The Kindly Ones

Blobel had come to Kharkov with the Saurer truck, and he was counting on using it for the action being pla

Finally the negotiations with the AOK came to a conclusion. Blobel, supported by the Ic Niemeyer, had asserted that the elimination of the Jewish population, as well as of other undesirables and political suspects, and even of non-residents, would contribute to easing the problem of the food supplies, which was growing increasingly urgent. The Wehrmacht, in cooperation with the city’s housing office, agreed to place a site at the Sonderkommando’s disposal for the evacuation: the KhTZ, a tractor factory, with barracks for the workers. It lay outside of the city, twelve kilometers from the center, beyond the river on the old road to Moscow. On December 14, an order was posted giving all Jews in the city two days to relocate there. As in Kiev, the Jews went there on their own, without escort; and at first they actually were housed in the barracks. On the day of the evacuation, it was snowing and very cold; the children were crying. I took a car to go to the KhTZ. The site hadn’t been sealed off and a huge number of people were coming and going. Since in these barracks there was no water or food or heat, the people left to find whatever they needed, and no one did anything to prevent them; informers simply pointed out those spreading negative rumors and upsetting the others; they were discreetly arrested and liquidated in the basements of the Sonderkommando’s offices. In the camp, utter chaos reigned; the barracks were going to ruin, children ran around screaming, old people were already dying, and since their families couldn’t bury them, they laid them out outside, where they remained, frozen by the frost. Finally the camp was closed and German guards were posted. But people kept flowing in, Jews who wanted to join their families, or else Russian or Ukrainian spouses, who were bringing food to their husbands, wives or children; we still let them come and go, since Blobel wanted to avoid panic and reduce the camp little by little, discreetly. The Wehrmacht had objected that a vast single action, as in Kiev, would create too much of a stir, and Blobel had accepted this argument. On Christmas Eve, the Ortskommandantur invited the officers from the Sonderkommando to a reception in the large conference hall of the Ukraine Communist Party, redecorated for the occasion; in front of a richly appointed buffet, we drank glass after glass of schnapps and brandies with the Wehrmacht officers, who raised their glasses to the Führer, to the Endsieg, and to our great common task. Blobel and the City Kommandant, General Reiner, traded gifts; then the officers who had a good voice sang some choruses. Begi

The cold settled in and made itself at home, almost like a living organism stretching out over the earth and seeping in everywhere, in the most unexpected places. Sperath informed me that frostbite was decimating the Wehrmacht, and often led to amputations: the hobnailed soles of the regulation Kommisstiefel had turned out to be an effective conductor of cold. Every morning dead sentinels were found, their brains frozen by their helmets being placed directly on their heads, without a wool cap underneath. The tank drivers had to burn tires under their engines to be able to start them up. Some of the troops had finally received warm civilian clothing, collected in Germany by the Winterhilfe, but there was a little bit of everything there, and some soldiers strolled about in women’s fur coats, feather boas, or fancy muffs. The looting of civilians was getting worse: the soldiers took sheepskin coats and shapkas by force, then threw their owners almost naked out into the cold, where many died. In front of Moscow, reportedly, it was even worse; ever since the Soviet counteroffensive at the begi