#7

Post by michael mills » 16 Feb 2004, 14:15

As the Russian forces moved forward, they uncovered more and more German atrocities, and on December 15, at Kharkov, four SS men were brought to trial, accused of using gas vans to murder Soviet civilians. One of the accused was a twenty-four year old SS lieutenant, Hans Ritz. On first having heard the words 'gas van' mentioned in Kharkov, Ritz told the prosecutor, 'I remembered the vehicle from my stay in Warsaw, where I witnessed the evacuation in it of the unreliable sections of the Warsaw population'. While in Warsaw, Ritz added, 'I got to know that part of the Warsaw population were evacuated by railway and another part were loaded into the "gas vans" and exterminated'.



Here is a brief statement on the Kharkov Trial from the book "Second World War" by Martin Gilbert (p. 480):The crucial element in the above statment by Ritz is his claim that he personally saw a gas van being used in Warsaw, and people from Warsaw being killed in it.No historian today claims that gas vans were used in the extermination of any part of the population of Warsaw. The generally accepted account is that the Jews held in the Warsaw Ghetto were evacuated by railway to Treblinka II camp and killed there in stationary gas chambers.Therefore Ritz cannot possibly have seen a gas van in operation at Warsaw, or have seen large numbers of people being killed in it there. Therefore, his statement was a falsehood.The question is, why did Ritz make that false statement?One possibility is that he deliberately made an obviously false statement of his own volition, in order to alert observers of the trial that other statements made by him were false.Another possibility, more likely in my view, is that Ritz was induced to make the false statement by his interrogators, who were unaware that gas vans were not used at Warsaw. In other words, Ritz was simply regurgitating a script that had been given to him by the prosecutors.Either way, any statement made by him concerning the use of gas vans at Kharkov or elsewhere must be treated with a high degree of reserve.Now to the judgement itself. It states that over 30,000 innocent citizens of the city of Kharkov were killed during the German occupation; of that number, the great majority, some 20,000, were "peaceful Soviet citizens" who were taken in November 1941 to barracks situated on the Kharkov Tractor Station as subsequently shot in small groups.That leaves 10,000 other victims, but the judgement does not give any figures adding up to anywhere near that total. It mentions 435 inmates of the Kharkov Regional Hospital killed in December 1941, and 800 wounded Red Army men killed in a hospital in March 1943 (presumably after the city was recaptured by the Waffen-SS), a total of 1,235.Accordingly, we must assume that the figure of 30,000 is an exaggeration plucked out of the air, and that the true total was a bit over 20,000, consisting essentially of the "peaceful Soviet citizens" imprisoned in the barracks at the Kharkov Tractor Station in November 1941 and later shot progressively in small groups.What the judgement conceals is the fact that the 20,000 "peaceful Soviet citizens" were all Jews. That is known from original German documents, which describe how the Jews of Kharkov were rounded up and held for several months in a ghetto situated at the tractor station, and were eventually shot in a series of actions in early 1942.Thus, almost all the victims of the German occupation of Kharkov, apart from a very small number of hospital patients and Red Army men, were members of the Jewish minority, not ethnic Ukrainians or Russians. The question is, why did the judgement conceal that fact?The answer is to be found in the situation of the Soviet Government in 1943. It was engaged in a life-or-death struggle with the German invaders, and was trying to win that struggle by mobilising the entire Soviet population for its war effort. In order to achieve that mobilisation, it had to convince all parts of its population that they were all targeted for destruction by the German invaders, and that the only way they could save themselves was to support the Soviet Government in its struggle, even though they might loath and detest Communism.Now, the aim of the Soviet Government to mobilise its population against the German invader would be frustrated if the large majority groups, Russians and Ukrainians, came to realise that they were not being targeted as a group by the Germans at all, and that it was only the Jewish minority that was being targeted, a group that the rest of the Soviet population did not like and regarded as arch-collaborators with their oppressive Communist rulers. If the majority population realised that they were not being targeted, they would be less likely to risk their lives by opposing the ruthless German occupation for the sake of saving the Soviet Government.Thus, it was vitally important to the Soviet Government to hide the fact that it was primarily the Jews who were being targeted for destruction by the German invaders, and that in some cases, as at Kharkov, the victims of the occupation were almost entirely Jewish. That explains the deceptive formula "peaceful Soviet citizens" used in the judgement at the Kharkov Trial.Now a word on the German defendants. If we disregard the more sensational elements of the charges against them, it appears that their main crime was their involvement in interrogations of prisoners, only to be expected given that they were officers of the Security Police. No doubt in carrying out those interrogations they used vogorous methods, including beatings and torture. However, it is most likely that the persons interrogated had been involved in various sorts of resistance to the German occupation administration, perhaps partisan activity.The judgement of course proclaims that the persons interrogated were all "completely innocent citizens" who had been "framed". But I suggest that is to be taken with a rather large grain of salt.Only two of the defendants, the German Retzlaw and the Russian collaborator Bulanov, appear to have been found guilty of involvemnt in killings using gas vans. Whether they actually were guilty is a matter of conjecture. As the quote from the Martin Gilbert book shows, the "confessions" made by the defendants in relation to the use of gas vans must be regarded as dubious.