The March 1942 Aktion: the first phase

German authorities assumed control of the 500 man Jewish Ordnungsdienst (police force) for the operation. The force was to assemble, screen, and transport a quota of 1,000 Jews a day, in close coordination with the unsuspecting Judenrat.(1) Beginning on 14 March, Jewish policemen gathered Jews on the basis of their documentation, the names on rolls kept of Jewish community welfare organization, or (in some instances) in settlement of personal scores. Each Jew's documents were first checked and the Ordnungsdienst delivered those lacking appropriate documentation to a school just beyond the Jewish residential district's boundary, the Sobieski School. The deportees filled the schoolrooms and police commissioner Dr. Ullrich rechecked the papers of the day's catch the same afternoon. Trains arrived each morning at a loading platform in the northwest part of the city (the Klepariv siding), directly opposite the Janowska forced labor camp. The selected Jews were moved to Klepariv, loaded aboard freight trains, and dispatched to their final destination.

Early in the operation, the Judenrat had an interest in securing the release of about 120 Jews, mainly specialists and other prominent members of the Jewish community. During the operation's first few days, Dr. Ullrich entertained requests for individual releases. By the third day of the deportation, about 17 March, the Sobieski School remained almost empty and the resettlement train departed Klepariv, not loaded with its quota of 1,000 Jews, but almost empty. Jewish witnesses reported after the war that Dr. Ullrich appeared unusually tense during that day's operation. On the fourth day, Dr. Ullrich did not appear at Sobieski to check papers and dispatch those selected.

SS-Untersturmführer Inquart arrived instead that afternoon (ca. 18 March) and immediately selected almost every Jew in the school for "resettlement," without concern for the status of their papers or appeals for exemptions. Inquart was the Jewish Referent on SSPF Katzmann's staff, and Katzmann's adjutant. The the civil administration police commissioner no longer oversaw the operation. Other SS men accompanying Inquart roamed Sobieski and beat the Jews awaiting transportation. SS men also oversaw the transfer of the Jews from the school to Klepariv (by truck, horse carts, or tram), and the loading of the Jews onto the trains that departed in the direction of District Lublin, to the northwest. The additional violence at Sobieski did not contribute to the attainment of the daily quota; Jews at risk rapidly disappeared into hiding, or acquired the documents necessary to avoid seizure by Jewish police.(2)

On about 20 March, SSPF Katzmann called a meeting with Inquart and a few leaders of the Judenrat. Dr. Landesberg (the Judenrat chairman) and the head of the Jewish police told Katzmann that their men were exhausted, and that there simply were no more undocumented or indigent Jews to be found. Dr. Ullrich, also in attendance, confirmed the difficulties reported. However, Katzmann was not sympathetic. He replied, Wenn ich mit meinem Kommando einsteige, dann werden nicht dreizig-, sondern hundert-tausand ausgesiedelt ["When I get involved with my detachment, not 30,000 but 100,000 will be resettled"].(3) For a couple more days after the meeting the round-ups continued haphazardly. Informers in the civil population reported the locations of Jews in hiding, information that made its way to the German security police.(4) Yet the results must have continued to disappoint Katzmann and Inquart, for no later than 24 March 1942, the SS and Police Leader unleashed his "detachment" against the city's Jews.
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(1) Statement of Dr. Ludwig Jaffe, 11.4.67, New York, Landesgericht Stuttgart Ks 5/65 [Röder et al.], 10060-10083, cited in Pohl, Judenverfolgung, 187. Jaffe is the principal source for the unfolding of the March Aktion in Lemberg that follows.

(2) DALO, R-12 / 1 / 41 / 10, Report (5th Comm.) on sweeps for Jews, 20.3.42. Jews were fleeing the residential district by way of Zamarstynivs'ka and Zhovkivs'ka streets to the Kryvchytsya and Zhovkva districts then leaving the area by car, according do the 5th Commissariat.

(3) Jaffe statement, op. cit. Jaffe participated in the meeting as a Judenrat member.

(4) DALO, R-12 / 1 / 41 / 10, Report (5th Comm.) on sweeps for Jews, 20.3.42. On 19 March, Ukrainian Police headquarters ordered (as Order No. 21) commissariats to report incidents of Jews in hiding that they had received since the start of the month. The 5th Commissariat responded the next day with four incidents involving more than six Jews within the precinct.
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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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