The Iron Curtain Closes

[pilgrimofdark]

I don't know where else to put this. It's not directly Holocaust-related, but the closing of the Iron Curtain as the Soviets advanced westwards is part of the Holocaust story and the overall WW2 story.

When the Red Army overtook groups of people, what happened to them? The "death march" narrative encompasses groups fleeing to avoid being trapped in Soviet territory after the war ended. They could deported to camps, shot as collaborators/traitors, imprisoned, interrogated, put on trial in the USSR, etc.

This Russian book is titled Special camps of the NKVD / Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR in Germany. 1945-1950.

Going through some of the documents with AI translation, there's a lot of material on how the Iron Curtain closed around groups of people at the end of the war, and the burgeoning NKVD camps.

Whether people "death marched" back to Germany or not, the USSR would scoop them up, imprison them, and send them to camps.

Here's excerpts from one short document:

Of the total number of those seized, Germans accounted for 138,200 people, Poles - 38,660 people, Hungarians - 3,200 people, Slovaks - 100 people, Italians - 390 people, and citizens of the Soviet Union (Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Kazakhs and others) - 27,880 people.

Of the total number of 215,540 people seized, 148,540 were sent to NKVD camps, 62,000 are in front-line prisons and NKVD camps, and 5,000 died during the operation and en route to the camps.
[...]
It should be noted that of those arrested for detention in NKVD camps, no more than half of the total number can be used for physical labor, since the rest are old people and people unfit for physical labor.
[...]
1. Henceforth, as the Red Army advances through German territory, when carrying out measures to clear the rear of active units of the Red Army, limit yourself to the removal of persons of the following categories:
[...]
2. Cease the transfer to the USSR of persons arrested during the clearing of the rear areas of active Red Army units, organizing the necessary number of prisons and camps for their detention on site. Transfer to the USSR only those arrested who are of operational interest.

Report of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR L.P. Beria to the Chairman of the State Defense Committee I.V. Stalin on the work to clear the front-line rear of the active Red Army by units of the NKVD of the USSR, on the composition of those arrested by category, on amending the NKVD order No. 0016 of January 11, 1945. April 17, 1945
Source

Post-war Polish camps could also be discussed here. Jews came back to Poland from the Soviet Union with Polonized names and had an outsized influence in these camps. They changed their names at the insistence of the Comintern, according to at least one source I found.

[Stubble]

Don't forget the 'extermination battalions' were reorganized and folded into the NKVD for the push into Ostland and the Ukraine in '44.

[pilgrimofdark]

Several hundred results for the annihilation/extermination battalions on that same website, covering 1941 through the end of the war.

I'm not sure a longer history of them is available in English. Maybe some 500 page dissertation no one has access to?

But seems like some formed or were folded into existing partisan groups over time, which were increasingly centrally-coordinated in Moscow. Looks like they were referred to throughout the entire war.

The term is Russian seems to be Истребительные батальоны.

They were definitely involved in the chase westwards and new ones being created.

From Belarus:

Remnants of German groups are located in the Baranovichi region, attempting to join up with their units. Partisan detachments, organized into extermination battalions by district, have been deployed to capture them.

Documents on the history of Belarus in the "Special Folder" I. V. Stalin. 1944

[Stubble]

I found out about them and the orders to use them to 'secure the rear' from the Russian Federal Archives if I recall correctly, this was months ago.

In the west it looks like historians like to pretend they didn't exist from 1942 to 1945 for some reason.

Sometimes I think that the 'accuse the enemy of exactly what you are doing while you are doing it' and 'there are no bad tactics' mantras not only existed but were true.

I've often thought to myself what an extermination battalion would do to 20-2,000 jews captured making armaments for the Germans...

I'm, pretty sure they would fucking kill them as collaborators, because, unless I'm mistaken, that was both the policy and a standing order.

[pilgrimofdark]

I'm, pretty sure they would fucking kill them as collaborators, because, unless I'm mistaken, that was both the policy and a standing order.

Yes, I posted the order elsewhere a while ago. Whole document worth reading.

NKVD Directive No. 33881/S on the formation and operation of the NKVD bodies on the territory liberated from the enemy. December 16, 1941

3. Identifying and eliminating enemy collaborators among the local population who provided any assistance or support to the occupiers and their proxies in their atrocities, etc.

4. [...] Identify individuals who were not residents of the cities and every rural community prior to the occupation. Subject such individuals to the most thorough screening...

7. The NKVD's duties in the territory liberated from the enemy also include the immediate confiscation of all documents and materials from fascist military and administrative institutions, as well as the confiscation of all printed materials in the public's possession (newspapers, magazines, brochures, leaflets, posters, orders, announcements, etc.). These materials must be used to identify and expose fascist collaborators. After use on site, all these documents must be transferred to the NKVD Directorate for safekeeping.

9. [...] At the same time, identify and, if possible, document (by interviewing eyewitnesses and victims, taking photographs, compiling reports, etc.) all the most characteristic instances of atrocities, robbery, violence, and plunder committed by the Nazi occupiers.

Kill/imprison the collaborators. Seize all military, government, and private documents and publications. Start documenting atrocities by gathering witness statements, etc.

There was a similar Order No. 001683 from December 12, 1941:

2. c. through agents, informants, partisans, and honest Soviet citizens, identify and arrest traitors, renegades, and provocateurs, both those in the service of the German occupation authorities and those who assisted them in carrying out anti-Soviet activities and persecuting party and Soviet activists and honest Soviet citizens.

[Stubble]

[...]

Yes, I posted the order elsewhere a while ago. Whole document worth reading.

NKVD Directive No. 33881/S on the formation and operation of the NKVD bodies on the territory liberated from the enemy. December 16, 1941

[...]

Was it here by chance?

viewtopic.php?t=505
That thread really got almost no love, but, I can't help but think, it might be important.

Around the time I found that slip for a metric fuck ton of wood slated for the NKVD just before the offensive I also ran across something about the extermination battalions and that prompted the thread about their operations on the eastern front IIRC.

The wood:
viewtopic.php?p=14620#p14620

[pilgrimofdark]

After the war, the Soviet "liberators" of Poland targeted the Polish Home Army (AK), the partisan armed forces of the Polish Underground.

Tens of the thousands of Home Army members were arrested and sent to Soviet NKVD camps.

Even members of Zegota, the Council to Aid Jews, were arrested and persecuted.

Jakub Berman, brother of Adolf Berman, was the chief of the Ministry of State Security when the Zegota personnel were arrested (1948-1949).

Adolf Berman was director of CENTOS (a charity) in the Warsaw Ghetto, then worked with Zegota after leaving the ghetto. He left Poland for Israel in 1950.

Wladyslaw Bartoszewski of Zegota spent nearly 7 years in jail before Zegota was rehabilitated in 1956.

Much of this info comes from these three books:

• The Warsaw Ghetto: A Guide to the Perished City
• Poland's Holocaust: Ethnic Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide in the Second Republic, 1918-1947
• "Them": Stalin's Polish Puppets

"Them" includes a fairly long interview with Jakub Berman where the postwar arrests of Zegota are briefly discussed. Jakub claims his brother Adolf did not inform him of the help Zegota provided to Poland's Jews until years later.

Poles working in organizations that were created specifically to help Jews were persecuted by Soviet Jews after the war who were disproportionately involved in the Polish security apparatus.

[HansHill]

Glad to see you raise this point Pilgrim. The very early Cold War is an interest of mine. These events are some of the most fascinating in history.

I am out of town currently and away from my notes but two points I will raise here: the Berlin Blockade and the events leading up to it indicate the soon-to-be-mortal-enemies East and West had such insurmountable suspicions of each other it simply cannot be overstated. One resource i will throw into the mix here is “Berlin On The Brink” by Daniel Harrington.

One of the most interesting aspects is how both East and West were both vying for the “soul” of Germany. The west broadly wanted a liberal democratic Germany to kickstart the “engine” of the European economy (this can even be applied more broadly for example the USA utilizing the German human capital under operation paperclip). The Soviets were at least a bit more forthcoming (and honest) in that they most urgently wanted war reparations and began dismantling East German hardware and shipping it back to the Motherland.

Either way, East and West each were adamant to avoid any “””problematic””” German Nationalist sentiment at precisely this time. This of course extends to any awkward conversations surrounding the Holocaust - “Hey Germany; listen we want to win you over to our way of thinking, sorry we lied about all that genocide stuff btw! Anyway all is forgiven now?” When viewed in its proper context, this point alone demolishes some of the slop you see here why any Nation allied either East nor Weet never “confessed”.

In the Harrington book he speaks about “the spectre of Adolf Hitler” was on everyone’s mind. For obvious reasons, both East and West wanted this spectre crushed with utmost finality.

Secondly, the comparison i invoke when speaking of the Iron Curtain is that of North Korea. The analogy isn’t perfect so sue me, but it’s close enough that it’ll do for now. There is a very specific cohort of people known as “North Korean double defectors”. These are North Korean nationals, who defected, were through various means captured, and returned to NK. They are a famously persecuted ethnic group who practice extreme ethnocentric ingroup preference and tend to avoid assimilation.

Sound familiar?

The point of invoking this cohort of people as an analogy, is that almost nothing is known about them. It speaks to the lengths that Nation States (behind an iron curtain) will go to, to ensure that the known whereabouts / fate of these people is obfuscated. All using the strong arm of State power and International alliances where diplomacy is serious business (in this case, States such as China, South Korea and Vietnam). Given the length of time at play here (1953 - present day) its understandable that there are peaks and valleys in which some numbers have emerged, most notably around the early 2000s when tech was becoming “useful” at the global level but not “bullet proof” for Nation states. This doesnt matter though as i’ll discuss below.

The “show us where the missing Jews are!” demand is equally as ludicrous as “show me where the North Korean double defectors are!”

You can’t, and you’ll never be able to. The CCP and Glorious People’s Republic of Best Korea has decided at the end of a bayonet that you don’t get to know anything about this persecuted Ethnic group so stop asking.

Again - Sound familiar?

The reason why the peaks and valleys of information breaking through aren’t as significant as appear, is because the information closest to the early Cold War (the era we are most interested in) is a complete black hole, and likewise with today when the State apparatus is at its most secretive (also interesting for our comparison).