Massacre at Slutsk

The first engagement studied in DA Pamphlet 20-269, Small Unit Actions During the German Campaign in Russia, occurs in the Izhora River Valley not far from Leningrad. The fighting was to keep supply lines open to Slutsk

A search on Slutsk showed that at the beginning of the 20th century, Jews made up almost 80 percent of the city’s 10,200 inhabitants. Likely, that percentage had not appreciably decreased when German soldiers arrived in late 1941.

On Oct. 27 and 28, four companies of SS Einsatzgruppen and Lithuanian allies murdered more than 4,000 Jews and Byelorussians.

Wilhelm Kube, Nazi commissioner general of Byelorussia, protested to Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS:

“The town was a picture of horror during the action. With indescribable brutality on the part of both the German police officers and particularly the Lithuanian partisans, the Jewish people, but also among them Belarusians, were taken out of their dwellings and herded together. Everywhere in the town shots were to be heard and in different streets the corpses of shot Jews accumulated. The Belarusians were in greatest distress to free themselves from the encirclement.
…

“I am submitting this report in duplicate so that one copy may be forwarded to the Reich Minister. Peace and order cannot be maintained in Belarus with methods of that sort. To bury seriously wounded people alive who worked their way out of their graves again is such a base and filthy act that the incidents as such should be reported to the Fuehrer and Reichsmarshal.”

Kube was an “old Nazi,” and not a defender of recognized subhumans, such as Jews, Slavs and Gypsies. The comical thing, as much as is possible in Nazi officials, is Kube’s belief that such murders, especially of Byelorussians, would stop if only Hitler and Himmler were informed.

Kube was killed in Minsk in 1943 when a bomb went off in his bed.

The reference to Kube’s letter is at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slutsk_Affair