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A confidential report dated April 7, 1942, issued by the Lublin Labor Office, documents labor allocations for March 1942, including transfers of workers to the Reich, SS construction projects, and the reorganization of Jewish forced labor during the early phase of Operation Reinhard. The report explicitly records the onset of mass deportations in Lublin that "in mid-month a larger resettlement action of Jews was initiated by the SS and Police Leader, which is still ongoing and during which the ghetto was sealed off. Of the 40,000 Jews residing in Lublin, all but approximately 2,000 are being removed from the city. These 2,000 consist of approximately 800 skilled workers and their family members." The document further states that "The resettlement action is also to be carried out in the tow…
Radio message from the Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF) Russia South, Friedrich Jeckeln, to the Kommando Stab RF-SS, dated 28 August 1941. The situation report records that Police Regiment South reported “369 Jews shot,” while Police Battalion 320 stated that, “approximately 5,000 Jews were shot” during the "special action" in Kamenets-Podolsky (Kamianets-Podilskyi).
Interrogation of former SS-Untersturmführer Hans Stark of the Auschwitz Political Department, dated April 28, 1959, on atrocities committed at the Auschwitz concentration camp. As a former member of the admissions department, Stark testified that "newly arriving transports that were designated for shooting were not to be registered, as would have been done with others, but were to be led directly to be shot." He further described the early use of poison gas, stating that "the first gassing was carried out in the autumn of 1941 in the small crematorium. … A group of approximately 200 to 250 Jews was brought to the crematorium. They were men, women, and children of all ages. They were sent into the crematorium. I stood at the entrance and counted them. The gassings were carried out in such a…
Report by SS-Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl, head of the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office (SS-WVHA), to Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, dated 6 February 1943, on “the quantity of scrap material from the Jewish resettlement that has so far been shipped out from the Auschwitz and Lublin camps.” The report states that a total of 825 railway wagons of confiscated property were collected, sorted, and dispatched from the Auschwitz and Majdanek concentration camps.
Cover letter dated 13 November 1941 and situation report dated 10 November 1941 from the Wehrmacht Commander in White Ruthenia concerning the political and military situation in the occupied territory. The report states with regard to the Jews that “since they continue to make common cause with the Communists and partisans, the complete elimination of this alien element is being carried out,” and that these actions had so far taken place “in the eastern part of the area, in the former Soviet–Russian border region and along the Minsk–Brest Litovsk railway line.” Attached to the situation report was the supplementary report on “special incidents” describing such a “cleansing action” in the Sluzk–Kleck area: "5,900 Jews were shot by Reserve Police Battalion 11".
Dated 10 November 1941 and issued by the Wehrmacht commander in occupied Belarus, this monthly report records that of 10,940 prisoners taken, 10,431 were executed, and that in a single “cleansing operation” near Sluzk, 5,900 Jews were shot by Reserve Police Battalion 11.
In an interrogation conducted by West German authorities on November 2, 1960, former SS driver Richard Böck gave further testimony about his service at Auschwitz. He provided firsthand account of mass gassing at the Bunker extermination site in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Among other details, Böck stated that "after the entire transport—there must have been about 1,000 people—was inside the building, the gate was closed. Then an SS man, I believe he was a Rottenführer, came to our ambulance and took out a gas canister. With this canister, he went to a ladder that stood on the right side of the building, as seen from the gate. I noticed that he was wearing a gas mask as he climbed the ladder. When he reached the top, he opened a circular metal flap and poured the contents of the canister into the o…
Telex from the Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF) Russia South, Friedrich Jeckeln, to the Command Staff RF-SS, dated 25 August 1941. The situation report states that the 1st SS Brigade recorded “283 Jews shot,” while Police Regiment South recorded “1,342 Jews shot.”
Telex (copy) from the Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF) Russia South, Friedrich Jeckeln, to the Kommando Stab RF-SS, dated 22 August 1941. The situation report records that Police Bataillon 45 "shot 5 prisoners, among them 3 armed women, 19 further bandits, and 66 Jews. Furthermore, in Sudylkuw 471 Jews."
Radio message (copy) from the Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF) Mitte, Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, to the Kommando Stab RF-SS, dated 7 August 1941. The situation report states that “by today at noon a further 3,600 have been executed” by the SS Cavalry Brigade, “so that the total number executed by the Cavalry Brigade to date amounts to 7,819.” The report concludes that “thus the figure of 30,000 in my area has been exceeded.”
On 4 May 1945, Kurt Gerstein completed a report describing his curriculum vitae and his inspection trip as SS-to the Aktion Reinhard extermination camps of Belzec and Treblinka, which took place between 17 and 19 August 1942. In this report, Gerstein provided an account of the extermination process, including the operation of the gas chambers. According to his testimony, he was sent to the camps in his capacity as an expert in disinfestation, first to assist with the disinfection of textiles collected during Aktion Reinhard and, second, to convert the gas chambers from engine exhaust to prussic acid (hydrogen cyanide).
A report submitted by the Wehrmacht’s Local Headquarters in Kerch, Crimea on 7 December 1941 recorded the extermination of the city’s Jewish population. It mentions that the “execution of about 2,500 Jews was carried out on 1, 2, and 3 December [1941]”. In the document, the word “execution” is crossed out in pencil and replaced with “resettlement,” the euphemism the Nazis used to conceal the murder of Jews. The report also noted that "additional executions are to be expected, since part of the Jewish population fled, went into hiding, and must first be apprehended".
This detachment order from SS Cavalry Regiment 1, issued on 1 August 1942, illustrates how Himmler’s earlier order that "all Jews must be shot. Jewish women are to be driven into the swamps" was integrated into daily field operations. The document notes that Himmler’s instruction “regarding the shooting of Jews is not to be taken as a reprimand, since up to now there have been no Jews” in the area. It underscores the directive to patrol leaders: “no male Jew is to remain alive; no remnant family is to remain in the localities.”
An explicit directive issued by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler transmitted via radio signal to SS Cavalry Regiment 2 on August 1, 1941 set out how the unit was to deal with Jews in its operational area. The order stated that "all [male] Jews must be shot" and that "Jewish women are to be driven into the swamps".
On June 30, 1943, the SS and Police Leader of Galicia in Lemberg (Lwiw) SS-Gruppenführer Fritz Katzmann submitted to the Higher SS and Police Leader East Friedrich Wilhelm Krüger, a top secret report on the “Solution of the Jewish Question in Galicia.” During the ghetto relocations of winter 1941/1942, the report states that “all work-shy and antisocial Jewish riffraff were identified during the screening and given special treatment" – a standard Nazi euphemism for extrajudicial killing. Katzmann records that “resettlement from the District of Galicia began in April 1942 and was carried out continuously,” and that by November 1942 “254,989 Jews had already been resettled or relocated.” He goes on to explain that “the resettlement was carried out vigorously, so that as of 23 June 1943 all…
Daily construction report from the firm W. Riedel & Sohn, dated 2 March 1943, detailing the work carried out on Crematorium IV at Auschwitz. The document records the number of workers present, the hours they worked, and the tasks completed that day—from plastering walls and fitting ventilation elements to “concreting the floor in the gas chamber.”
War Diary no. 1 of the Operation Staff Minsk, compiled by SS-Obersturmführer Fritz Biermeier for the Higher SS and Police Leader for the Ostland, documents the anti-partisan and extermination action Operation Swamp Fever ("Sumpffieber") carried out in the Generalkommissariat Weissruthenien in August-September 1942. The report statess that "8350 Jews were executed", while "389 armed bandits were shot in combat".
A report dated 1 August 1941 by Higher SS and Police Leader SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln describes a three-day “cleansing operation” carried out by the 1st SS-Brigade RFSS across Volhynia. Framed as a military and anti-partisan sweep in the army's rear, the documents records mass shootings of 73 Russian soldiers, 165 officials and civilians accused of supporting the Soviet regime and 1,658 Jews portrayed as "given significant support to the Bolshevik system and who had betrayed Ukrainians to the Bolshevik authorities".
In this secret directive (telex dated 25 October 1942), SS-Obersturmbannführer Arthur Liebehenschel instructed SS-Hauptsturmführer Hans Aumeier that any inspection of the Auschwitz camp’s “special installations” for “special accommodation” (Sonderunterbringung) was strictly prohibited, and that "escape shootings" were to be avoided during the visit of a French construction commission inspecting the labor facilities of the Auschwitz complex.
On April 19, 1943, SS statistician Richard Korherr submitted a shortened version of his Korherr Report – the SS’s statistical account of the “Final Solution of the European Jewish Question” – to the personal staff of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, for presentation to Adolf Hitler. In the report, Korherr estimated that “the reduction of Jewry in Europe from 1937 to the beginning of 1943 is to be estimated at 4½ million” and noted that “only part of the deaths of Soviet-Russian Jews in the occupied eastern territories could be recorded, while those in the rest of European Russia and at the front are not included at all.” He concluded that “European Jewry since 1933 has probably lost almost half of its total population,” of which “only about half has flowed to other continents.”…
On July 20, 1943, SS-Obersturmbannführer Eduard Strauch, Commander of the Security Police and the SD in White Ruthenia, issued a memorandum on a confrontation with Gauleiter Wilhelm Kube after Strauch had that morning “delivered for special treatment” (Sonderbehandlung) the entire Jewish staff of the General Commissariat in Minsk – an euphemism for their execution. Kube condemned the actions of the Security Police as "unworthy of a German human being and of a Germany of Kant and Goethe" and accused Strauch's "men derived a kind of perverse pleasure from these executions". Strauch, in turn, complained that "even the fact that the Jews who were to undergo special treatment had their gold dental fillings properly removed by medical specialists had become the subject of gossip".