Unlearned Lessons of the Holocaust. Excerpt from Timothy Snyder's Book, Soon to be Published in Ukrainian

On January 27, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Ukrainian edition of American historian Timothy Snyder's book "Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning" will be published by Choven Publishing House.

The book is based on new sources from Eastern Europe and forgotten testimonies of survivors, and it defines the Holocaust as a closer and more understandable event than it appears at first glance—and thus even more terrifying. In Hitler's imagination, the Holocaust was a strategy for restoring balance on the planet, and by eliminating the Jews, Germans were to obtain the necessary resources. Such a scenario could only be realized if Germany completely destroyed other states.

Reflecting on the lessons of the Holocaust, Timothy Snyder concludes: we have not understood the present and have jeopardized the future. At the beginning of the new century, we find ourselves looking back at the start of the previous one: the struggle for resources and the food crisis are accompanied by ideological challenges to the world order. Thus, the Holocaust is not just history but also a warning.

LIGA.netpublishes a fragment of the book.

[…] At some point, the Germans realized that pogroms were not a very effective method for exterminating Jews, and they also observed that the lawlessness provided an opportunity to find murderers who could be recruited for organized actions. Within a few weeks, they concluded that people liberated from Soviet rule could be drawn into violence for psychological, material, and political reasons.

Local residents who returned with the Germans brought with them and reinforced the German idea that liberation from Jews was the only possible emancipation and a prerequisite for any further political discussions. People who fled Soviet occupation to Berlin, and new recruits within the country, could be used as translators. Local collaborators added, possibly for their own purposes, the idea that killing a Jew would cleanse the stain of Soviet collaboration. Thus, in June and July 1941, the German managers of violence found a way to utilize the available post-Soviet resources.

The Nazi belief that Jews were not human and that Eastern Europeans were subhumans offered no tactics for the annihilation of the former and the subjugation of the latter. Only politics could motivate people to do what the Germans could not achieve on their own: physically destroy large groups of Jews in a very short period of time. Lithuania proved that this was politically possible; Latvia demonstrated that it was technically feasible. As in Lithuania, the destruction of the Latvian state by the Soviet regime in June 1940 provided a significant political opportunity for the Germans, offering them a large reserve of refugees who could be recruited.

The Germans began their occupation of Latvia with approximately 300 selected Latvians. Among them was a former head of the Latvian political police, whom they reinstated in his position. In Latvia and Lithuania, the arrival of the Germans was accompanied by a media propaganda campaign in the local language. Newspapers published gruesome photographs of murdered NKVD prisoners, labeling them as Latvian victims and Jews as the perpetrators. Radio broadcasts and newspaper articles in Latvian equated the Soviet regime with the Jews and portrayed liberation as their removal from Latvia.

At that time, Walter Stahlecker, the commander of Einsatzgruppe A, devised a formula. As always, according to him, the idea was to "create the impression that the local inhabitants were reacting naturally" to the attack on the Jews and "were acting of [their own] will." He spoke about the necessity to "channel" the experience of Soviet occupation into pro-German actions. As in Lithuania, the goal of propaganda in the local language through the media and in private conversations was to "dig this channel."

Stahlecker regarded the pogroms instigated under German influence as a kind of recruitment campaign. The result was a new model developed in twice-occupied Latvia: an execution squad led by locals who followed German orders and carried out most of the shootings. Its commander, Viktor-Bernhardt Arajs, became one of the most skilled mass murderers in European history.

*****

Arājs was born in the Russian Empire in 1910 to a German-speaking mother and a father who was repressed by the Soviet authorities after the October Revolution. Like Stahlecker and other German mass murderers, Arājs received a legal education. In 1932, he enrolled in the Faculty of Law in independent Latvia, and two years later joined the police to earn a living. He married a wealthy older woman to pay for his education and later had a younger mistress. Shortly before the war, he returned to his studies and excelled in a course on English constitutional law. After the occupation and annexation of Latvia by Soviet forces, Arājs continued his education.

He adapted his biography to fit their ideological template, emphasizing his humble origins and work as an ordinary laborer when applying for further education. He held a diploma from Soviet Latvia, meaning he earned a degree in Soviet law, defending a thesis focused on the Stalinist constitution. It seems he somewhat sympathized with the Soviet project and even considered himself a communist for a while. Later, an employer he favored was repressed. When the Soviet troops retreated under pressure from the Germans in the summer of 1941, they reportedly killed Arajs' lover and her family. It's unknown if he knew about this at the time or if it concerned him at all.

The leitmotif of Arajs's personal and public life was social advancement. He served three entirely different systems: Latvian, Soviet, and German. He showed no signs of allegiance to the communists until the Soviet troops arrived, just as he did not exhibit Nazi sympathies until the Germans came. Indeed, while working as a policeman in independent Latvia, he arrested members of illegal right-wing groups. Perhaps by chance, or perhaps by prearrangement, Arajs managed to meet Stahlecker immediately after the German troops entered Latvia.

Stahlecker's personal translator was a German from Latvia who knew Arajs before the war, when he served in the Latvian army. Arajs and Stahlecker met on July 1 and 2, 1941, when attacks on Jews were already taking place in Riga. By July 3, Arajs and his men were already carrying out their first arrests of Jews. The following day, they were burning Riga's synagogues.

In Riga, Araisu was allowed to use the house of a Jewish family of bankers as headquarters. This family's property was confiscated and they were deported—not by the Germans, but by the Soviet authorities. By the time the Germans arrived, the wealthier Jews were already in the Gulag. This provided a unique material resource. In addition to stripping property rights, the Soviet authorities also removed many property owners. Even if previous owners—the Jews—were still physically present in some cases, they could never reclaim their property under German rule. If Jews attempted to reclaim Sovietized property, the Germans considered them looters.

The non-Jewish population of Latvia—Latvians, Germans, and others—often thought as people do in similar situations: the only way to be sure of keeping stolen property is to ensure that no one else can make a legitimate claim to it. The Sovietization of Jewish property during the German occupation turned into its Latvianization. Although the Germans seized the best properties, such as the home of the banker’s family, they could not control this process throughout the country. The combination of Soviet expropriation and Nazi anti-Semitism created a clear material incentive for non-Jews to kill Jews.

On July 4, 1941, Arajs published announcements, vaguely worded, calling on Latvians to register for a new auxiliary police unit that would work for the Germans. There was no mention of Jews. Many of his first recruits were soldiers from the Red Army who had previously served in the Latvian military. It is quite likely that these were men who sought to wash away the double shame—the loss of Latvian independence and wearing the Soviet uniform. Volunteers who served in the Soviet militia also probably hoped to cleanse themselves of their Soviet past.

Arājs also successfully recruited Latvians who held grudges against the Soviet authorities, following the advice of Stahlecker. For example, one recruit had witnessed the deportation of his parents by the Soviet authorities. The largest age group of newly recruited policemen was between 16 and 21 years old.

For many of these young people, the previous year of Soviet occupation became a decisive experience in one way or another. Most of the new auxiliary police officers came from the working class. None of the first recruits knew in advance that their main duty would be to shoot Jews. Many of them were not volunteers at all; they were simply transferred from the regular police because initially there was a shortage of volunteers. Of course, not all these people were Latvian nationalists. Some of them were Russians.

The activities of the "Arajs Kommando," a creation of Stahlecker, were overseen by his subordinates Rudolf Batz and Rudolf Lange. They trained the unit's members to gather Jews and kill them, later shifting the responsibility for the murders onto Arajs. He and his men shot the Riga Jews in the Bikernieki forest on the outskirts of the city. Then, over the course of six months, from July to December 1941, they traveled through villages and towns on the infamous blue bus, killing the local Jews. Of the 66,000 Jews who lived in Latvia in the summer of 1941, the "Arajs Kommando" shot approximately 22,000, and later assisted in the killing of another 28,000.

Like other killers serving German policy and like the Germans themselves, the "Arajs Kommando" killed those they were ordered to eliminate. Like all mass murderers of Jews, they also killed the non-Jewish population. Traveling around the country, they, for instance, executed patients in psychiatric hospitals. After most Latvian Jews had perished, the "Arajs Kommando" was sent east to fight Soviet partisans, which essentially meant executing Belarusian civilians.

Throughout the entire period, Arajs was most concerned that the law degree he obtained during the Latvian and Soviet rule was no longer recognized by Germany. After his career as a mass murderer, he returned to the university in Riga, where he obtained a German degree in law.

*****

Timothy Snyder is an American historian, writer, and public intellectual. He is a professor at the University of Toronto (Canada); a specialist in the history of Eastern Europe in the 20th century, particularly the histories of Ukraine, Poland, and Russia. He is a researcher of nationalism, totalitarianism, and the Holocaust.

The main books by Timothy Snyder have been published in Ukrainian, including "Thinking the Twentieth Century" (co-authored with Tony Judt), "The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America," "On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Graphic Edition," "Our Malady: Lessons in Liberty. A Hospital Diary," "Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin," "Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning," "The Red Prince," "On Freedom."

"Black Earth" is being published in Ukrainian through a collaboration between the publishers "Choven" and "Local History" with the exclusive support of the bookstore "Sens".