The Kindly Ones

The next morning the Gruppenstab arrived, together with the bulk of our Kommando, headed by Kuno Callsen. Sappers had finally inspected our palace and taken away the crates of explosive bottles, and we had been able to go back to our premises in time to welcome them. A Vorkommando from the HSSPF arrived too and occupied the czar’s residence that we had just left; they brought with them two Orpo battalions, which gave us considerable reinforcements. The Wehrmacht began to dynamite the buildings in the center of town to control the fires. Four tons of explosives had been found in the Lenin Museum, ready to detonate, but the sappers had managed to defuse them and buried them in front of the entrance. The new City Kommandant, Generalmajor Kurt Eberhard, was holding almost constant meetings, which representatives of the Group and the Kommando had to attend. Since Kehrig still hadn’t been replaced, I found myself the acting Leiter III of the Kommando, and Blobel often asked me to accompany him or delegated me in his place when he was too busy; the Gruppenstab also conferred hourly with the men from the HSSPF, and Jeckeln himself was expected that night or the next day. In the morning, the Wehrmacht was still thinking of civilian saboteurs and had asked us to help search them out and repress them; then, in the course of the day, the Abwehr found a demolition plan of the Red Army, listing almost sixty objectives prepared for destruction before their departure. Engineers were sent to inspect and seemed to confirm the information. More than forty of the objectives were still waiting to explode, some equipped with wireless detonators, controlled from a distance; the sappers were furiously demining, as fast as possible. The Wehrmacht wanted to take radical measures; at the Group too, measures were being discussed.

On Friday the Sicherheitspolizei began its activities. With the help of information I gathered, 1,600 Jews and Communists were arrested during the day. Vogt had set up seven commandos for the interrogations—in the Dulags, in the camp for the Jews, in the civilian camp, and in town—in order to sift through the masses of prisoners and pick out the dangerous elements. I reported this during one of Eberhard’s meetings; he nodded, but the army wanted more. The acts of sabotage continued: a young Jew had tried to cut one of the pipes set in the Dnieper by the sappers to feed their fire hoses; the Sonderkommando shot him, as well as a band of Gypsies caught rummaging around in an outlying neighborhood near an Orthodox church. On Blobel’s orders, one of our platoons liquidated the mentally ill in the Pavlov Hospital, for fear they might escape and add to the disorder. Jeckeln had arrived; in the afternoon, he presided over a large meeting at the Ortskommandantur, which was attended by General Eberhard and staff officers from the Sixth Army, officers from the Group, including Dr. Rasch, and officers from the Sonderkommando. Rasch looked out of sorts: tapping on the table with his pen, he didn’t speak, his somewhat vacant gaze straying distractedly over the faces surrounding him. Jeckeln, by contrast, was brimming with energy. He gave a short speech about the sabotage, the danger represented by the masses of Jews in the city, and the necessity to have recourse to the most rigorous possible measures of retaliation, but also of prevention. Sturmbannführer Hennicke, the Leiter III of the Einsatzgruppe, presented some statistics: according to his information, Kiev must at that time have been harboring some 150,000 Jews, permanent residents or refugees from western Ukraine. Jeckeln suggested, as a preliminary measure, shooting 50,000 of them; Eberhard warmly approved and pledged the logistic support of the Sixth Army. Jeckeln turned to us: “Gentlemen,” he declared, “I give you twenty-four hours to prepare a plan for me.” Blobel leaped up: “Obergruppenführer, it will be done!” Rasch spoke for the first time: “With Standartenführer Blobel, you can count on it.” His tone held a rather marked irony, but Blobel took it as a compliment: “Absolutely, absolutely.”—“We have to make a strong impression,” Eberhard concluded, calling the meeting to a close.