carried out searches and arrests. “Fifty-four Jews were liquidated on 4 July and 93 were liquidated on 5 July,” the report continues. “Sizeable property belonging to Jews was secured.” Intimidating raids and elimination of Jewish leaders made easier the larger roundups that followed.
Before Barbarossa the Soviet authorities had begun constructing a fuel depot in the Baltic pinewood five miles southwest of Vilnius at a place called Ponary, close to a railroad line. Fuel tanks of various diameters were to be sunken below ground level and circular pits to receive them were being excavated in the sandy soil. With the German invasion, the excavations had been abandoned, leaving a pit sixty feet in diameter half-cleared, with a semicircular trench twenty feet deep on its perimeter shored up with planking, and another sixty-foot pit next to it fully excavated. Smaller pits pocked the woods behind the main excavations like bomb craters. This place, which a young Vilnius Jew keeping a diary would call “the great grave,” was the place Einsatzkommando 9 chose for a killing site and immediately began to fill.
Two Wehrmacht drivers and a company clerk saw the early killings. All three reported watching daily columns of about four hundred Jewish prisoners marching out to Ponary from the direction of Vilnius, with armed civilians wearing armbands and carrying carbines guarding them. “They were all men,” the company clerk attested, “aged between about twenty and fifty. There were no women and children. These prisoners were really quite well-dressed and most of them were carrying hand luggage such as small suitcases, parcels and bundles.” The Einsatzgruppen played games of deception with their Jewish victims to make assembling them easier; the commonest, as here, was ordering them to appear for “labor duty” with minimal luggage. Victims unable to imagine the mass slaughters that the Germans were planning — who could?—credited the orders or feared to disobey them.
The Lithuanian auxiliaries led the Jewish men in groups down into the semicircular trench of the partly dug pit, which they were using as a holding area. “An elderly man stopped in front of the entrance for a moment,” one of the drivers reports, “and said in good German, ‘What do you want from me? I’m only a poor composer.’ The two civilians standing at the entrance started pummelling him with blows so that he literally flew into the pit.” When all the men had been herded into the trench, the guards standing above them on the partial excavation ordered them to strip to the waist, toss their jackets and shoes out of the trench and wrap their shirts around their heads. The guards enforced this order, the other driver says, by beating the men “with heavy truncheons and rifle butts.” He also noticed that the Lithuanians rummaged among the clothes and shoes. A Pole who lived near Ponary and kept a diary commented on the vulturing. “To the Germans,” this diarist wrote, “three hundred Jews means three hundred enemies of humanity. To the Lithuanians it means three hundred pairs of pants, three hundred pairs of boots.” His view was myopic; the Germans looted on a far grander scale.
Now the killing proceeded. The guards led ten hooded men at a time out of the trench and lined them up by having each man hold on to the waist of the man in front of him. A guard offered a club crosswise to the first man in line and led the line across and out of the first excavation to the edge of the second. Here the eyewitnesses’ stories diverge, suggesting how quickly the Einsatzkommandos adapted their techniques to improve the efficiency of their killing. One of the two drivers watched a ten-man Lithuanian firing squad shoot the ten hooded Jewish men one-on-one into the deep second pit. The other driver and the company clerk both describe seeing a light machine gun set up on the path between the two pits. When the lead guard had cleared the line, the
Before Barbarossa the Soviet authorities had begun constructing a fuel depot in the Baltic pinewood five miles southwest of Vilnius at a place called Ponary, close to a railroad line. Fuel tanks of various diameters were to be sunken below ground level and circular pits to receive them were being excavated in the sandy soil. With the German invasion, the excavations had been abandoned, leaving a pit sixty feet in diameter half-cleared, with a semicircular trench twenty feet deep on its perimeter shored up with planking, and another sixty-foot pit next to it fully excavated. Smaller pits pocked the woods behind the main excavations like bomb craters. This place, which a young Vilnius Jew keeping a diary would call “the great grave,” was the place Einsatzkommando 9 chose for a killing site and immediately began to fill.
Two Wehrmacht drivers and a company clerk saw the early killings. All three reported watching daily columns of about four hundred Jewish prisoners marching out to Ponary from the direction of Vilnius, with armed civilians wearing armbands and carrying carbines guarding them. “They were all men,” the company clerk attested, “aged between about twenty and fifty. There were no women and children. These prisoners were really quite well-dressed and most of them were carrying hand luggage such as small suitcases, parcels and bundles.” The Einsatzgruppen played games of deception with their Jewish victims to make assembling them easier; the commonest, as here, was ordering them to appear for “labor duty” with minimal luggage. Victims unable to imagine the mass slaughters that the Germans were planning — who could?—credited the orders or feared to disobey them.
The Lithuanian auxiliaries led the Jewish men in groups down into the semicircular trench of the partly dug pit, which they were using as a holding area. “An elderly man stopped in front of the entrance for a moment,” one of the drivers reports, “and said in good German, ‘What do you want from me? I’m only a poor composer.’ The two civilians standing at the entrance started pummelling him with blows so that he literally flew into the pit.” When all the men had been herded into the trench, the guards standing above them on the partial excavation ordered them to strip to the waist, toss their jackets and shoes out of the trench and wrap their shirts around their heads. The guards enforced this order, the other driver says, by beating the men “with heavy truncheons and rifle butts.” He also noticed that the Lithuanians rummaged among the clothes and shoes. A Pole who lived near Ponary and kept a diary commented on the vulturing. “To the Germans,” this diarist wrote, “three hundred Jews means three hundred enemies of humanity. To the Lithuanians it means three hundred pairs of pants, three hundred pairs of boots.” His view was myopic; the Germans looted on a far grander scale.
Now the killing proceeded. The guards led ten hooded men at a time out of the trench and lined them up by having each man hold on to the waist of the man in front of him. A guard offered a club crosswise to the first man in line and led the line across and out of the first excavation to the edge of the second. Here the eyewitnesses’ stories diverge, suggesting how quickly the Einsatzkommandos adapted their techniques to improve the efficiency of their killing. One of the two drivers watched a ten-man Lithuanian firing squad shoot the ten hooded Jewish men one-on-one into the deep second pit. The other driver and the company clerk both describe seeing a light machine gun set up on the path between the two pits. When the lead guard had cleared the line, the
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