[Cz-L]FW: Czernowitz

Hi all. Have spoken to Stephen and he tells me that this unit operated in
other parts of the area...and any information will be of value. Any info
both to me and to Stephen! With thanks.....Cornel

From: Stephen Tyas [mailto:stephen.tyas_at_ntlworld.com]
Sent: 08 August 2010 19:45
To: cornel.fleming_at_virgin.net
Subject: Czernowitz

Dr Fleming,

We had a very short talk at the Wiener Library last month when they held a
talk on Czernowitz.

Firstly, I am not connected to anyone from Czernowitz.

My interest in Czernowitz is purely an historical one - just six weeks in
July and August 1941.

I have been researching the role of Einsatzgruppe D for over 25 years. EG D
had several detachments in the field, one of them was Sonderkommando 10b.

SK 10b, a mixed unit of Gestapo, criminal police and SS men totalling about
90 men, was stationed in Czernowitz from the first week of July until
middish

August 1941. Czernowitz was SK 10b's first station in the newly occupied
areas.

SK 10b worked closely with the occupying Rumanian military authorities in
Czernowitz, and with the Rumanian police carried out a number of executions

of Jews and others. During their period in Czernowitz SK 10b reported they
had executed 682 persons. This document has a Nuremberg trial reference

and accepted as an original document.

Now the problem.

I have research the West German police investigation into crimes of SK 10b.
In the course of their investigations, they interrogated everyone who had

served in SK 10b. When you compare one statement against another, you can
generally get an idea of what happened at various places. One episode

the perpetrators more or less agree on, is that there was a "demonstration
shooting" involving most of the SK 10b men at Czernwitz in July. This was a

common action among all the Kommandos from the four Einsatzgruppen in
Russia: many of the men had never been involved in execution squads so I

think these actions were organized to "blood" them and engender some kind of
camaraderie.

The "demonstration shooting" at Czernowitz involved only male victims,
mainly Jews, and ranges from 45 to 65 shot.

The perpetrators discuss other "minor" shootings that might make the total
they shot, maybe 100.

So who shot the other 582 and what were the circumstances?

I believe that the commander of SK 10b, Alois Persterer (a suicide in 1945)
fiddled the numbers of those executed and claimed those shot by the

Rumanian police. Fiddled, so that he would look good in the eyes of his
superiors.

The inflated figure of 682 is reported by Reitlinger and Hilberg, queried
but not fully answered by a recent German history of EG D.

The meeting at The Wiener Library showed a scattering of Czernowitz
survivors here in the UK. Unfortunately someone 15-20 in 1941 will be 85-90

years of age today. Among the Wiener Library records, including their
eye-witness reports taken in the 1950s, I have found nothing that is
helpful.

Would you have any knowledge of Czernowitz survivors here in the UK who
might prove helpful - or indeed, any documentation I have missed that

might clarify what happened?

I am personally known to Ben Barkow at the Wiener Library and if you google
my name you can find the kind of stuff I have written, I am not related

to any of the lawyers, solicitors and genealogists bearing my surname. I
have two articles printed in "Holocaust and Genocide Studies" publ. by

Oxford University Press in co-operation with the US Holocaust Memorial
Museum. Another is in peer review at this moment.

Regards

Steve Tyas

248 The Ridgeway

St Albans

Herts AL4 9XQ

phone 01727-842930

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Received on 2010-08-08 17:01:43