The March 1942 Aktion: Prelude

The first deportation [Aussiedlung] of Jews from Lemberg occurred in March 1942. This operation also marked the initiation of a policy of systematic murder of Jews -- men, women and children -- in the city. German civil authorities had exclusive control of the resettlement, with security elements limited to coordination and provision of manpower. German occupation bureaucrats advised the Judenrat on 19 February that the operation would begin in March, and directed the council to be ready to provide some 33,000 Jews for "resettlement" to labor camps in the East.(1)

In early March, the German police commissioner [Polizeidirektor], Dr. Albert Ullrich, advised the head of the Judenrat, Dr. Henryk Landesberg, that the operation was imminent. Jews who could not present valid identification and work documentation would be relocated to labor camps outside the city. He also ordered the Judenrat to turn over the welfare rolls of Jews who were homeless and those receiving assistance from its welfare offices.(2) The Jewish residential quarter, though not yet containing all of the city's 125,000 or more Jews, was severely overcrowded. Some Poles and Ukrainians had not vacated their apartments, as directed, during the attempted separation of "Aryans" and non-Aryans (Jews) in November-December 1941, when German authorities forced many thousands of additional Jewish families into the new residential district.(3) The quarter was situated beyond the railroad embankment just to the north of the city center.

German occupation authorities began preparations in late February. The Labor Office [Arbeitsamt] within the civil administration, which had responsibility for regulating legal employment in Lemberg, ordered the registration and marking of Jews working in enterprises authorized by German authorities.(4) Those businesses were the only legal work sites aside from the Jewish community where Jews were allowed to work. At the same time, the commander of the German Municipal Police [Schutzpolizei, or Schupo], Major Weise, requested a significant increase in the end strength of his Ukrainian police force [ukrainische Hilfspolizei] to meet the current and anticipated responsibilities he expected to place on it.(5) Since the previous December, the Ukrainian Police had reported regular incidents of criminal assault on Jews, sometimes with participation of "unknown" individuals in Wehrmacht uniforms, and often in daylight or early evening.(6) A few days before the start of the operation, the SS and Police Leader, Brigadeführer Fritz Katzmann, issued directions to his Municipal Police subordinates. One participant reported after the war:

As the adjutant, I participated in a meeting with Major Weise [Schutzpolizei commander in Lemberg], conducted at the office of the SS and Police Leader shortly before the spring operation. The SS and Police Leader for District Galicia, Katzmann, explained in broad strokes how the upcoming resettlement operation would be conducted. He also set out the organization in broad strokes . . . Katzmann explained in turn that the Jews would initially be collected in a school and then sent to a camp for a short time, then transported out of Lemberg from there by rail for labor assignments in the East.(7)

The Jewish community's leaders opposed the operation on principle. The involuntary removal of Jews who lacked registered residences or authorized work were nevertheless members of their community. Dr. Ullrich had established good working relations with a few men in the Jewish community administration and his assurances placated the Judenrat's leaders. He strengthened the deceit by ordering Jews destined for deportation to inventory carefully their movable property, so that the Judenrat could later transmit the auction proceeds from its sale to each deportee. Yet even before the deportation operation began, Ullrich knew what "resettlement" meant to the intended victims.(8)

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Sources:
(1) AAN Warsaw, Starostwo Miejskie we Lwowie, sygn. 510/9-10, Jüdische Gemeinde der Stadt Lemberg to Stadthauptmann Lemberg, 26.3.42. Figure: Emanuel Ringelblum, Kronika getta warszawskiego, wrzesien 1939 - styczen 1943 [Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto, September 1939 to January 1943], ed. Artur Eisenbach (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1988), p. 360 (entry on 24.3.42).

(2) TsDIA L'viv, spr. 7696, Gouverneur Dist. Galizien, "Bekanntmachung: Bildung eines jüdischen Wohnbezirkes in der Stadt Lemberg," 8.11.41.

(3) AAN Warsaw, Starostwo Miejskie we Lwowie, sygn. 510/9-10, Jüdische Gemeinde der Stadt Lemberg to Stadthauptmann Lemberg, 26.3.42.

(4) DALO, R-12/1/37/10, "Arbeitseinsatz jüdischer Arbeitskrafte, hier: Erfassung und Kennzeichnung der 'A' Juden," 25.3.42.

(5) DALO, R-58/1/30/45+v., "Erhöhung der Sollstärke der ukrainischen Hilfspolizei," 26.2.42.

(6) DALO, R-12/1/41/1+v., "Stan bandits'kykh napadiv v rayoni 5. Komisaryatu U.P.," 28.2.42.

(7) Statement of Hermann Greifenberg, 15.12.67, in Landesgericht Stuttgart Ks 5/65 [Röder et al.], 5108-5123.

(8) Statement of Dr. Ludwig Jaffe, 11.4.67, in Landesgericht Stuttgart Ks 5/65 [Röder et al.], 10060-10083, cited in Pohl, Judenverfolgung, 187. Jaffe was head of the Judenrat's housing office.
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