. NMT04-T0440
Volume IV · Page 440
| Although engaged in an ideological
enterprise, supposedly undertaken on the highest ethnic and cultural level,
executants of the program were not above the most petty and loathsome thievery.
In the liquidation of Jews in Zhitomir and Kiev the reporting Einsatzkommando
collected 137 trucks full of clothing. The report does not say whether the
clothing was torn from the victims while they were still alive or after they
had been killed. This stolen raiment was turned over to the National Socialist
People's Welfare Organization. One of the defendants related how during the winter of 1941 he was ordered to obtain fur coats for his men, and that since the Jews had so much winter clothing, it would not matter much to them if they gave up a few fur coats. In describing an execution which he attended, the defendant was asked whether the victims were undressed before the execution. He replied, "No, the clothing wasn't taken — this was a fur coat procurement operation." A document issuing from Einsatzgruppe D headquarters (February 1942) speaks of the confiscation of watches in the course of anti-Jewish activities. The term "confiscate" does not change the legal or moral character of the operation. It was plain banditry and highway robbery. The gold and silver watches were sent to Berlin, others were handed over to the Wehrmacht (rank and file) and to members of the Einsatzgruppe itself "for a nominal price" or even gratuitously if the circumstances warranted that kind of liberality with these blood-stained articles. This report also states that money seized was transmitted to the Reich Bank, except "for a small amount required for routine purposes (wages, etc.)". In other words the executioners paid themselves with money taken from their victims. (NOKW-631.) The same Einsatzgruppe, reporting on the hard conditions under which some ethnic German families were living in southern Russia, showed that it helped by placing Jewish homes, furniture, children's beds, and other equipment at the disposition of the ethnic Germans. These houses and equipment were taken from liquidated Jews. Einsatzgruppe C, proudly reporting on its accomplishments in Korovo (September 1941), stated that it organized a regular police force to clear the country of Jews as well as for other purposes. The men enlisted for this purpose, the report goes on to say, received "their pay from the municipality from funds seized from Jews." (NO-3154.) Whole villages were condemned, the cattle and supplies seized (that is stolen), the population shot, and then the villages themselves destroyed. Villages were razed to the ground because of the fact, or under |
