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Posted Friday,
August 13, 1999
Alphabetical index (text)
Eichmann in the Ukraine?
Submitted by
Michael Mills
From the article on “Ukraine” in the
Universal Jewish
Encyclopedia on 1943 (vol 10, p. 339).
In
August, 1941, the notorious
Eichmann, formerly Gestapo head
in Vienna, was appointed head of the
Gestapo in the Ukraine, with complete
authority to deal with the Jews there
as he saw fit. Two months later great
massacres of Jews in the Ukraine behind
the battle lines took place. Thousands
of Jews unable to retreat with the
Soviet armies into the interior of
Russia were mowed down by Nazi machine
gun fire.In the course of these massacres, which were reported to have begun as early as the month of August, 1941, more than
50,000 Jewish men, women and children were murdered in Kiev alone. Nazi troops and agents spread anti-Jewish reports among the Ukrainian population, which, however, remained sympathetic toward the Jews, refusing to participate in the massacres and in many instances giving shelter to refugee Jews from the Ukraine, Poland and other parts of Eastern
Europe.
Mills comments: “The references to
Eichmann are of course extremely inaccurate. He was not Gestapo head in
Vienna, although he was head of the
Zentralstelle fuer jüdische
Auswanderung there in 1938. And he was certainly never head of the Gestapo in
Ukraine, and never held any position there. What is remarkable is that the author of this article, a certain
Abraham I. Shinedling, had even heard of Eichmann in 1943.
By all accounts, Eichmann operated in relative obscurity until he stepped into the limelight in 1944 as the manager of the
Hungarian deportation. It is possible that
Eichmann was known to Shinedling through refugees from Vienna who knew of his pre-war activities there. The article shows that wildly inaccurate rumours about
Eichmann must have been circulating in
1942-3. The article appears to make
Eichmann responsible for the massacres in the Ukraine.
There is a further interesting item of information in the article:
New
massacres of Jews in Ukrainian towns,
including Novozibkovo, in the district
of Kiev, and Unich, occurred in
September and October, 1942. In the
latter month large numbers of Jews were
deported from Limbourg, Liege and
Antwerp, Belgium, to the
Ukraine.
Mills writes: “This is the first contemporary reference that I have seen to
Jews from Belgium arriving in
Ukraine.”
[Eichmann
index]
Website comment: The typescript of
Eichmann’s memoirs in our possession states that he was alarmed by US newspaper references to his name during the Vienna and Czech periods of his infamous career.
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