HRUBIESZOW is located 258.1km SE of Warsaw. The German Army entered the town of Hrubieszow (aka Hrubieszow, Rubieszow, Rubieshow) on September 15, 1939, and immediately organized a series of pogroms. Ten days later the Germans withdrew and the Soviet Army occupied the town, but, after a fortnight, returned it to the Germans in accord with the provisions of the Soviet-German pact. Over 2000 Jews, having experienced the Nazi terror, left together with the withdrawing Soviet Army. After a series of forced evacuations to the east in winter 1939, the town's Jewish population was further diminished to 4,800 citizens by April 1940. However, no ghetto was established within town limits, and only small deportations to Hrubieszow were carried out duuring 1940-41. (The largest of these was the expulsion of 300 Jews from Krakow to Hrubieszow). The first deportations from Hrubieszow to the Sobibor death camp occured in June 1942, and the second in October 1942. After this some 200 Jews were allowed to remain alive in a labor camp, their task being to clean out the houses of the previously murdered Jews, and help send the contents on to Germany. The final 200 Jews were eventually sent to a forced labor camp in Budzyn, and most did not survive the war. [from Aaron Biterman's 'Hrubieszow Memorial Page'.]
I believe it has been pretty much documented both in the 1945 Nuremburg proceedings, and in the vast literature of the Holocaust, that the forced evacuations of 1939-40 of both Jews and Poles from their homes to make room for future German settlers, were undertaken by direct order of RSHA Chief Reinhard Heydrich, who tasked Amt IV chief Mu(e)ller and his deputy (then) SS-Hstf.Adolf Eichmann>Eichmann to get the job done using units of the Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei). An example from the trial of Adolf Eichmann>Eichmann
(Session 31 - May 8, 1961):
"Here we have a report on this terrible operation of expulsion. The document is our No.149. In this operation of transferring people and of searching for those suitable to become German deportations were carried out in two stages. In the first stage 261,517 persons were expelled and her is a list of all the districts, tens of districts, from which the Poles were deported by Section IVB4. The next page refers already not only to 'expelled Poles' but of 'expelled and disloged Poles.' And again there is a list of all the districts from which, in the year 1939 until the end of 1943, a total of 534,384 Poles were expelled from their homes and transferred to other localities. All of this by IVB4, headed by Adolf Eichmann>Eichmann. We have a partial report compiled until November 1940 on these evacuations, which was submitted by the Chief of the Security Police. Until then the number of deported Poles was 356,862."
As to which exact units of the German Army were carrying out the above described 'pogroms' of September 1939, it should be damning enough in the first instance that such units did in fact take part in this type of activity (and worse), and that it was publicly documented long before the advent of the Hamburg Institute's unstudied exhibition. For example, consider the Nuremberg testimony of Wehrmacht [Abwehr] Oberstleutnant Erwin Lahousen, authenticated and presented at [Session 31] of the Trial of Adolf Eichmann>Eichmann (8.May,1961):
" May it please the Court. We still have a number of
documents concerning the chapter of Poland, and I shall present them now. The
first document is our No.1535. It is a report by Oberstleutnant Lahousen on the
first stage of the first actions of the Einsatzgruppe in 1939. He describes his
visit to Poland and on 20 September, 1939 he reports about his activities in the
neighbourhood of Lemberg. At that time the German troops also occupied the area
in Poland from which they later retreated when the Soviets moved in.
On 21 September the demarcation line was decided upon. Lahousen says that there
was unrest and dissatisfaction in the Army, particularly on account of the fact
that young people are carrying out mass murders - especially of Jews - instead
of proving their courage at the front." This of course does not in any way
connect the Wehrmacht with what happened at Chelm-Hrubieszow in December 1939,
but it does [unfortunately] go a long way toward establishing that regular toops
were indeed 'capable' of such actions. Which troops exactly 'brutalized' and
murdered the Jews in the winter evacuation known as 'The Hrubieszow Death March'
? My guess is 'Sicherheitspolizei', probably using Orpo (Ordunungspolizei) or
men from any number of the 'SS-Totenkopf Standarten' who were in Poland at the
time and assisting the 'Einsatzgruppe' cadres in their dirty work. This of
course does not absolutely rule out the use of German Army [Heer] personnel for
such activities, for the SD had the power to routinely requisition assistance
for special 'security operations' from local Military Commands in the areas in
which they took place. As for this specific incident, I have written a couple of
queries to firends who have more archival material on the unfortunate incidents
in Chelm and Hrubieszow than I currently possess (including two of the
ref.books cited below), and will relate any findings back to the list.
Websites:
'Hrubieszow Death March' : http://www.geocities.co/Paris/Rue/4017/HUR.HTM
'Hrubieszow on the Web': http://www.jewishgen.org/shtetlinks/Hrubieszow
Eichmann>Eichmann's [role in evacuations] and Hrubiesow, 1939:
http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/people/e/Eichmann.adolf/transcripts/Sessions/Session-031-01
Books:
'Pinkas Hrubieszow' (Memorial Book of Hrubieszow) B.Kaplinsky ed.,1962, 811p. [Tel Aviv: Hrubieszow Assoc. of Israel and USA]
'Shorashim shelanu: le-zekher kedoshei Hrubieszow' (Our Roots: In Memory of the Jewish Victims of Hrubrieszow) [4-part series published by 'Hrubieszow Survivors Assoc.]
'From A Ruined Garden: The Memorial Books of Polish Jewry', ed.transl.J.Kugelmass and Jonathan Boyarin (Indiana Univ.Press, 1998)
Best regards,
Russ Folsom
(rfolsom@draper.com)
Back to September 15, 1939