The Kindly Ones

The Wehrmacht had finally resumed its advance, and this was creating new tasks for us. Guderian was completing his breakthrough, attacking the Soviet armies in Kiev from the rear; his prey, as if paralyzed, wasn’t reacting. The Sixth Army started moving again, and crossed the Dnieper; farther south, the Seventeenth Army was also passing the Dnieper. It was hot and dry, and the troops on the move raised columns of dust as high as buildings; when the rains came, the soldiers rejoiced, then cursed the mud. No one had time to bathe and the men were gray with dust and mire. The regiments advanced like little isolated ships on the ocean of corn and ripe wheat; they saw no one for days, and the only news that reached them came from Rollbahn drivers coming back up the line; all around them, flat and wide, stretched the vast earth: Is there anyone living on this plain? sings the knight in the old Russian tale. Sometimes, when we went out on a mission, we met one of these units; the officers would invite us to eat, happy to see us. On September 16, Guderian joined forces with von Kleist’s Panzers in Lokhvitsa, 150 kilometers beyond Kiev, surrounding four Soviet armies according to the Abwehr; to the north and south, the air force and infantry began to crush them. Kiev lay wide open. In Zhitomir, since the end of August, we had stopped killing Jews, and the survivors had been regrouped in a ghetto; on September 17, Blobel left the city with his officers, two units from the Police Regiment South, and our Askaris, leaving behind only the orderlies, the cooks, and the repair gear for the vehicles. The Kommandostab was to establish itself as soon as possible in Kiev. But the next day, Blobel changed his mind, or received a counterorder: he returned to Zhitomir to liquidate the ghetto. “Their insolent attitude hasn’t changed, despite all our warnings and our special measures. We can’t leave them behind us.” He formed a Vorkommando under the leadership of Häfner and Janssen to enter Kiev with the Sixth Army. I volunteered and Blobel accepted.