Callafangers wrote: ↑Sun Sep 20, 2026 9:20 pm
SanityCheck wrote:Bombsaway has already noted how this 'security logic' and excuse-making totally undermines the resettlement thesis - if a closed ghetto could continue to be a security threat, then essentially no pattern of relocating Jews made the slightest sense from a security perspective, much less moving the Jews of Poland a few hundred miles east into Soviet territory. Killing them would be the only certain security solution.
Since you've just been spanked regarding Pinsk as a supposed 'harmless ghetto targeted totally without military rationale', we move onto the question of whether resettlement itself remained feasible.
Again, you hand-wave critical context: the fact of proximity to partisan activity (Pripyat marshes), scale of threat/liability (clearly substantial at Pinsk ghetto, as just shown), and the actual security (or security-feasibility) of this ghetto itself, which obviously was compromised given multiple escapes and effective coordination of terrorist plots.
You have also dodged another critical detail: the Pinsk ghetto executions do not say "resettlement" -- they say "executions".
Why?
Nothing you've posted indicates any connection between the internal Jewish ghetto resistance plans (which mirror similar groups in Warsaw, Bialystok, Wilno and other big ghettos) and the
actual Soviet partisan movement in the Polesie in autumn 1942.
Himmler's order claimed to have received 'news' that the Pinsk ghetto was 'the centre for the movement of gangs in the region':
The Headquarters of the Wehrmacht informs me that the region of Brest-Gomel suffers increasingly from gang attacks, which bring into question the need for additional troops.
On the basis of the news, which has been reported to me, one must regard in the Ghetto of Pinsk the center for the movement of the gangs in the region of the Pripet marshes.
There is no trace of this 'news' in the German files. Himmler's files on antipartisan warfare do include correspondence about protecting the Brest-Gomel rail line, and
later search-and-destroy operations mounted by the SS-Police to locate partisan units, but nothing on a link between the Pinsk ghetto and the actually existing Soviet partisan movement at this time. There isn't anything in the Meldungen aus den besetzten Ostgebieten, despite extensive reporting on the growth of Soviet partisan activities and other Soviet resistance activities (parachutists, espionage networks rolled up, urban undergrounds, etc).
Himmler trumped up a putative threat to override Wehrmacht objections to eliminating the entire workforce of the Pinsk ghetto made at the start of the autumn 1942. He did so not long after parrying similar preserve-the-workforce objections from the Wehrmacht in the Government-General (which cost General von Gienanth his job), and after economic objections to deporting the remaining Reich Jews employed in factory work were overridden.
'Security' was the trump card. But it wasn't played everywhere; the fact that Himmler had to issue a direct, explicit order was unusual for the 'second sweep'.
Meanwhile, in July 1942, Himmler told Berger this much more simple line:
“The occupied Eastern territories will be freed of Jews (judenfrei). The Führer has laid upon my shoulders the execution of this very difficult order. Moreover, no one can relieve me of this responsibility.” (VEJ 7/242)
Nothing here about either resettlement or execution, just that the besetzte Ostgebieten would become judenfrei. Nor any justification given.
And even earlier, on December 18, 1941, Himmler noted during a meeting with Hitler the remark 'Judenfrage/als Partisanen auszurotten'. Since partisans were to be executed, the extirpate here meant exterminate. Himmler's Sütterlin handwriting was distinctive and hardly easily forged, so however one interprets this - as applying across Europe after Hitler's basic decision, or an affirmation of the evolved policy in the occupied Soviet Union - it still covers waaaay more than the Pinsk ghetto.
Which explains why 133 other ghettos in Wolhynien were also wiped out without any consideration of whether they did or didn't have any internal Jewish resistance groups, or links to Soviet partisans outside the towns.
