www.ordnungspolizei.

org

Massimo Arico
_______________

“GROSSE GHETTO, GROSSE AKTION”

Kaunas, 28-29 October 1941

Wikimedia – Bundesarchiv. Kaunas, 1916

”It wasn’t worthwhile living

for more than sixty years,
in order to witness
a day like this…..”

Elchanan Elkes,
Kaunas, October 28, 1941

”Eine art 'ausforstung'

vorgenommen worden sie….”

Heinrich Schmitz,
Wiesbaden, February 28, 1962
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
Avraham Tory in Kaunas, March 1943 *
This article is partially based on the book, by Avraham Tory:
“Surviving the Holocaust. The Kovno Ghetto Diary” 1, that, in turn, is
the editorial reworking, enriched with historical notes and updates, of
the personal diary written, at the time of facts, by the same Tory, a
young lithuanian Jew, who worked as secretary at the Judenrat of the
Kaunas ghetto, from 1941 to 1944.
In this sense, in the next sections, some selected excerpts will be
highlighted, directly taken from this work, that not only was a
personal diary, but and above all, a real historical chronicle
meticulously documented, so much so that it was accepted, as
primary evidence, during three different legal proceedings, for war
crimes or denaturalization, opened by the Public Prosecutors of
Wiesbaden (Germany), Tampa (Florida, US) and Toronto (Canada),
against subjects of the Nazi political and military administration of
Kaunas, deemed among the main responsibles of the Jewish
genocide in Lithuania, between 1941 and 1944 2.

Therefore, having the belief that nothing is better than the original, we suggest the reading of Tory’s book,
by which this article was inspired, as far as in particular, the narration of the events of October 28, 1941, is
concerned.

I. OCTOBER 28, 1941: ONE-WAY ROADS

”Tuesday morning, October 28 was rainy. A heavy mist covered the sky and the whole ghetto was shrouded
in darkness. A fine sleet filled the air and covered the ground in a thin layer. From all directions, dragging
themselves heavily and falteringly, groups of men, women and children, elderly and sick who leaned on the
arms of their relatives or neighbors, babies carried in the mother’s arms, proceeded in long lines. They were
all wrapped in winter coats, shawls, or blankets, so as to protect themselves from the cold and the damp.
Many carried in their hands lanterns or candles, which cast a faint light, illuminating their way in the
darkness.
Many families stepped along slowly, holding hands. They all made their way in the same direction – to
Demokratu Square. It was a procession of mourners grieving over themselves. Some thirty thousand people
proceeded that morning into the unknown, toward a fate that could already have been sealed for them by
the bloodthirsty rulers.
A deathlike silence pervaded this procession tens thousands strong. Every person dragged himself along,
absorbed in his own thoughts, pondering his own fate and the fate of his family whose lives hung by a
thread. Thirty thousand lonely people, forgotten by God and by men, delivered to the whim of tyrants whose
hands had already spilled the blood of many Jews.
All of them, especially heads of families, had equipped themselves with some sort of document, even a
certificate of being employed by one of the ghetto institutions, or a high school graduation diploma, or a
German university diploma – some paper that might perhaps, perhaps, who knows, bring them an
”indulgence” for the sin of being a Jew” […] 3.

This dramatic scene is what we would have seen in Kaunas at dawn of October 28, 1941. A gray and livid
dawn, the last one for many thousands of Jews, selected among the weakest and the vulnerable, among the
“useless” and the disabled; among those, in short, no more able to produce, but instead still capable to
consume precious resources. And that, for this “reason”, had to be eliminated.
But how, was it possible, to arrive to all of this?
II. TWO MONTHS BEFORE
Ever since the days immediately following its establishment (August 15, 1941), three different actions at
least, were perpetrated in the ghetto of Kaunas, during which more than 5.000 Jews had been taken from
their homes and executed at the Fourth and Ninth Forts by the Lithuanian auxiliaries 4. Previously, an
unspecified number of Jews – about 8/10.000 – had been “cleared” in town by the beginning of August 5,
when it was finally decided, by Stahlecker and Jäger, the establishment of the ghetto in the old and
dilapidated Jewish quarter of Vilijampole (Slabodka), apparently with the aim to restore the “order” and
“security”.

The ghetto of Kaunas. The bridge over Paneriu Strasse *

The deportation of about 25/30.000
people was finally carried out by
August 15, when the perimeter of the
ghetto was fenced and cut off from
the rest of the town. Moreover, a
second barbed wire barrier subdivided
the ghetto in two parts: the “Klein
Ghetto” and the “Grosse Ghetto”,
crossed by a main road (Paneriu
Strasse), whose access was forbidden
to the Jews.
The two parts of the ghetto were
connected by a wooden bridge
surmounting the road, while the
surveillance was tasked to the the
third company of the Polizei-Bataillon
11, reinforced by Lithuanian auxiliaries
6
.
The police battalion, about which we are talking about, had been formed in Königsberg, East Prussia, about
in September 1939, and especially during the first months of Barbarossa, it would have become one of the
most destructive tools assigned by the Ordnungspolizei for the implementation of the Genocide: infact, in
addition to Kaunas – where it entered about in late July 1941 – this battalion would have also perpetrated
several slaughters in the area of Minsk, where two of its companies would have been transferred on October
6, 1941, for a stay that lasted just for a few weeks. The battalion was under the orders of Maj. Franz
Lechthaler, a 51 y.o. Rhenish policeman, with a distant Socialist past, who after the war was sentenced to
two years in prison, for the massacres perpetrated in Belorussia.
Fundamental was the role this battalion played in Kaunas, also because it represented, for a long time, the
main German unit at disposal of the FK 821, even after the shifting of powers from the Wehrmacht military
administration to the civil rule of the Reichkommissar von Renteln, that occurred on July 17. Infact, until the
appointment of the KdO Engels, that happened in September 1941, Lechthaler remained the highest-ranking
officer of the Ordnungspolizei present in Kaunas, with a prominent role also within the complicated German
hierarchy, taken as a whole, in the Lithuanian capital city.
By virtue of this kind of situation, almost automatic was, to the Polizei-Bataillon 11 and its commander, the
attribution of tasks directly connected with the “Jewish question”, among which from mid August on, the
already mentioned surveillance of the ghetto 7, as well as the escort of the so-called Jewish
Arbeitskommandos, that every day departed from the ghetto for reaching the various workplaces, the
Aleksotas airfield in particular.
And infact, just the decision of using the Jewish labour force, with consequent issuing of individual work-
permits – the so-called Jordanscheine – delivered to the specific workers by the civil administration 8, was
the discriminating factor along which the subsequent selections, among the ghetto inhabitants, would have
passed: that is to say, among those still able to work and those who were no longer able, among the
productive and those considered “unuseful”, among those, in essence, who would have lived a little more,
and those instead, who would have been immediately killed.
III. TWO DAYS BEFORE
The drama was staged in the afternoon of October 25, 1941, with the entrance in the offices of the
Judenrat, of SS-Hauptscharführer Helmut Rauca, the officer in charge of the Jewish affairs at the Gestapo of
Kaunas.
This man, without preambles, instructed the terrorized members of the Councils that, in order to rationalize
the Jewish workforce and avoid any competition between those who had received the Jordansheine and
those who had remained excluded, the latter had to be transferred and isolated within the small ghetto.
After which, more abundant rations would have been granted to the workers and their families: for this
reason, pics had to be taken of those who were able to work 9. This operation would have been carried out
through a roll call summoned on October 28 at 6 a.m. in Demokratenplatz. Consequently, by mean of a
decree, the Judenrat was ordered to spread the news to the Jewish population, in order to induce everybody
to obey without any exception, the disabled and the babies included. Obviously, Rauca said, anyone who
would have tried to avoid the roll call, would have been shot on the spot by the patrols tasked to proceed
with house to house searching 10.
Given the precedents, this order clearly panicked the whole Council.
Turned out unsuccessful a petition to Rauca – who ensured about the absence of any evil intent by him 11 –
the Council tried to find more informations, useful to disclose the real Rauca’s intentions; and infact, through
contacts with the Lithuanians, soon began to arrive rumors concerning the excavation of large mass graves
at the Ninth Fort, by part of the Russian POWs. Moreover, directly from the offices of the Gestapo, special
work permits were distributed to a group of selected workers, employed at the airfield yards, or at
particularly important factories 12: disquieting clues that gave no room for optimistic interpretations about
the real intents of Rauca.
Finally, after long discussions and contrasts within the Council, in the late morning of October 27, the
Judenrat decree was spread to the population of the ghetto.
After which, during the subsequent few hours, the whole ghetto lived as in a sort of suspended animation,
awaiting for dawn of October 28 and the dramatic appointment with an unavoidable fate.

IV. INGLORIOUS BASTARDS

SS-Hauptsturmführer Heinrich Schmitz *
Those who decided, planned and finally executed most of the
slaughters in the ghetto of Kaunas during Summer 1941, were a
small and heterogeneous group of zealous and efficient henchmen.
According to the Lithuanian historian Arunas Bubnys, on September
23, 1941, the Einsatzkommando 3a of Karl Jäger – that had reached
Kaunas on June 29 – was formally reorganized into the KdS “Litauen”
13
. This structure included, as far as the so-called “Jewish question”
was concerned, the Abt. IV (Gestapo), to which as commander, SS-
Obersturmführer Martin Kurmis was appointed; actually, around mid
October, this officer was replaced by SS-Hauptsturmführer Heinri ch
Schmi tz 14 who, after having acted until that moment as Jäger’s
deputy at the Stab EK 3a, in the subsequent months would have
become one of the main perpetrators of the Jewish Genocide in
Lithuania.
To the same Abt. IV and directly subordinated to Schmitz, two more
NCOs, among the others, were transferred, which had previously
served with the infamous – and then disbanded – Rollkommando
Hamann: SS-Hauptscharführer Helmut Rauc a, who had been
Hamann’s deputy and SS-Hauptscharführer Josef Stütz 15.
Rauca in particular, who at a later date would have become the commander of the Section 4 A 3 (Partisan
Movements), was appointed by Jäger responsible for the Jewish Affairs in Kaunas: a role that would have
substantially granted to him the right of life and death over the inhabitants of the ghetto, having among his
tasks, during the various rounding-ups, the selection of the victims destined to be shot 16.
Substantially in the same role of Rauca, in charge of the Jewish Affairs but in his case belonging from the
civil administration of Kaunas, acted SS-Hauptsturmführer Frit z Jord an , through which passed the issuing
of the work permits to the ghetto inhabitants: that is to say, the only glimmer of temporary survival allowed
to the few selected Jews, lucky enough to receive it 17. Finally, there was Mi kas Kaminska s, a Lithuanian
quisling employed at the civil administration of Kaunas and close collaborator of Jordan, who had been
tasked by the Lithuanian mayor Palciauskas, to keep the liaisons between the civilian authorities and the
ghetto Judenrat.
Maj. Kazys Simkus
Apart from the leaders, engaged with the planning, what it was needed, in
order to phisically carry out the Jewish actions, was what it has been
efficaciously defined as Fussvolk der Endlösung 18, that is to say, a
genocidal manpower, quite large and able to reinforce the scarce details of
the Sichereitspolizei and that, in the case of Kaunas, was well represented
by the already mentioned third company of the Polizei-Bataillon 11, of
Hptm. Alfred Torn ba um 19.

It is interesting to notice that, in the specific case of the 3/11 of

Tornbaum, this company had been put at disposal – after the transferring
to Belorussia of about half of the battalion – of the KdS “Litauen” Jäger,
probably as a result of an agreement with the KdO Engel, to whom the
company remained formally subordinated, but only for the ordinary
matters 20. For everything else, and in particular the facets concerning the
“Jewish question”, the company acted as a real genocidal cohort: as so
were also the other two battalion companies, in that period relocated in
Belorussia and fully engaged in spreading death among the Jewish communities of the area of Minsk.

Moreover, as a further reinforcement, also Lithuanian personnel was available, taken from the Litauische-
Hilfspolizei-Bataillon 1 of Maj. Kazys Simkus , a former Air Force officer, now in command of an auxiliary
battalion, formed since the early days of the German occupation and regularly used by the EK 3, for the
carrying out of the mass shooting in the forts of Kaunas 21.

V. OCTOBER 28, 1941: DEMOKRATENPLATZ

Just after dawn of October 28, once the ghetto inhabitants were rounded up in Demokratenplatz 22, a house-
to-house search was started by groups of Lithuanian auxiliaries, looking for possibly hidden Jews: these
bravos were coordinated by a squad of German policemen, under the orders of Hauptwachtmeister Blask 23;
in the meantime, other policemen of the 3/11, equipped with machine guns, surrounded the entire
perimeter of the ghetto. Behind them, standing on the hills overlooking the ghetto, many Lithuanian civilians
played their role of bystanders.
Demokratenplatz *
The waiting of the crowd, gathered at
the square, lasted until 9 a.m., when
finally Schmitz, Rauca, Jordan and
Tornbaum, arrived before their victims,
already subdivided in groups,
according to the workplace of the
family heads 24. All around to them, at
the corners of the square, machine-
guns were placed, while policemen of
the 3/11 of Tornbaum and Lithuanian
auxiliaries, surrounded the crowd of
Jews.
The selection, at that point, could
finally begin.

Here’s what's happened according to

the testimony of Tory 25:
”The columns of employees of the ghetto institutions and their families passed before Ruaca, followed by
other columns, one after another. The Gestapo man fixed his gaze on each pair of eyes and with a flick of
the finger of his right hand passed sentence on individuals, families, or even whole groups **. Elderly and
sick persons, families with children, single women, and persons whose physique did nont impress him in
terms of labor power, were directed to the right. There, they immediately felt into the hands of the German
policemen and the Lithuanian partisans 26, who showered them with shouts and blows and pushed them
towards an opening especially made in the fence, where two Germans counted them and then reassembled
them in a different place […] **.
When some old or sick person could not hold out any longer and collapsed on to the ground, the Lithuanians
set upon him istantly, kicking him with their boots, beating him, and threatening to trample him underfoot
[…].
Dr. Elchanan Elkes, 1939 *
Rauca directed the job of selection composedly, with cynism, and with
the utmost speed […]. Throughout the selections he did not exhibit any
sign of fatigue or sensitivity at the wailing, pleas, and cries, or at the
sight of the heartrending spectacles which took place before his eyes
when children were separated from their parents, or parents from their
children, or hurbands and wives from each other […].
From time to time, Rauce feasted on a sandwich […] or enjoyed a
cigarette, all the while performing his fiendish work without interruption
**.
When a column composed mostly of elderly people, or of women or
children appeared before him, he would command contemptuously: ’All
this trash to the right!’ or ’All this pile of garbage goes to the right!’. To
Dr. Elkes, when he tried to intervene in an attempt to save their lives 27,
he would say: “Wait, you’ll be grateful to me for having rid you of this
burden” […].
Now and then Rauce would be handed a note with a number written on
it, copied from the notebook kept by the German who diligently applied
himself to the task of recording the number of Jews removed to the small ghetto […]. The selection was a
protracted affair. Hungry, thirsty, and dejected, thousands of people waited for their turn from dawn […].
Those who were weak – those who could not withstand the psychological tension and the bodily torment –
collapsed and breathed their last even before their turn came to pass before Rauca.
It was beginning to grow dark, yet thousands of people remained standing in the square. Captain Jordan
now opened another selection place **; he was assisted by Captain Tornbaum. Rauca could count on this
pair without reservation […] 28.
The selection was completed only after nightfall, but not before Rauca made sure that the quota had been
fulfilled and that some 10.000 people had been transferred to the small ghetto. Only then where those who
had passed through the selection, and had remained standing in the square, allowed to return to their
homes […] **. One-third of the ghetto population had been cut down. The sick people who had remained in
their homes in the morning had all disappeared. They had been transferred to the Ninth Fort during the day
**.
The square was strewn with several dozen bodies of elderly and sick people who had died of exhaustion.
Here and there stools, chairs , and empty baby carriages were lyng about 29.
On his way back Dr. Elkes muttered: “It wasn’t worthwhile living for more than sixty years in order to
witness a day like this….”.

The selection had finally ended.

VI. OCTOBER 29, 1941: AUTUMN TWILIGHT

Overall, the dramatic selection of October 28 had forced about 10.000 Jews, most of which elderly, sick and
children, and unemployed adults, from the great ghetto to the small and dilapidated quarter around
Sajungosplatz, previously emptied from its inhabitants, during the action of October 4 30.
All of them, although the majority had no longer any reasonable hope, could not be sure of what would be
really happened in their future: so much so that some of them begun to organize their survival in the new
sector.
Obviously, any illusion was brutally broken at dawn of October 29, when Tornbaum’s policemen and the
Lithuanians, stormed the houses of the small ghetto, forcing the Jews to line up and march toward the Ninth
Fort, about 4 km far, while the weakest and the people no more able to move autonomously – among whom
there were many women with their children – were loaded onto the trucks of the company 31. At that point,
from the procession of thousands of victims, begun to rise, more and more intense, a simphony of tears,
prayers and cries of despair, that hovered along the entire column from top to bottom.
The “Grosse Aktion” of the great ghetto of Kaunas, was reaching its tragic final.
But let's read once more the words of Tory 32:
”It was an autumnal, foggy and gloomy dawn when German policemen and drunken Lithuanian partisans
broke into the small ghetto, like so many ferocious beasts, and began driving the Jews out of their homes
[…]. The partisans barked out their orders to leave the houses and to line up in rows and columns. Each
column was immediately surrounded by partisans, shouting “Forward march, you scum, forward march”, and
driving the people by rifle butts out of the small ghetto toward the road leading to the Ninth Fort. It was the
same direction that the Jews had been led away in the “action” commanded by Kozlowski on September 26,
1941, and in the “action” of the liquidation of the small ghetto on October 4, 1941. The same uphill road […]
to a place from which no one returned.
It was a death procession […]. Column after column, family after family, those sentenced to death passed by
the fence of the large ghetto. Some men, even a number of women, tried to break through the chain of
guards and flee to the large ghetto, but were shot dead on the spot. One woman threw her children over
the fence, but missed her aim and the child remained hanging on the barbed wire. Its screams were quickly
silenced by bullets […].
The procession, numbering some 10.000 people, and proceeding from the small ghetto to the Ninth Fort,
lasted from dawn until noon. Elderly people and those who were sick, collapsed by the roadside and died
[…]. Thousands of curious Lithuanian flocked to both sides of the road to watch the spectacle, until the last
of the victims was swallowed up by the Ninth Fort.
In the fort, the wretched people were immediately set upon by the Lithuanian killers, who stripped them of
every valuable article – gold rings, earrings, bracelets. They forced them to strip nacked, pushed them into
pits which had been prepared in advance and fired into each pit with machine guns which had been
positioned there in advance. The murderers did not have time to shoot everybody in one batch before the
next batch of Jews arrived. They were accorded the same treatment as those who had preceded them. They
were pushed into the pit on top of the dead, the dying, and those still alive from the previous group. So it
continued, batch after batch, until the 10.000 men, women, and children had been butchered.
Villagers living in the vicinity of the fort told stories of horrors they had seen from a distance, and of the
hearttrending cries that emanated from the fort and troubled their waking hours all day and night […]”.

Kaunas, the gates of the Ninth Fort *

The description of what happened in
the Ninth Fort in Kaunas, on October
29, comes to us through the dramatic
testimony of Kuki Kopelman, who in
those days was a boy of thirteen, lucky
enough to survive because deemed as
dead into the pit, under the corpses of
the other victims 33.

This is the narration of Kopelman 34:

”German and Lithuanian guards stood
at the entrance with several large dogs
straining at their leashes, barking and
snarling furiously. We were pushed
through the gates.
Several trucks were standing inside the
courtyard, their engines running. They often backfired and it sounded like shots. A young German officer
addressed us: ’In spite of all the ridiculous rumors, you’re going to be transported to working camps in the
east. You will shower and then be issued working clothes. Undress and leave your clothing here’.
He spoke in civil tones, and in spite of all we knew about this death factory he almost sounded convincing.
Whatever spark of hope we felt was estinguished when we heard a long burst of machine-gun fire and
distant screams. The Germans heard it too, for they raised their guns and pointed them at us.
’Quickly you Jews! Undress and into the showers! You’re just hearing the backfire of some trucks’, the officer
shouted […].
But no one moved, no one seemed able to move a muscle. The officer calmly walked up to an elderly who
was standing near the front, drew his luger and shot him in the face. When he fell to the ground his head
opened up and his brains pured out into the mud.
Suddenly everyone was undressing. When you’re about to die, even a few minutes seem precious, as if
another second might bring a reprieve […].
What followed was a nightmare in slow motion. Every tiny detail will stay burned in my memory forever.
On the officer’s signal the Germans and Lithuanians launched themselves at us. ’Run, run, you Jew swine’,
they shouted, lashing out at us with sticks and rifle butts, their dogs attacking the slow-moving ones, tearing
pieces of flesh from their legs and buttocks. We started running in a wild panic with the guards and dogs
after us […]. Then as we rounded a corner we saw dozens and dozens of machine guns mounted around an
open field. They were firing long bursts into a huge pit. I could hear screaming from inside […].
Lithuanians and Germans with rolled up sleeves and red faces were loading and firing into the mob. You
could see the yellow flashes from the barrels, and a veil of blue smoke drifting over the field.
It was a scene out of hell itself. There were hoarse shouts, and women’s screams – shrill, and children and
babies crying and barking dogs. It stank of sweat and urine and excrement as terrified bodies just… let go. I
saw one bearded man standing by the pit, shaking his fists at the sky and screaming.
’Jews! There is no God! There is a devil sitting up there!’ He looked a lot like my old rabbi. Blood was
streaming down him and they kept shooting at him, but he kept standing there, screaming at the sky.
Then we were at the pit. It looked like thousands of bodies, one on top of another, screaming and writhing,
begging the Germans to finish them off. A vision of hell. A vision of hell.
We were right in front of the guns. Bullets were buzzing around me like angry bees, but all I felt was the
crush of the mod behind me […].
Then I felt a weight fall on my head, knocking me into merciful oblivion”.

That day, 9.200 Jews were butchered: 2.007 men, 2.920 women, and 4.273 children, as it has been
confirmed by Karl Jäger in his summarized report of December 1, 1941, in which we read:

”Säuberung des Ghetto von überflüssige Juden” – “cleansing ghetto of superfluous Jews”.

VII. WAITING TIMES

In the post war period, those who were the major responsible of the slaughters perpetrated in Kaunas
during Summer/Winter 1941, had to answer for their actions in the course of an endless judicial procedure,
started by the ZStL in the late ‘50s, with the gathering of the firsts personal folders, and closed about thirty
years later, when died in prison for an incurable disease – while still in wait for the beginning of his trial –
the last of the main defendants involved in that investigation: the former SS-Hauptscharführer Helmut Rauca
who, just a few months before, had been finally extradited in Germany from Canada, where he had lived
undisturbed by December 30, 1950, to May 20, 1983 35.
As far as the other two main responsible of the slaughter are concerned, namely Jordan and Simkus, the
former was KIA on the Eastern front on August 2, 1942, while the latter escaped to Australia, where he died
probably by the beginning of the ‘90s 36.

Here follows a summarized chronology of the judicial procedure, concerning the investigations carried out by
the Public Prosecutor of Frankfurt on the Main, between 1959 and 1983.

1959
The Public Prosecutor of Frankfurt receives by the ZStL the folder concerning to Schm it z and other
members of the EK3: the folder is labelled as ZStL 207 AR-Z 14/1958 (Schmitz). The Prosecutor of Frankfurt
classifies the file as StA Frankfurt 4 Js 1106/59 gegen Heinrich Schmitz und anderen.
1961
On September 27, 1961, the Prosecutor of Frankfurt ask for the opening of the preliminary investigations
(StA Frankfurt VU-Antrag gegen EK 3), to the Court of Wiesbaden, against members of the Polizei-Bataillone
9 and 11 and of the EK 3, included Rauc a, versus who an arrest warrant in absentia, had already been
issued, just a few days before (September 21). Heinrich Schm it z is remanded in custody.
 Helmut Rauca on trial

1962 – February
As far as the slaughter of October 28-29, 1941, is
concerned, the following statement is released by
Heinrich Schm it z to the Public Prosecutor of
Frankfurt: ”eine art 'ausforstung' vorgenommen
worden sie. Dieser Ausdruck hört sich jetzt
fürchterlich an, aber er bezeichnet ziemlich
treffend das, was damals geschah. Es wurden
etwa 10.000 Juden ausgewählt nach dem
Grundsatz der Nützlichkeit und auch der
Gesundheit. 10.000 wurden damals auch
tatsächlich umgebracht” 37 [It was a sort of
“weeding out”. Such a phrase, today, may sound
horrific, but it describes, rather efficaciously, what
happened then. About 10.000 Jews were selected
on the basis of principles of utility and good
health. And about 10.000 were actually killed. A/N].
1962 – November
In November 1962 the Court of Wiesbaden opens the proceeding. Schm it z commits suicide in jail. Avraham
Tory is called among the prosecution witnesses. His diary is accepted as a primary evidence.
1966 – March
On March 27, 1966, the Public Prosecutor of Frankfurt asked to the Court of Wiesbaden the removal, from
the defendants, of G.B., former member of the 3/11.
1966 – August
The Court of Wiesbaden, with ruling LG Wiesbaden 4 Js 1106/59 – 7 VU 3/61 vom 22.8.1966, approved the
request of the Prosecutor of Frankfurt, concerning the removal of G.B., from the defendants.
1971
The Court of Wiesbaden, with ruling LG Wiesbaden 4 Js 1106/59 – VU 3/61 vom 6.12.71, removes from the
defendants, the other members of the PB 11 still under investigations, including Tornb au m, and also four
former members of the EK3. According to the disconcerting judgment of the court: ”the only role Tornbaum
played was the selection of the victims, without having precise knowledge about what would have been the
result of his actions. Moreover, his presence in the ghetto, in the course of the various actions, does not lead
automatically to consider Tornbaum as partially responsible of what happened there, nor it demonstrates he
has played any kind of supporting role” 38.
In the same period the Prosecutor of Frankfurt receives concrete proofs concerning the presence in Canada
of Rauc a.
1973
A further verdict, issued on January 28, 1971, by the Court of Wiesbaden, LG Wiesbaden VU 3/61 – 4 Js
1106/59 vom 28.1.73, removes the positions of the remaining members of the PB 9, still under
investigations.
1982
The German authorities ask for the extradition of Rau ca from Canada. Rauca is arrested by the RCMP on
June 17, 1982. Avraham Tory is called in Toronto to testify against Rauca. Again, his diary and other
documents are accepted as evidences.
1983
The Public Prosecutor of Frankfurt, following the extradition in Germany of Helmut Rau ca (20.5.1983),
issues a bill of indictment against him on August 26, 1983 (StA Frankfurt 50/4 Js 284/71 vom 26.8.1983
gegen Rauca), on which basis Rauca is arrested and posted in custody in Kassel. He die in jail, waiting for
the beginning of the trial, on October 29, 1983.
VIII. CONSIDERATIONS
With the massacre of Kaunas, of October 28-29, 1942, the short and bloody path that in a span of one
season, from the firsts improvised and “occasional” slaughters at the beginning of July, had led to the
planned and systematic mass-extermination of the following Autumn, essentially reaches its conclusion: we
enter infact, into the final stage of the Jewish Genocide, that which – within few months – would have
touched its historical peak and the definitive turning point, with the establishment in Poland of the three
extermination camps of Belzec, Sòbibor and Treblinka.
In other occasions we have already had the opportunity to highlight, as in our opinion, the symbolic
beginning of the Jewish Genocide, may be made to coincide with the slaughter of Rumbula of
November/December 1941, therefore, about one month after that of Kaunas.
Well, the events of Kaunas seem to us fully coherent with this path, being Rumbula a symbol not necessarily
by reason of the destructive dynamics that produced (and were produced during) this slaughter, which were
already well tested and functional, but rather because of its apocalyptic magnitude. Compared to Kaunas
infact, Rumbula has, as specific characteristic, the tragic enormity of its numbers (about 25.000 victims in
two days of shootings), besides the fact of having seen a large Jewish community (that of Riga), erased in
its entirety, forever from the history.
On the contrary in Kaunas, where the victims of October 28-29 were about one-third compared to Rumbula,
and where the Jewish ghetto managed to survive, in a way or another, for about 32 months yet, all the
genocidal dynamics that variously but never simultaneously, had emerged from time to time, during the
previous slaughters, appeared in their full evidence, as in a kind of total synthesis.

In Kaunas there was a premeditated selection, planned and implemented, of the weakest and the most
vulnerable among the Jews, of the childrens and the youngest (about 45% of total), of the women and the
elders: that is to say, of all those categories deemed as “superfluous” because of their unproductiveness,
and that therefore became the main target of the annihilation strategy. In other words, whether the
Genocide had to be implemented, it would have been convenient, as first step, “getting rid of the most
superfluous weights”, preserving for a pure utilitarian purpose, those still able to furnish their working
contribution. We remember, in this sense, what Rauca said to Elkes during the selection: ”Wait, you’ll be
grateful to me for having rid you of this burden”.
In Kaunas the selection took place, certainly not on the basis of alleged, and mythical, “blacklists” – that
according to a “reductionist” theory, were aimed to neutralize the most dangerous among the opponents 39 –
but rather, by means of a procedure that later would have been used, endless times, on the platform of
Auschwitz: that is to say, by grouping the most valid and healty, to exploit until exhaustion; and by forming
another group with the “useless”, to be erased immediately. In this way, the massacre of Kaunas was ahead
of its times, and adopted methods as in a real extermination camp.
In Kaunas the logic and methods of an extermination camp were applied also during the executions, with
endless waves of naked Jews, marching through the gates of the Ninth Fort, just for being immediately
mowed down by the machine guns at the common graves: a system that had nothing different, apart from
the cause of death – bullets instead of gas – from that applied, for example, at Sòbibor and Treblinka, where
endless columns of naked Jews, would have crossed the entrance of the tubes, that led to the gas
chambers. In this sense, if the Ninth Fort cannot be technically considered a real extermination camp, in
practice it was used as such. By extension, the same “Grosse Ghetto” of Kaunas, may be associated, in
functional sense, to the Camp nr. 1 of Sòbibor, where all the Jews not intended for immediate gassing, tried
to survive in conditions of working slavery. In other words, the organizational and structural system of the
Aktion Reinhard camps, had been somewhat anticipated by the detention and extermination complex
represented by the ghetto and by the forts of Kaunas 40.
In Kaunas, as in Rumbula and in the camps of the Aktion Reinhard, and in several brutal slaughters in
Belorussia and Ukraine, there was a substantial collaboration of local auxiliaries, actively used as genocidal
workforce in the firing squads, as well as in escorts and rounding-ups. And even though initially, some of
them, were probably induced to search some kind of compensation against the Jews, on the basis of
political/ideological endogenous motivations, related to the period of the Soviet occupation, well, all of this
ended by being confused and levelled when they found themselves merely used by their German controllers,
as heterodirect perpetrators, without any degree of authonomy 41. In a more general meaning, also the
same hopeful Lithuanian nationalistic administration – that largely contributed to the destruction of the
Lithuanian Jewry, although pushed by its own goals – not only did not rejected the genocidal solution
imposed by Berlin, but ended up by embracing it in toto 42, so becoming nothing more than a political vassal.
In Kaunas there was what we could define a “community of intent”. Infact, it was not just the
Sichereitspolizei, through the department IV B 4 of the KdS “Litauen” – institutionally in charge of the Jewish
Affairs – that was involved in the decimation of the ghetto, but also the Ordnungspolizei, the German civil
administration headed by Cramer, the Lithuanian authority under Mayor Palciauskas, as well as the
ubiquitous militarized auxiliaries of Simkus. It was therefore applied a synergistic strategy, aimed to the
optimization of the resources, in which every organization – while pursuing its own goals – was able to
furnish its contribution. What we can clearly see, in all of this, it’s the pyramidal decentralization that, from
Berlin down to the periphery, was reproduced by cascade, splitted into one thousand of semiautonomous
streamlets, but, at the same time, coherent with a common general plan.
In Kaunas, there were no operational needs connected with the security of the rear area, nor any pretext of
reprisal, related to the perpetration of such a slaughter, not even that ridiculous “justification” that was
claimed in occasion of the so-called Aktion-Koslowski of September 26 43. There was just the will to proceed
with the progressive annihilation of the ghetto – weed out, was the term they used – based on purely
genocidal intentions. And even the statement released by Schmitz to the Prosecutor of Frankfurt, about the
principles of utility and good health, confirms this way of thinking: that generation of Jews, over which the
Nazis had put their hands, had to be the last one; all the family liaisons, the relationships within the
community, the perpetuation of the traditions to the childrens and to the youngest, the memory inherited
from the elders, the solidarity between the generations, well, all of this had to be inexorably erased. The
river had to be gradually dried up, up to the total disapperance, until when even the last one Jew, deemed
as “useful”, would have ceased to be such.

According to the various estimates, about the 95% of the Lithuanian Jewry – more than 200.000 on the eve
of Barbarossa – did not survived the Final Solution 44: a percentage that is the highest of the whole occupied
Europe. Of the about 40.000 Jews present in Kaunas in June 1941, and excluding the few that managed to
escape prior the arrival of the Wehrmacht, no more than 2.000 were those still alive in July 1944, after the
return of the Red Army 45.
The numbers of such a catastrophe let no room for interpretations.

We cou ld tal k about the dynamics, the roles and the methods by which all of this took place, but certainly
not about the fact that there was a precise political will of destruction, pursued from first to last day of
occupation – except for a tactical pause in the period December 1941-March 1943 – for putting an end to
the Lithuanian Jewry, for reasons that were nothing but ideological and racial.
We coul d qu ib ble about the context in which this crime was perpetrated and about the relationships that
existed or not, among the various components of the Lithuanian society, and about the influences that could
have received from the outside, but the fact remains that, for over three years, from June 1941 to July 1944,
a part of the population, essentially defenceless, and reduced in terms of being not able to react in any way,
was scientifically, costantly and relentlessly persecuted and annihilated, also by means of a balance of power
that could not be more overwhelming.
We coul d de ba te – and certainly sympathize – about the suffering endured by the Lithuanian population
subjected to the Soviet yoke on the eve of the WW II, as well as about the feelings of revenge that erupted
when this yoke finally ended, but at the same time, it is not certainly acceptable the so-called theory of the
“two genocides”, nor, even less, the brutal generalization that, through a sort of collective culpabilization,
wanted to extend, to the whole Lithuanian Jewry – basically Ashkenazic and observant – the faults of certain
pro-Soviet segments of the same Jewish community in Lithuania, or even, those “imported” through the evil
deeds of some Soviet Jews, enrolled with the NKVD or in other Communist repressive organizations –
intrinsically atheistic and internationalistic. A brutal and simplistic generalization that find its roots into the
Nazi propaganda and that it has been rightly stigmatized as “troglodytic”, by distinguished member of the
same Lithuanian culture 46.
We coul d dis cuss about all of this. But all of this certainly does not diminish the fact that the Lithuanian
Jewry, that for centuries had represented a cultural and economic crossroad among three worlds, namely the
Baltic, the Germanic and the Slavic, has been irretrievably erased during the span of 37 months, by hand of
a rough, but lucid, destructive will.

We want to close this article with a phrase quoted by the book “The Vanished World of the Lithuanian Jews”
47
: ”The remarkable Lithuanian Jewish community, which once occupied a prominent place in the Jewish
world and constituted an unique part of of the Jewish world communities, is no more. All that remains is
memory”.

That is sculpted on the stones of the Valley of the Communities at Yad Vashem.
FOOTNOTES
* Source: fair use Yad Vashem. www.yadvashem.org.
** Detail confirmed by the Poblic Prosecutor of Frankfurt: StaW Frankfurt am Main, 50/4 Js 284/71 vom
26.8.1983 gegen Rauca, of by StaW Frankfurt am Main 4 Js 1106/59 vom 27.3.1966, gegen Heinrich
Schmitz.
1
Avraham Tory “Surviving the Holocaust. The Kovno Ghetto Diary. Introduction by Martin Gilbert and historical notes by Dina Porat.
Cambridge, Massachussets, 1990.
2
Tory was called to give his testimony, and his diary was recognized as a proof, during the proceedings of Wiesbaden against Heinrich
Schmitz (commander of the Abt. IV.Gestapo of the KdS “Litauen”), Tampa against Kazys Palciauskas (former Mayor of Kaunas) and
Toronto against Helmut Rauca (Adjutant of Schmitz).
3
Tory, page 49.
4
According to the so-called Jäger Report, 534 Jews were shot on August 9 at the Fourth Fort, 1.811 on August 18 at the Fourth Fort,
1.608 on September 26 at Fourth Fort ( Aktion-Koslowski), and 1845 on October 4 at Ninth Fort ( Klein-Ghetto-Aktion). See
Bartusevicius/Tauber/Wette, pages 303-308, Longerich, page 398. Actually, as far as the actions of August 9 and 18 are concerned,
there are some inaccuracies in the report of Jäger, who would have swapped the dates and included, into those two totals, three main
executions at least, happened in that same period: in particular, 1.200 Jews would have been shot on August 7 (Donnerstag-Aktion), 30
on August 15, and probably 534 on August 18 (Intelligenzaktion). Dieckmann, pages 445-446, 465, Stang, pages 101-102. The
Donnerstag Aktions is confirmed also by the testimony, released on March 19, 1958, before the ZStL 207 AR-Z 14/1958 (Schmitz), by
Gehrart Quittschau, former member of the Polizei-Bataillon 11, who voluntarily, took part in the executions. About the Inteligenzaktion,
see also Tory, page. 33.
5
According to the EM 19 of July 11, 1941, 7.800 Jews had been executed until thhat date, by execution squads formed with Lithuanian
auxiliaries, especially at the Seventh Fort. Also were included in this total, the about 1.000 Jews, murdered in Kaunas during the
pogroms that occurred in those first days. These executions, apart from the Lithuanians of the TDA-Batalionas, were perpetrated by
personnel of the SK 1b, as well as by a details of the Polizei-Bataillon 9, attached to the EK 3. See Dieckmann, pagg. 442, 463,
Dieckmann/Sužiedėlis, pagg. 55-57.
6
Curilla, page 154, Tory, page 39, Dieckmann, page 443.
7
After an exchange of messages, among Himmler, Prutzmann and the Reichkommissar Lohse, dated August 24, i.e., just a few days
after the establishment of the ghetto (August 15), the employment of Lithuanian guards had been authorized in support of the
3/Polizei-Bataillon 11, that already had been charged with the surveillance of the same ghetto. Breitman, pages 78 and 271.
8
The firsts 5.000 working permits were issued on September 15 to the Jewish Council, and by this assigned on the basis of lists
compiled by the offices of Fritz Jordan, to an extent of no more than a permit for each family, or married couple. The tragedy was that,
being the permits nominative and not transferable to anyone, just the direct recipient of the working permit was protected, while, all
around to him, all his blood relatives – sons, spouse, parents – as well as other relatives, could be subjected to “free hunting”, during
the selections. Tory, page 36-37.
9
Curilla, page 173, StAw Frankfurt am Main, 50/4 Js 284/71 of 26.8.1983 gegen Rauca.
10
Tory, pages 43-44.
11
According to the reconstruction of the facts, made by the Public Prosecutor of Frankfurt, Rauca ensured the members of the Judenrat
about his intention to merely know the ghetto populations, in order to gather informations concerning their working capabilities. Curilla,
page 173, StAw Frankfurt am Main, 50/4 Js 284/71 del 26.8.1983 gegen Rauca.
12
In particular, the Jews of the so-called Brigade “Lipzer” were benefited by those special permits, as engaged in repairs at the building
of the Gestapo of Kaunas.
13
Bubnys, Vokiečių okupuota Lietuva, page 78.
14
Stang, pages 60, 98.
15
Bubnys, Holocaust in Lithuanian Province, 1941, page 19. Between July and October 1941, the Rollkommando Hamann had sowed
destruction among the Jewish communities in Lithuania, killing around 53.000 civilians. See Jäger Report, in
Bartusevicius/Tauber/Wette, pages 303-308, Stang, pages 168-160. Mainly formed with Lithuanian auxiliaries, this kommando had, as
cadres, a small group of German NCOs: in addition to Hamann, Rauca and Stütz, SS-Hauptscharführer Porst, Salzmann, Mack and
Planert are also mentioned. See also Curilla, page 309. The Rollkommando Hamann was disbanded in early October, shortly after having
perpetrated its last slaughter in Zagare (October 2, 1941).
16
Stang, page 98.
17
Jordan, who also had the rank of SA-Obersturmführer, was the director of the Hauptabteilung II Politik, and through its role of
superintendent of Jewish Affairs, was directly subordinated to SA-Brigadeführer Hans Cramer, chief of the German civil administration of
Kaunas (Stadtkommissar). After having been transferred to the eastern front, because of a quarrel with his superior, Jordan was KIA on
August 2, 1942. See Dieckmann, pages 443, 463, Neumann, page 147, Tory, page 38.
18
Klaus-Michael Mallmann: Vom Fussvolk der “Endlösung”. Ordnungspolizei, Ostkrieg und Judenmord. Tel Aviv, 1997.
19
This is the description Tory makes in his book, about this officer: “Tornbaum was the enbodiment of a typical German gendarmes. He
expressed great interest in art, in philatelic collections, and in valuable in general. He was a sadist, fond of listening to Liszt’s rhapsodies
played by an artist, only to rob him afterward of his piano. He was a police dog, who forced women to undress, so that he could then
conduct gynecological examination on them, while, at the same time, beating them severely. This police inspector who plundered and
looted treasures from the Jews, repaying them with blows on all parts of their bodies; this broad-schouldered man in gray uniform
[probably it was green. A/N] and shining boots, feared by his own subordinates; this [was] Tornbaum, who had thougt that his rule
over us would be indefinite […]”.Tory, page 403. A testimony about Tornbaum, during a plundering in the ghetto, is given also by
Joheved Inciuriene, a survived Jewess, at that time young girl of seventeen: “He came into our room with gun drawn. We were ordered
to open the closets, in which we kept our dresses, and to a Jew, who had accompanied him, to load our winter clothes onto the trucks,
waiting in the courtyard, plus a couple of my father’s dresses”. [After he was gone out], “I saw through the window, put our stuff onto
the truck and suddenly I heard Tornbaum shouting: ‘Dance you, Jew! Dance!’. The Jew, a middle-aged man, who without hurry had
carried our clothes, stood still, not having understood what the German had ordered him. At that point, Tornbaum pointed the gun and
shot him on the spot”. Inciuriene, page 203-204.
20
Between Engel, appointed KdO “Litauen” around mid-September, and Lechthaler, commander of the Polizei-Bataillon 11, there was a
conflict concerning the auxiliary Lithuanian units, until then controlled by Lechthaler, and that instead, Engel now claimed by virtue of
his role. The question was settled by BdO Jedicke, at first with a compromise and then, by transferring Lechthaler to Belorussia
(October 6, 1941), along with two battalion companies (2/11 and 4/11). As far as the 1/11 is concerned, it remained in Lithuania, at
Marijampole, while the 3/11 of Tornbaum – as already said – was placed at disposal of the Sichereitspolizei. Stang, page 187.
21
We are talking about the TDA-Batalionas, formed in Kaunas on June 28, 1941, with lituanian personnel already drafted into the Red
Army. It was later disbanded (August 7) and reorganized into three new battalion, one of which, the 1.PPT-Batalionas (Litauische-
Hilfspolizei-Bataillon 1), remained under the orders of Simkus. In December 1941, it was definitively renamed Litauische-Schuma-
Bataillon 13. See Bubnys Hilfspolizeibataillone, pages 119-120, Dieckmann/Sužiedėlis, pages 31-32, 50-51.
22
In spite of its name Demokratenplatz was, in autumn 1941, nothing more a large wasteland, near the northern edge of the ghetto. It
was later used as agricultural terrain.
23
Curilla, page 175.
24
Curilla, page 173. StAw Frankfurt am Main, 50/4 Js 284/71 vom 26.8.1983 gegen Rauca. According to the Public Prosecutor of
Frankfurt, Rauca and the others arrived in the square towards 7 a.m.
25
Tory, pages 52-55.
26
Tory uses the term “partisans”, when he refers to the Lithuanian collaborationist groups, at the German’s service. In this article we
have maintained the same meaning, in coherence with the original.
27
Elchanan Elkes (1979-1944), was the chairman of the Judenrat in the ghetto of Kaunas. He died in Germany, in the concentration
camp of Landsberg, on October 17, 1944.
28
According to a testimony, at a certain point, towards evening, Rauca left the square and was replaced by Ltn. Iltmann, commander of
a platoon of the 3/11, who supervised the selection of the last 5 or 6.000 Jews. Actually, this officer would prove to be quite “generous”,
by selecting just about thirty elders, particularly sick and frail. Curilla, pag. 174.
29
According to the Public Prosecutor of Frankfurt, those who died by exhaustion on the square, were about 10 or 15. StAw Frankfurt
am Main, 50/4 Js 284/71 of 26.8.1983 gegen Rauca. According to Stang, page. 103, they were 30.
30
See note nr. 4.
31
Curilla, page 175, StaW Frankfurt am Main 4 Js 1106/59 vom 27.3.1966, gegen Heinrich Schmitz.
32
Tory, pages 54-59.
33
The testimony of Kopelman has been published by his childhood friend Solly Ganor (Zalke Genkind), in his book “ Light one Candle. A
Survivor’s Tale from Lithuania to Jerusalem” [Germ.ed.: “Das andere Leben. Kindheit im Holocaust”]. Shortly after the publishing,
Ganor’s book raised polemics, concerning some points of the narration, that however, were soon set aside, also thanks to the
intervention in his favour by Barbara Distel, the well-known historian and director, for over thirty years, of the memorial-museum of
Dachau.
34
Ganor, pages 175-176.
35
Margolian, pages 113-114.
36
Dean, pge 282. According to a testimony, Simkus was recognized in 1949 by a young survived Jew, in the refugee camp of Bonegilla,
Victoria (AU), from which he immediately disappeared. His name was included within a list of 38 Lithuanians, alleged members of the
TDA-Batalionas, who were investigated in Australia, by the Special Investigation Unit. According to the final report, issued in 1993, 18 of
the 38 suspects, including Simkus, had passed away in the meantime.
37
Dieckmann, pages 448, 466.
38
Curilla, page 177. LG Wiesbaden, 4 Js 1106/59 – VU 3/61 vom 6.12.71.
39
There is no doubt that, the first target of the Einsatzgruppen were those who, according to the Nazi ideological vision, were
considered hostile to the Germany, both active and potential, and first of all the so-called Jewish-Bolsheviks, Communists and the party
officials. But all of this – besides having character of an evident preventive repression, quite objectionable in and of itself – soon
overflowed, enlarging dramatically its targets, well over those categories initially identified as “hostile”, and ended up by becoming, a
mere anti-Semitic persecution. See Dieckmann/Sužiedėlis, pag. 23.
40
About the organization of the Aktion Reinhardt Camps, see Yitzhak Arad: Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. The Operation Reinhard Death
Camps.
41
The same Lithuanian pogromists, who acted in the first days of Barbarossa, who were partially absorbed into the auxiliary militarized
units (that of Simkus included) and that, according to a theory, should demonstrate an alleged anti-Semitic attitude of the Lithuanian
population, independent from the anti-Jewish policies plotted in Berlin, to the point of exploding in parallel with the Soviet withdrawal
from the country, well, all of this becomes substantially irrelevant, when considered within the “general economy” of the Jewish
Genocide: no more than one thousand infact, were the victims of the pogroms (more organized, than spontaneous), that happened in
Kaunas in late June 1941, as confirmed by Dieckmann/Sužiedėlis, page 43. In essence, the theory concerning a so-called political
revenge of the Lithuanian natives, against the “Jewish-Bolsheviks” oppressors, seems to us quite specious, as it can be applied just to
specific episodes, during a very limited period of time, and, in any case, within a political context, operational and situational in which,
the presence on the ground – or, at least, the outer influence – of the Sichereitpolizei units, cannot be underestimated.
42
Bubnys Outline, page 215.
43
The so-called Aktion-Koslowski of September 26, 1941, that caused the death of 1.608 Jews, would have been perpetrated as
“reprisal” for a gunshot fired, from the side of the ghetto, in direction of a certain Willi Koslowski, policeman of 3/11 in guard duty at the
outer perimeter. Such a retaliation rate – 1.600 victims for a shot that did not reached its alleged target – goes far beyond any
conceivable proportionality, and it is monumentally higher than the Sühnequote of 100 hostages for each German killed, applied in
Serbia. Hence, it's more than evident the grotesque unreality of such a “justification”.
44
Bubnys Outline, page 214.
45
Dieckmann, page 439.
46
Tomas Venclova, quoted by Leonidas Donskis, in the preface of “The Vanished World of the Lituanian Jews”, page X.
47
Alvydas Nikžentaitis, Stefan Schreiner, Darius Staliūnas: “The Vanished World of the Lituanian Jews”, pag. 1.

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This article is taken from the site www.ordnungspolizei.org