Letter dated 17 February 1942 by the District Commissioner of Vilnius county reminded the Local Administrative Head in Nemenčinė “to submit to me without delay the report of completion regarding my order of 12 December 1941 concerning the fencing of the sites of Jewish liquidation”.
Medical Services Report issued by the Ortskommandantur in Mariampol (Lithuania) on 5 April 1942. the report notes the need to reinforce “the Jewish graves at the edge of the barracks grounds with an additional covering of earth, because runoff from precipitation and flooding (the graves are located directly on the bank of the Sesupe River and are covered only by a 50 cm layer of earth) have washed away the covering layer and exposed the corpses”.
On 29 January 1942, the office of the Reichsführer-SS forwarded to the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories a proposed version of guidelines for the “Jewish question.” The guideline states that “the Jewish question must be solved generally for all of Europe” and that “measures in the occupied eastern territories which serve the final solution of the Jewish question and thereby the elimination of Jewry are in no way to be hindered”. The guidelines added that, especially in the occupied eastern territories “a fairly rapid solution of the Jewish question is to be sought”. They also remarked that “any “actions by the local civilian population against the Jews” were not “to be prevented”.
On February 6, 1942, the BdS Ostland in Riga (head of Einsatzgruppe A) telexed its Einsatzkommandos in Reval, Minsk and Kaunas to receive a break-down of “the number of executions carried out” and specifically asked “how many were women and children?” Three days later, the commander of Einsatzkommando 3 in Kaunas, Karl Jäger, telexed to Riga the “Executions up to 1 February 1942 by EK 3”: “Jews 136,421, Communists 1,064, Partisans 56, Mentally ill 653, Poles 44, Russian prisoners of war 28, Gypsies 5, Armenians 1”. Jäger summarized the total figures: “138,272, of which women 55,556, children 34,464”
This directive on “Burial sites of the Jews”, issued on 25 April 1942 by the District Commissioner of Wilna-Land (Vilnius Region), instructed local authorities that “the liquidation sites of the Jews must immediately be covered with sufficient quantities of chlorinated lime and the sites must be filled in with new earth”.
On May 16, 1942, SS-Untersturmführer August Becker submitted a report to the head of RSHA department II D, Walther Rauff, on his inspection of the operation of the homicidal gas vans at the Einsatzgruppen. Becker noted that the vehicles had become widely recognized, “that not only the authorities but also the civilian population referred to them as ‘death vehicles’ as soon as one of them appeared”. He also observed “various units have their own men unload the vehicle after the gassing,” and warned the commanders of “what enormous psychological and physical harm this work can cause to the men.” He states that “the gassing is generally not carried out correctly,” as drivers “consistently apply full throttle,” with the result that victims “die of suffocation.”
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 towns of the rest of the district”.
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”.
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 December 7, 1942, a German city medical officer named Dr. Wilhelm Hagen wrote an extraordinary letter addressed directly to Adolf Hitler. Hagen, who was the City Medical Officer of Warsaw, and claimed that during a government meeting on tuberculosis control, a senior official had revealed – as a “classified Reich matter” – that during the planned resettlement of 200,000 Poles to make way for German settlers, “to deal with a third of the Poles – with 70,000 old people and children under the age of 10, as with the Jews, that is, to kill them”. Hagen also wrote that “if this information had not come in an official capacity, I would dismiss it as mere fantasy.”