Sonderkommando Lange

[David Thompson]

[This thread was split off from the discussion of "Himmler orders on 30 November 1941" at
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=85994 and recaptioned by the moderator -- DT.]


Michael -- You said:

The suggestion made by Wetzel, of using the "Brack device", ie gas-chambers using bottled carbon monoxide, to solve the problem of overcrowding was never implemented in Riga. Rather it was solved by killing off the native Jews penned up in the Riga ghetto in two mass shooting actions.

You're overlooking the mobile version of the "Brack device" -- carbon monoxide gassing vans. The RSHA sent three to Riga in mid-December 1941, and another 2 or 3 later (ed. Eugen Kogon, Hermann Langbein, and Adalbert Rückerl, Nazi Mass Murder: A Documentary History of the Use of Poison Gas, Yale University Press, New Haven/London: 1993, pp. 56-58):

Gas Vans in the Eastern Territories (Reichskommissariat Ostland)

Einsatzgruppe A operated in the Baltic states, EG B in Byelorussia and Smolensk. They were under the control of the chief of the Security Police and the SD of the Eastern Territories,* which had its headquarters in Riga and was commonly referred to by the initials BdS.
____________________________________________
* The Eastern Territories (Reichskommissariat Ostland) included Byelorussia, Ruthenia, and the Baltic states (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia), all occupied by Hitler. (Editor's note.)

The Gas Vans behind the Front 57

In the middle of December 1941, three gas vans were brought from Berlin to Riga and put at the disposal of the BdS of the Eastern Territories. There were two small Diamond vans and one large Saurer van. Two drivers, Karl Gebl and Erich Gnewuch, arrived from Berlin before Christmas 1941. At the beginning of 1942 they were dispatched with two gas vans to the commander of the BdS regional office for Byelorussia, located in Minsk and known, like the other regional offices, by the initials KdS. Gnewuch said in his deposition,

"On orders from my department, I too drove a gas van from Berlin to Minsk. These vans had been constructed with a lockable cargo compartment, like a moving van. It could hold about fifty to sixty Jews. I personally gassed Jews in this gas van. "11

Some time later the KdS of Byelorussia found that it needed more gas vans. It applied to the BdS in Riga, and an official named Trühe, who was head of the supply section there, telegraphed to the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin:

A transport of Jews, which is to be subjected to special treatment, arrives weekly at the office of the commandant of the Security Police and Security Service of White Ruthenia.

The three S-vans there are not sufficient for that purpose. I request assignment of another S-van (five tons). At the same time, I request the shipment of twenty gas hoses for the three S-vans on hand (two Diamond, one Saurer), because the ones on hand are already leaky.12

Trühe declared in his deposition:

"I am aware of the use of the so-called gas vans. It was considered a state secret, and I was informed of it only after some time. "13

He remembered that the gas vans—six in all—had been sent by the Reich Security Main Office from Berlin to Riga. He apparently did not know to which of the regional services they had been attached. The KdS in Riga was supposed to have received one or two of them.14

Dr. August Becker, who was charged by the Reich Security Main Office with supervising the use of the gas vans in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union, saw one of these vehicles in Riga in June 1942 at the end of a tour of inspection. Another eyewitness, a Jew from Riga named Mendel Vulfovich, testified on 9 December 1944 before a Soviet commission investigating Nazi war crimes:

"In February 1942, I saw with my own eyes two thousand elderly Jews from Germany, men and women, being loaded into special gas vans. These vans were painted gray-green and had a large closed cargo compartment with hermetically sealed doors. All those inside were killed by gas. "15

It is probable that gas vans were also used in the Einsatzgruppe A sector, in Estonia, Latvia, and the region of Leningrad,16 because a reply dated 22 June 1942 from Rauff 's department at the Reich Security Main Office reads: "The delivery of a five-ton Saurer can be expected in the middle of next month. The

58 The Gas Vans behind the Front

vehicle is at the Reich Security Main Office for repairs and minor alterations. One hundred meters of hose will be supplied."17

A letter dated 13 July announced,

"The gas van Pol 71463 is ready. It will be sent to Riga with its driver. "18

According to Trühe's testimony, the Reichskommissariat for the Eastern Territories had five or six gas vans at its disposal in 1942 and 1943. One or two remained in Einsatzgruppe A's sector—that is, in Riga and the area between Latvia and Leningrad. Four operated in the Minsk KdS sector, where Einsatzkommando 7b, 8, and 9 each had its own van. The fourth was probably stationed in Minsk itself.

[michael mills]

You're overlooking the mobile version of the "Brack device" -- carbon monoxide gassing vans. The RSHA sent three to Riga in mid-December 1941, and another 2 or 3 later

The problem with the above explanation is that there is no demonstrable connection between Brack and the Führer Chancellory on the one hand and the gas vans on the other.

The gas-vans were designed and produced by technicians in the Criminal Technical Institute (KTI) of the Criminal Police, a part of the RSHA under the command of Nebe. While Nebe was for a time commanding EG B, which operated in Belorussia, he carried out experimental killings of Soviet mental patients using first explosives and then motor-vehicle exhaust (this second experiment was filmed, and the film still exists). Thus, Nebe and the Criminal Police under his command seem to have been the initiators of the gas-vans, mobile gas-chambers using their own exhaust as the killing agent.

The gas-vans, having been built by the KTI, remained part of the vehicle fleet of the RSHA, which despatched them to various places in the occupied Soviet Union, and also to Serbia.

Thus, there is no connection between Brack and the gas-vans. They were not under his control, so he could not told Wetzel that he could send them to Ostland.

Most probably Brack suggested to Wetzel that "euthanasia" be applied to surplus Jews in Ostland, and that the methodology used in the T-4 centres under his control, gassing in stationary gas-chambers with bottled carbon monoxide, be transferred there. He seems to have promised to send his own staff to build the chambers.

However, there is no indication that Brack's suggestion, as forwarded by Wetzel, was ever taken up by the civilian authorities in Ostland.

There is also no indication that Lohse had ever suggested culling the remaining Latvian Jews, or asked for assistance in doing so. The number of Latvian Jews had been greatly reduced during the summer massacres, and Lohse wanted to use those remaining as a slave labour force, penned up in closed ghettos.

Here is what the leading authority on Latvia, Ezergailis, has to say on the subject, in his chapter on the Rumbula Massacre (page 246):

Lohse was not obligated to carry out the Führer Befehl; his orders from Alfred Rosenberg were to raise the productivity of the Ostland and to supply the army with daily necessities and hardware. Lohse's program for the Jews was to drive them into the ghettos, expropriate their property, and exploit their labor. Also Hans-Adolf Prützman, the High commander of SS and the Police (HSSPF) in the Baltic and Belarus, who, was in charge of the Jews after Stahlecker moved east, played a passive role.

During September and October Lohse's policy prevailed in the Baltic. The ghetto was sealed on October 25. Free exit and entrance were no longer possible. The SD appeared to be checkmated in the Baltic. But not for long. Himmler was impatient and a decision was soon made in Berlin to reinvigorate the fundamental orders in the Baltic. As the Rîga ghetto was closing, Prützman and Jeckeln were ordered to exchange places. On October 31 Prützman was ordered south. Jeckeln, who had killed tens of thousands of Jews in Ukraine, Berdichov, Krivoi-Rog, Kiev, Kremenchug, and had designed the “Jeckeln system” for mass executions, was ordered north. On November 5, Jeckeln's staff of about fifty men arrived in Rîga. The general himself was summoned to Berlin, where on November 12 Himmler told him about the problems in the Baltic, and specifically ordered him, contrary to Lohse's plan, to kill the Jews in the Rîga ghetto. To counter Lohse's possible objections Himmler told Jeckeln: “Tell Lohse that it is my order, and that it also the expressed wish of the Führer.” After his arrival in Rîga, Jeckeln met Lohse and explained Himmler's orders to him. Lohse raised no further objections, and Jeckeln ensconced himself in the Ritterhaus, the one-time seat of the feudal Germans.

Thus it is unlikely that in the period from 4 to 25 October, Lohse had raised with Wetzel the need to get rid of some Jews, and Wetzel had sought out a methodology for doing so.

The most likely explanation is that the draft dated 25 october was an initiative by Wetzel, based on a suggestion by Brack, and was not acted on by either Rosenberg or Lohse. We know that Lohse was opposed to killing the Riga Jews; accordingly it is impossible that he could have sought a methodology for doing so.

Finally, Ezergailis was able to find no evidence that gas-vans were ever used in Latvia. All the killings were carried by shooting actions undertaken by Latvian auxiliaries, mainly in the Bikernieki Forest.

[David Thompson]

Michael -- You said:

The problem with the above explanation is that there is no demonstrable connection between Brack and the Führer Chancellory on the one hand and the gas vans on the other.

You are mistaken. See chapter 5 of ed. Eugen Kogon, Hermann Langbein, and Adalbert Rückerl, Nazi Mass Murder: A Documentary History of the Use of Poison Gas, Yale University Press, New Haven/London: 1993, pp. 73-101 on "The Stationary Gas Vans at Kulmhof." The demonstrable connection is Sonderkommando Lange.

[michael mills]

The Sonderkommando Lange was a unit of the Security Police, under the command of the Sipo office in Posen. It was therefore under the command of the RSHA, not of the Führerkanzlei.

The Sonderkommando Lange was set up to liquidate the inmates of mental hospitals in the annexed Polish territories, operating out of Soldau in East Prussia.

Then it was lent by the HSSPF Wartheland, Koppe, to Reichstatthalter Greiser for the purpose of carrying out the Sonderbehandlung of 100,000 Jews of the Wartheland, which had been authorised by Himmler and Heydrich at Greiser's request. That was the genesis of the killing operation located at Chelmno.

The three gas-vans employed by Sonderkommando Lange (later Sonderkommando Bothmann) for the purpose of carrying out the Sonderbehandlung were detailed to it by the vehicle park of the RSHA.

The bottom line is that Brack did not have possession of any gas-vans that he could send anywhere. What he did have was staff who had built and operated the gas-chambers at the Euthanasia institutes in Germany, and we must assume that he was offering that staff to the Ostministerium for employment at Riga.

The crucial point is that there is nothing to indicate that Brack's offer of his staff for use in Riga was ever taken up.

[David Thompson]

Michael -- You said:

The crucial point is that there is nothing to indicate that Brack's offer of his staff for use in Riga was ever taken up.

As far as I am aware, this statement is accurate.

On the issue of the "demonstrable connection between Brack and the Führer Chancellory on the one hand and the gas vans on the other," here is a passage from ed. Eugen Kogon, Hermann Langbein, and Adalbert Rückerl, Nazi Mass Murder: A Documentary History of the Use of Poison Gas, Yale University Press, New Haven/London: 1993, pp. 73-75 which fills in some details missing in your post above:

Chapter 5 The Stationary Gas Vans at Kulmhof

The extermination center at Kulmhof (the Polish Chelmno) was set up by the National Socialists principally to exterminate the Jewish population of the Polish provinces of Poznan (Posen) and Lodz. But thousands of German Jews and other nationals were killed there, too, including five thousand Gypsies. At the end of the so-called Polish campaign, these two provinces were incorporated into the Reich under the name of the Reichsgau Wartheland, or Warthegau.*

The Planning

A letter of 16 July 1941 from a Warthegau official to SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann contains the first known reference to the possibility of "eliminating the Jews" in the Warthegau "by some fast-working poison." The writer was SS-Sturmbannführer Rolf-Heinz Hoppner, of the staff of the chief of police (who was also the SS leader) in the Warthegau. The letter reads:

During discussions held in the governor's office, various agencies looked at the solution of the Jewish question in the Reichsgau Wartheland. The following solution was proposed:

(1) All the Jews in the Warthegau will be taken to a camp for 300,000 people, to be constructed as near the main coal railroad [Gdynia-Silesia] as possible. The camp will be constructed in the form of barracks, in which there will be workshops equipped for tailoring, shoemaking, etc.

(2) All the Jews in the Warthegau will be assembled in this camp. Those who are fit for work could be grouped into working parties as required and detached from the camp.

(3) According to SS-Brigadefuhrer Albert, a camp of this kind could be

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* As we noted in chapter 2, Arthur Greiser was Reichstatthalter (governor) as well as Gauleiter (district party leader). (Editor's note.)

[p. 73]

74 The Stationary Gas Vans at Kulmhof

guarded with fewer police than is at present the case. Moreover, the danger of epidemic, which threatens the population in the vicinity of the ghetto in Litzmannstadt [Lodz] and in other places, will be reduced to a minimum.

(4) This winter there is a danger that it will not be possible to feed all the Jews. It should therefore seriously be considered whether the most humane solution would not be to eliminate those Jews unfit for work by some fast-working method. That would in any case be more agreeable than leaving them to die of starvation.

(5) It has also been proposed that all Jewish women of childbearing age in the camp should be sterilized, so that the Jewish problem would in fact be resolved with this generation.

(6) The Reichsstatthalter [governor] has not yet given his opinion on this matter. It would seem that Regierungsprasident Uebelhoer [head of the local administration] does not wish to see the ghetto in Litzmannstadt disappear, as he makes quite a bit of money out of it. As an example of how money can be made from the Jews, I have been informed that the Reich Ministry of Labor pays 6 RM from a special fund for every Jew put to work, but in fact the Jew [in camp] costs only 0.80 RM.

A Sonderkommando was then put together and placed under the command of SS-Hauptsturmfuehrer Herbert Lange, who along with some of his men had already carried out mass killings during the "euthanasia" operation. The then chief of police and SS leader of the Warthegau, Wilhelm Koppe, made the following statement about this unit's formation and its task:

It was in 1940, or it may have been 1941, that I learned that a commissar from Berlin was to arrive in the Warthegau with an SS commando that would carry out the evacuation" of the Jews in this province. At the time I did not for one moment imagine that all the Jews were to be exterminated. Greiser also believed that Jews fit for work would be kept for production. I thought that the special commando from Berlin and its commissar, whose name I later discovered was Lange, would be employed only on an experimental basis to begin with. This idea was based on the fact that a certain Dr. Brack, of Hitler's private chancellery, had already done some preparatory work with poison gases, and that these were to be tried out by the Sonderkommando Lange.

I am certain that I heard about the employment of Sonderkommando Lange from Damzog [the inspector of the Security Police in the Wartheland Reichsgau]. Furthermore, Dr. Brandt [SS-Obersturmbannführer Rudolf

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* Even at this stage the term "evacuation" meant "physical extermination." (Author's note.)

The Stationary Gas Vans at Kulmhof 75

Brandt, head of Himmler's personal staff ] informed me by telephone that an operation against the Jews was being prepared. The conversation went something like this:

Dr. Brandt told me that Dr. Brack had already carried out experiments with gas in Berlin, that these experiments had almost been completed, and that it was planned that he, Dr. Brack, would be put in charge of testing these gases in the Warthegau. Sonderkommando Lange was the obvious choice for carrying out the gassings. . . . As a result of this conversation it became absolutely clear to me what kind of operation was intended against the Jews in the Warthegau. As it was an operation that concerned my province, I found myself confronted with a moral dilemma. As head of the SS and police leader, I was directly involved on a moral and ethical level. Day and night I considered possibilities of averting the planned operation by some clever tactic or other. I telephoned for an appointment to see Gauleiter Greiser. During this meeting I didn't have to explain the purpose of my visit. I realized immediately that Greiser knew about the planned operation. I told him that it seemed that the Warthegau was to become the scene of certain experiments that, as a human being, one could not accept. I asked whose responsibility it would be should the experiments go ahead. Greiser intimated that it was an order from the Führer and that it could not be sabotaged.

Having cleared up that point, we can move on.

[michael mills]

I suggest checking here for information about Herbert Lange and his Sonderkommando:

http://www.deathcamps.org/occupation/he ... lange.html

It will be seen that Lange had no connection whatever with Brack, the T-4 organisation, or the Führerkanzlei.

He was subject directly to the RSHA (ie not to Brack), and his orders to carry out the killings of inmates of mental hospitals in the annexed Polish territories came from Himmler, ie those killings were not part of T-4, and did not come under the aegis of Brack.

I would suggest that the testimony of Koppe should be discarded as obviously self-serving, designed to distance himself from Lange and his killing squad by making it appear that Lange was working for Brack.

It is stated that Lange organised the Chelmno death camp by orders of Himmler and Greiser. Since Koppe was the HSSPF for the Reichsgau Wartheland, he must have been the connection between Greiser and Lange. That being so, it is easy to see why Koppe would claim that Lange was working for Brack, and had no connection with the Security Police in the Wartheland, ie to Koppe.

So there is still no demonstrable connection between Brack and gas-vans of any kind.

[michael mills]

Here is another site with important information on Herbert Lange:

http://lexikon.freenet.de/Herbert_Lange

It states that from 20 November 1939 until the spring of 1942 he was a member of the staff of the Inspector of the Security Police and SD in Posen, SS-Standartenführer Ernst Damzog.

Note that Damzog was mentioned in the untrustworthy statement by Koppe.

Since Koppe was HSSPF for Wartheland in which Posen was situated, ultimately both Damzog and Lange were subordinated to him, and the killing operation at Chelmno run by Lange and his Sonderkommando was also within his area of responsibility.

That being so, it is easy to see why Koppe created the falsehood that Lange was somehow working for Bracht, and that Bracht was responsible for the gassings perpetrated on the Jews of Wartheland.

[David Thompson]

Michael -- You wrote:

I suggest checking here for information about Herbert Lange and his Sonderkommando:

http://www.deathcamps.org/occupation/he ... lange.html

It will be seen that Lange had no connection whatever with Brack, the T-4 organisation, or the Führerkanzlei.

The omission of a specific circumstance in a brief biographical sketch isn't proof of anything.

You also said:

I would suggest that the testimony of Koppe should be discarded as obviously self-serving, designed to distance himself from Lange and his killing squad by making it appear that Lange was working for Brack.

and

That being so, it is easy to see why Koppe created the falsehood that Lange was somehow working for Bracht, and that Bracht was responsible for the gassings perpetrated on the Jews of Wartheland.

Your syllogism (X had a motive to lie; therefore X did lie) is faulty. The existence of a motive to lie only calls the statement into question; it doesn't prove that the statement is false.