Rehearsing for murder: The beginning of the final solution in Lithuania in June 1941

Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Volumn 12, Issue 1, 1998, Pages 3-26

  Kwiet, Konrad ^a  

^a MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 57749107437     PISSN: 87566583     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/hgs/12.1.3     Document Type: Article

References (60)

1. See also, Konrad Kwiet, "The Onset of the Holocaust: The Massacres of Jews in Lithuania in June 1941." Annual lecture delivered as J. B. and Maurice Shapiro Senior Scholar-in-Residence at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on December 4, 1995
2. Published under the same title but expanded in Power, Conscience and Opposition: Essays in German History in Honour of John A Moses, ed. Andrew Bonnell et al. (New York: Peter Lang, 1996), pp. 107-21
3. Relevant recent studies are Richard Breitman, The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991)
4. Peter Longerich, "Vom Massenmord zur Endlösung," Zwei Wege nach Moskau: Vom Hitler-Stalin Pakt zum Unternehmen "Barbarossa," ed. Bernd Wegner (München und Zürich: Piper, 1991), pp. 251-74
5. Christopher R. Browning, The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution (Cambridge: Canto edition, 1995)
6. Philippe Burrin, Hitler und die Juden: Die Entscheidung für den Völkermord (Frankfurt/Main: S. Fischer, 1993)
7. Gerald Fleming, Hitler and the Final Solution (Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994)
8. David Cesarani, ed. The Final Solution: Origins and Implementation (London, 1994)
9. Götz Aly, "Endlösung": Völkerverschiebung und der Mord an den europäischen Juden (Frankfurt/Main: S. Fischer, 1995)
10. Henry Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995)
11. Ralf Ogorreck, Die Einsatzgruppen und die "Genesis der Endlösung" (Berlin: Metropol, 1996)
12. Relevant studies dealing with the "Final Solution" in Lithuania are: Yitzhak Arad, "The Final Solution in Lithuania in the Light of German Documentation," Yad Vashem Studies 11 (1976), pp. 234-72
13. idem., Ghetto in Flames: The Struggle and Destruction of the Jews in Vilna in the Holocaust (New York: Holocaust Library, 1982)
14. Dov Levin, Lithuanian Jewry's Armed Resistance to the Nazis, 1941-1945 (New York, 1985)
15. idem., "Lithuania," in Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, vol. 3, ed. Yisrael Gutman (New York: Macmillan, 1990), pp. 895-99
16. Avraham Tory, Surviving the Holocaust: The Kovno Ghetto Diary, ed. Martin Gilbert (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1990)
17. Dinah Porat, "The Holocaust in Lithuania. Some Unique Aspects," Cesarani, p. 69
18. Zvi Koltiz, "The Physical and Metaphysical Dimensions of the Extermination of the Jews in Lithuania," The Holocaust in the Soviet Union, eds. Lucijan D. Dobroszycki, Jeffrey S. Gurock (New York, 1993)
19. Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1985), p. 338
20. Jörg Friedrich, Die kalte Amnestie: NS-Täter in der Bundesrepublik (Frankfurt/Main, S. Fischer, 1984), pp. 324-29. The trial was held in the West German city of Ulm in 1957-58
21. See Albert Rückerl, The Investigation of Nazi Crimes, 1945-1978: A Documentation (Hamden: Archon Books, 1980)
22. Die Normalität des Verbrechens: Bilanz und Perspektiven der Forschung zu den nationalsozialistischen Gewaltverbrechen, eds. Helge Grabitz, Klaus Bästlein, Johannes Tuchel. Festschrift für Wolfgang Scheffler (Berlin: Hentrich, 1994)
23. See Alfred Streim, "The Tasks of the SS-Einsatzgruppen," Simon Wiesenthal Centre Annual 4 (1987), pp. 309-29
24. This is a continuation of the debate with Helmut Krausnick in the correspondence section of SWCA 6 (1988), pp. 311-47
25. The German military records are kept in the Federal Archives-Military Archives Freiburg (BA-MA). Relevant are the records of 61 Division (RH - 61), 291 Division (RH 26-291), 18 Army (RH 20-18) and Army Group North
26. See Breitman, Architect, p. 170
27. and Matthäus, Jenseits der Grenze, p. 150ff
28. See Ruth Bettina Birn, Die Höheren SS- und Polizeiführer: Himmlers Vertreter im Dritten Reich (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1986)
29. Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm, Die Einsatzgruppe A der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD 1941/1942 (Frankfurt/Main: Lang, 1996)
30. See Konrad Kwiet, "From the Diary of a Killing Unit," in Why Germany? National Socialist Anti-Semitism and the European Context, ed. John Milfull (Providence/Oxford: Berg, 1993), pp. 92-110
31. modified German version "Auftakt zum Holocaust: Ein Polizeibatallion im Osteinsatz," in Der Nationalsozialismus: Studien zur Ideologie und Herrschaft, ed. Wolfgang Benz et al. (Frankfurt/Main: S. Fischer, 1993), pp. 191-208
32. Levin, Lithuania, pp. 895-99
33. Arad, Final Solution, pp. 234-72
34. Ezra Mendelsohn, The Jews of East Central Europe Between World Wars (Bloomington, 1983)
35. Arad, Ghetto in Flames, pp. 20-28
36. See Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm, "Antisemitismus im Baltikum," Normalität des Verbrechens, pp. 85-102
37. as well as "Offene Fragen der Holocaust-Forschung: Das Beispiel des Baltikums," Die Schatten der Vergangenheit: Impulse zur Historisierung des Nationalsozialismus, eds. U. Backes, E. Jesse, R. Zitelmann (Frankfurt, Berlin: 1990), pp. 403-25
38. Kolitz, Physical and Metaphysical Dimensions, p. 199
39. Kolitz, Metaphysical, p. 200
40. idem., Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis and War in the Third Reich (New York: Oxford, 1992)
41. Paul Kohl, Ich wundere mich, daß ich noch lebe: Sowjetische Augenzeugen berichten (Gütersloh, 1991)
42. Theo Schulte, The German Army and Nazi Policies in Occupied Russia (Bonn, 1991)
43. Christian Streit, Keine Kameraden: Die Wehrmacht und die sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen, 1941-1945 (Stuttgart, 1978)
44. idem., "Ostkrieg, Antibolschewismus und 'Endlösung,'" in Geschichte und Gesellschaft 2 (1991), pp. 251
45. Jürgen Förster, "Die Sicherung des Lebensraumes," Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg. Bd. 4 (Stuttgart, 1983)
46. Erobern und Vernichten: Der Krieg gegen die Sowjetunion 1941-1945: Eine Dokumentation, ed. Reinhard Rürup (Berlin, 1991)
47. Vernichtungskrieg: Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941 bis 1944, eds. Hannes Heer, Klaus Neumann (Hamburg, 1995)
48. Deutsch-russische Zeitenwende: Krieg und Frieden, 1941-1995, ed. Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, Jochen Löser, Daniel Proektor, Sergej Slutsch (Baden-Baden, 1995)
49. Hannes Heer, "Killing Fields: The Wehrmacht and the Holocaust in Belorussia," in Holocaust and Genocide Studies II:2 (1997), pp. 79-101
50. Quoted from Förster, Die Sicherung des "Lebensraumes" p. 1045
51. See Raul Hilberg, Perpetrators Victims Bystanders. The Jewish Catastrophe 1933-1945 (New York: HarperCollins, 1992)
52. Christopher R Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Batallion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York, 1992)
53. Daniel J. Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996)
54. See Streim, Correspondence, p. 332
55. Browning, Ordinary Men, pp. 177-83
56. Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, Bd. 15, 60, p. 154
57. Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, Bd. 17, p. 352
58. Rückerl, Investigation, pp. 80-83
59. See Kwiet, Auftakt zum Holocaust, p. 205
60. Dan Bar-On, "Holocaust Perpetrators and their Children: A Paradoxical Morality," Heimannsberg, Chr J Schmidt, The Collective Silence. German Identity and the Legacy of Shame (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1993), p. 202ff