executioners'1

271

Police Battalions: Lives, Kil/ings, and Motives

Obviously, not all police battalions perpctratcd gcnocidal slaughter. Many simply ncvcr rcccivcd thc ordcrs to participatc in killing operations. So thc percetitage of policc battalions that wcrc complicit in gcnocidc is not an il-luminating figurę, for such tasks wcrc not voluntary in thc scnsc that thc regimc sent out recruitment notices giving particularly bloodthirsty battalions and men thc opportunity to sign up to bccomc gcnocidal cxccutioncrs. By chance, sonie police battalions endcd up in killing operations and others did not. No cvidence suggests that thc regime either hesitated to usc policc battalions at all for mass killings of Jews or discriminated among police battalions in making such assignmcnts, by screcning them according to sonie cri-teria of fitness and willingncss, or by using any other mcans that took thc charactcr of battalions and their men into account.³⁴1 lappcnstancc accounts for much of why thc men of one policc battalion killed Jews whilc thosc of another did not. Relevant to an analysis of policc battalions’ role in thc gcnocidc, thcrcforc, arc thc actions of thc men only of thosc policc battalions that wcrc ordered to deport Jews to their deaths or to kill them with their own hands.

On this point sonie generał tliings can be said. A large cnough number of police battalions contributed to thc I Iolocaust that their participation in thc perpetration of thc I Iolocaust was scen as, and indeed was, absolutely ordi-nary. The regime rnuline/y turncd to policc battalions as implcmentcrs of thc gcnocidal will. As far as my (considcrablc but not cxhausti\ c) rescarch bas de-termined, at least thirty-cight policc battalions killed or deported Jews to dcath camps in thc stock manner of Policc Battalions 65 and 101. (Undoubt-edly, morc will be uncovered.) The materiał that cxists on sonie of these battalions is so sketchy that little can be said of thc extent and charactcr of their actions, cxccpt that they perpctratcd mass slaughter of Jews. Of these thirty-cight battalions, at least thirty perpctratcd large-scale slaughters or deporta-tions. The lollowing table contains only sonie of thc major killing operations (ovcr one thousand victims) of these thirty battalions. They and other police battalions carricd out an cnormous number of other killing operations, large

and smali, that are not listed.^25Police Battalion Location		Datę	Number of 1 'ictitns
3	Sovict Union	Deccmbcr 1941	1 oo.ooos
9	Soviet Union	J une-Decembcr 1941	l OO.OOOS
11	Slutsk	Pall 1941	I,OOOS
•3	Mława District	November,	12,000
		Deccmbcr 1942
	Plohnen	Knd of 1942	5,000