Tapping Hitler's Generals

CHOLTITZ: Once I went to OLDENBURG and visited Gauleiter RÖVER[318] who said to me on parting: ‘I must congratulate you, Sir, on your “Regiment”. You are now in command of the “Oldenburger Regiment”. How are things in the field?’ I said: ‘Well, the soldiers’ morale is high, everything is in order. It’s just the home front that doesn’t satisfy our men.’ He asked why ever not. ‘Well, we can’t stand this shooting of Jews.’ The man couldn’t understand that. ‘And we cannot stand–I stress this fact in the name of my men–we won’t stand the persecution of churches and religious houses.’ In SOUTH OLDENBURG, which is Catholic, nuns and monks were being turned out of their houses and were not permitted to remain within a radius of 60 km, to prevent them from being assisted by the population.[319] He looked very amazed and then started shouting like a madman, saying: ‘What! Is that what your men are concerned about? It’s incredible! The FÜHRER gave orders, shouting at me furiously, that a report be sent him every day in which not at least a thousand Jews were shot.’

ROTHKIRCH: Only in GERMANY, or where?

CHOLTITZ: No–everywhere. I presumed he meant POLAND. 36,000 Jews from SEBASTOPOL were shot.

Document 129

CSDIC (UK), GRGG 272

Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 13–16 Mar. 45 [TNA, WO 208/4177]

ROTHKIRCH: All the gassing institutions are in POLAND, near LVOV.[320] I know that there are large gassing centres there but I don’t know any more. Let me tell you though, the gassings are by no means the worst.

RAMCKE: I first heard about all those things here in this PW camp.[321]

ROTHKIRCH: I’m an ‘Administration General’ and the people here have already interrogated me. It was near LVOV. Actually we washed our hands of it all because these atrocities took place in a military area. At LVOV in particular I was always receiving reports of those shootings and they were so bestial that I wouldn’t care to tell you about them.

RAMCKE: What happened?

ROTHKIRCH: To start with the people dug their own graves, then ten Jews took up their position by them and then the firing squad arrived with tommy-guns and shot them down, and they fell into the grave. Then came the next lot and they, too, were paraded in front of them and then fell into the grave and the rest waited a bit until they were shot. Thousands of people were shot. Afterwards they gave that up and gassed them. Many of them weren’t dead and a layer of earth was shovelled on in between. They had packers there who packed the bodies in, because they fell in too soon. The SS did that, they were the people who packed the corpses in.

RAMCKE: Were they ‘Waffen-SS’? What did the Security Police do?

ROTHKIRCH: I believe they were Security Police.

RAMCKE: Where were they recruited from?

ROTHKIRCH: I can’t tell you that, they were typical–they were SS men. There are photographs in this newspaper, you can see them. We received a description. I don’t know to this day why I got it. The SS leader wrote that he had shot the children himself–women were shot as well–because it was so repulsive; they didn’t always die immediately; he actually wrote that, I have the thing at home. He described how he grasped the children by the neck and shot them with his revolver because that way he had the greatest certainty of their dying instantaneously. This thing, which I had not asked for at all, I sent home.