTEEN
  24. NINETEEN
  25. TWENTY
  26. TWENTY-ONE
  27. TWENTY-TWO
  28. TWENTY-THREE
  29. TWENTY-FOUR
  30. TWENTY-FIVE
  31. TWENTY-SIX
  32. TWENTY-SEVEN
  33. TWENTY-EIGHT
  34. TWENTY-NINE
  35. THIRTY
  36. THIRTY-ONE
  37. THIRTY-TWO
  38. THIRTY-THREE
  39. THIRTY-FOUR
  40. THIRTY-FIVE
  41. THIRTY-SIX
  42. THIRTY-SEVEN
  43. THIRTY-EIGHT
  44. THIRTY-NINE
  45. FORTY
  46. FORTY-ONE
  47. FORTY-TWO
  48. EPILOGUE
  49. AUTHOR’S NOTE
  50. Teaser chapter

I had joined the 316th Battalion straight from Berlin, at a place called Zamosc, in Poland. Prior to this, the 316th and the 322nd, with whom we operated, had been in Kraków. At that time, so far as I was aware, no mass murders had been carried out by either of these two police battalions. I knew that many of my colleagues were anti-Semitic, but just as many were not, and I didn’t see any of this as a problem until we got to Minsk, where I made my report. I also handed over the two dozen sets of identification papers we had confiscated before executing their murderous bearers. It was July 7.

My superior, an SS colonel called Mundt, congratulated me on our successful action while at the same time issuing a reprimand for not bringing back the two women so they could be hanged. It seemed Berlin had issued a new order: all NKVD women and female partisans were to be hanged, in public, as an example to the population of Minsk.

Mundt spoke better Russian than I did at the time, and he could also read the language. Prior to his attachment to Special Action Group B in Minsk he had been with the Jewish Office of the RSHA. And it was he who noticed something about the NKVD prisoners we had executed. But even when he read aloud their names I still didn’t understand.

“Kagan,” he had said. “Geller, Zalmonowitz, Polonski. Don’t you get it, Obersturmführer Gunther? They’re all Jews. That was a Jewish NKVD death squad you executed. It just goes to show you, doesn’t it? That the Führer is right about Bolshevism and Judaism being one and the same poison.”

Even then it didn’t seem to matter that much. Even then I told myself that I hadn’t known they were all Jews when we shot them. I told myself that it probably wouldn’t have made any difference—they had murdered thousands of people in cold blood and they deserved to die. But that was on the morning of July 7. By the afternoon I had started to look upon the police action I’d led somewhat differently. By the afternoon I had heard about the “registration,” as a result of which two thousand Jews had been identified and shot. Then, the following day, I had happened upon an SS firing squad, commanded by a young police officer I had known back in Berlin. Six men and women were shot and their bodies fell into a mass grave in which perhaps a hundred bodies already lay. That was the moment when I realized the real purpose of the police battalions. That was the moment when my life changed, forever.