1944-01-21 / Secrets at Kaunas Fort IX: “Told Me About Your Kommando 1005 B, Even Giving Me Concrete Figures”
A series of wartime letters from early 1944 shows how knowledge of Sonderkommando 1005 circulated within German military and SS circles. In this correspondence, Oberleutnant Willy Schell threatens SS-Obersturmführer Radif – who was at the time in custody in connection with the escape of Jewish prisoners from the Sonderkommando 1005 site at Fort IX in Kaunas- “to report to your superiors the careless manner in which you told me about your Kommando 1005 B, even giving me concrete figures.” Schell sought to pressure Radif into retracting his testimony that Schell had disclosed an unspecified incident involving homosexual conduct. In his reply, the Commander of the Security Police in Kaunas stated that “I will in any case hold SS-Obersturmführer Radif accountable in this matter, although I would note that the confidential matter you refer to has long been generally known and has even been described in detail in illegal Lithuanian propaganda leaflets”. The defensive tone of the response – the Security Police refrained from reporting Schell to the legal authorities as this “could have unforeseeable consequences” – underscores the sensitivity of the information. So what makes these documents particularly interesting is the tension they reveal: on the one hand, Sonderkommando 1005 was an operation surrounded by extreme secrecy; on the other, fragments of its purpose – exhumation and destruction of bodies – were clearly leaking beyond strictly controlled channels.
