Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine by Wendy Lower

Author:Wendy Lower
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 2005-03-15T16:00:00+00:00

German SS-policeman shooting a Jewish man in Vinnytsia, surrounded by members of the SS-police force and the Wehrmacht (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Ullstein Bild, #00463386)

Hitler with General Field Marshal Wilhelm List and Hermann Göring at Werwolf Headquarters, Vinnytsia, 31 August 1942 (Ullstein Bild #00007695)

The Soviet POWs who worked on the site were also deemed a security threat and killed. As many as 10,000 Soviet POWs constructed the compound, and 2,000 died during the building phase, which occurred mainly in the winter months when the ground was frozen and the Germans insisted on excavating the deep bunker and bomb shelters according to the Führer’s wishes. The remaining 8,000 POWs “disappeared” in the summer of 1942 and were not heard from thereafter.103

But for some regional officials the immediate need for labor was a strong enough rationale for slowing the machinery of the Holocaust. The story of the use of Jewish labor and the construction of Himmler’s headquarters offers an unusual example of how one local SD leader was pressured into complying with the “Final Solution.” About 300 Jews were also employed in the construction of Himmler’s Hegewald headquarters, which contained an airfield, several houses, barracks, elegant living quarters, and a bunker with thick concrete walls.104 After the war, Zhytomyr’s Sipo-SD chief Razesberger provided the only detailed description of the compound, referring to an expensive rug on the wall of Himmler’s office.105

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