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The Holocaust in Estonia refers to the Nazi crimes during the occupation of Estonia by Nazi Germany. There were, prior to the war, approximately 4,300 Estonian Jews. After the Soviet 1940 occupation about 10% of Jewish population were deported to Siberia along with other Estonians. About 75% of Estonian Jews, aware of the fate that awaited them from Nazi Germany, escaped to the Soviet Union; virtually all the remainder (between 950 and 1,000 people) were killed by Einsatzgruppe A and local collaborators before the end of 1941.[1] Roma people of Estonia were also murdered and enslaved by the Nazi occupiers.
Round-ups and killings of the remaining Jews began immediately by the extermination squad Einsatzkommando (Sonderkommando) 1A under Martin Sandberger, part of Einsatzgruppe A led by Walter Stahlecker, who followed the arrival of the first German troops in July 7, 1941. Arrests and executions continued as the Germans, with the assistance of local collaborators, advanced through Estonia. Estonia became a part of the Reichskommissariat Ostland. A Sicherheitspolizei (Estonian Security Police) was established for internal security under the leadership of Ain Mere in 1942. Estonia was declared Judenfrei quite early by the German occupation regime at the Wannsee Conference. [2] Jews that had remained in Estonia (921 according to Martin Sandberger, 929 according to Evgenia Goorin-Loov and 963 according to Walter Stahlecker) were killed. [3] Fewer than a dozen Estonian Jews are known to have survived the war in Estonia.
The Estonian state archives contain death certificates and lists of Jews shot dated July, August, and early September 1941. For example the official death certificate of Ruvin Teitelbaum, born in Tapa pn January 17, 1907, states laconically in a form with item 7 already printed with only the date left blank: "7. By a decision of the Sicherheitspolizei on September 4, 1941, condemned to death, with the decision being carried out the same day in Tallinn." Teitelbaum's crime was "being a Jew" and thus constituting a "threat to the public order".
On September 11, 1941 an article entitled "Juuditäht seljal" – "A Jewish Star on the Back" appeared in the Estonian mass-circulation newspaper Postimees. It stated that Dr. Otto-Heinrich Drechsler, the High Commissioner of Ostland, had proclaimed ordinances in accordance with which all Jewish residents of Ostland from that day onward had to wear visible yellow six-pointed Star of David at least 10 cm. in diameter on the left side of their chest and back.
On the same day Regulations [4] issued by the Sicherheitspolizei were delivered to all local police departments proclaiming that the Nuremberg Laws were in force in Ostland, defining who is a Jew, and what Jews could and could not do. Jews were prohibited from changing their place of residence, walking along the sidewalk, using any means of transportation, going to theatres, museums, cinema, or school. The professions of lawyer, physician, notary, banker, or real estate agent were declared closed to Jews, as was the occupation of street hawker. The regulations also declared that the property and homes of Jewish residents were to be confiscated. The regulations emphasized that work to this ends was to be begun as soon as possible, and that lists of Jews, their addresses, and their property were to be completed by the police by September 20, 1941.
These regulations also provided for the establishment of a concentration camp near the south-eastern Estonian city of Tartu. A later decisions provided for the construction of a Jewish ghetto near the town of Harku, but this was never built, a small concentration camp being built there instead. The Estonian State Archives contain material pertinent to the cases of about 450 Estonian Jews. They were typically arrested either at home or in the street, taken to the local police station, and charged with the 'crime' of being Jews. They were either shot outright or sent to concentration camp and shot later. An Estonian woman, E. S. describes the arrest of her Jewish husband as follows[5]:
As my husband did not go out of the house, I was the one to go to town every day to see what was going on. I was very frighteend when I saw a poster at the corner of Vabaduse Square and Harju Street calling for people to show where the apartments of Jews were located. On that fatal day of September 13, I went out again because the weather was fine but I remember being very worried. I rushed home and when I got there and heard some voices in our apartment I had a foreboding that something bad had happened. There were two men in our apartment from the Selbstschutz who said they were taking my husband to the police station. I ran after them and went to the chief officer and asked for permission to see my husband. The chief officer said that he could not give me permission but added, in a low voice, that I should come the next morning when the prisoners would be taken to prison and perhaps I could see my husband in the corridor. I returned the next morning as I had been advised, and it was the last time I saw my husband. On September 15 I went to the German Sicherheitspolizei on Tõnismägi in an attempt to get information about my husband. I was told he had been shot. I asked the reason since he had not been a communist but a businessman, The answer was: "Aber er war doch ein Jude." [But he was a Jew.].
With the invasion of the Baltic States, it was
the intention of the Nazi government to use the Baltics countries
as their main area of mass genocide. Consequently, Jews from
countries outside the Baltics were shipped there to be killed. [6] and an
estimated 10,000 Jews were killed in Estonia after having been
deported to camps there from elsewhere in Eastern Europe. The Nazi
regime also established 22 concentration
and labor camps on occupied Estonian territory for foreign
Jews. The largest, Vaivara concentration camp
housed 1,300 prisoners at a time. These prisoners were mainly Jews,
with smaller groups of Russians, Dutch, and Estonians.[7] Several
thousand foreign Jews were killed at the Kalevi-Liiva camp. [2]
Units of Estonian auxiliary police participated in the
extermination of the Jews in Estonia and Pskov region of Russia and provided guards for
concentration camps for Jews and Soviet POWs (Jägala, Vaivara, Klooga, Lagedi), where the
prisoners were killed – despite the criminal activities in which
numbers of policemen were engaged.[8]
All members of Police Department B-IV did participate in such
crimes.
From 1941 to 1943 Karl
Linnas had commanded a Nazi concentration
camp at Tartu, Estonia, where he directed and
personally took part in the murder of thousands of men, women, and
children who were herded into anti-tank ditches.
(Nazi terminology about 'extermination camp')
Four Estonians most responsible for the murders at Kalevi-Liiva
were accused at war
crimes trials in 1961. Two were later executed, while the
Soviet occupation authorities were unable to press charges against
two who lived in exile. [16] There
have been several known 7 ethnic Estonians:
Ralf Gerrets, Ain-Ervin Mere, Jaan Viik, Juhan Jüriste,
Karl Linnas,
Aleksander Laak and Ervin Viks who have faced trials for crimes
against humanity committed during the Nazi occupation in Estonia.
The accused were charged with murdering up to 5000 German and Czechoslovakian
Jews and Romani people near
the Kalevi-Liiva
concentration camp in 1942–1943. Ain-Ervin Mere, commander of the
Estonian Security Police (Group B of the Sicherheitspolizei) under the Estonian
Self-Administration, was tried in absentia.
Before the trial Mere was an active member of the Estonian
community in England, contributing to Estonian language
publications.[17] At
the time of the trial he was however held in captivity, accused of
murder. He was never deported[18] and
died a free man in England in 1969. Ralf Gerrets, the
deputy commandant at the Jägala camp. Jaan Viik, (Jan Wijk,
Ian Viik), a guard at the Jägala labor camp was singled out
for prosecution out of the hundreds of Estonian camp guards and
police for his particular brutality.[19]
He was testified as throwing small children into the air and
shooting them. He did not deny the charge.[20]
A fourth accused, camp commandant, Aleksander Laak (Alexander
Laak) was discovered in Canada but committed suicide.
According to testimony of the survivors, at least two transports with about 2,100–2,150 people[21], arrived at the railway station at Raasiku, one from Theresienstadt (Terezin) with Czechoslovakian Jews and one from Berlin with German citizens. Around 1,700–1,750 people, mainly Jews, not selected for work at the Jägala camp were taken to Kalevi-Liiva and shot.[21] Transport Be 1.9.1942 from Theresienstadt arrived at the Raasiku station on September 5, 1942, after a five day trip.[22][23] According to testimony by one of the accused, Gerrets, eight busloads of Estonian auxiliary police had arrived from Tallinn.[23]
A selection process was supervised by Ain Mere, chief of Sicherheitspolizei in Estonia; those not selected for slave labor were sent by bus to an execution site near the camp. Usually able bodied men were selected to work on the oil shale mines in northeastern Estonia. Women, children, and old people would be executed on arrival. In the case Be 1.9.1942 however, the only ones chosen for labor and to survive the war were a small group of young women who were taken through concentration camps in Estonia, Poland and Germany to Bergen-Belsen, where they were liberated.[24] Later the police[23] in teams of 6 to 8 men[21] would execute the Jews by machine gun fire, on other hand, during later investigation some guards of camp denied participation of police and said that execution was done by camp personnel[21]. On the first day a total of 900 people were murdered in this way.[23][21] Gerrets told that he had fired a pistol at a victim who was still making noises in the pile of bodies.[23][20] The whole operation was directed by Obersturmführer Heinrich Bergmann and Oberscharführer J. Geese.[21][23] According to an article published by the journal "Contemporary European History" in 2001,
"In 1942, transports of Jews from other countries arrived, and their murder and incarceration in slave labour camps was organised and supervised by German and Estonian officials (including Mere and the German head of A-IV). The final act of liquidating the Klooga concentration camp, which involved the mass-shooting of roughly 2,000 prisoners, were committed by Estonians under German command, that is by units of the 20th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Estonian) and (presumably) the Schutzmannschaftsbataillon of the KdS. Survivors report that, during this period when Jewish slave labourers were visible, the Estonian population in part attempted to help the Jews by providing food and so on."[25][26]
A number of foreign witnesses were heard at the Holocaust trials in Soviet Estonia, including five women, who had been transported on Be 1.9.1942 from Theresienstadt.[23]
"The accused Mere, Gerrets and Viik actively participated in crimes and mass killings that were perpetrated by the Nazi invaders on the territory of the Estonian SSR. In accordance with the Nazi racial theory, the Sicherheitspolizei and Sicherheitsdienst were instructed to exterminate the Jews and Gypsies. For that end in August–September 1941 Mere and his collaborators set up a death camp at Jägala, 30 km from Tallinn. Mere put Aleksander Laak in charge of the camp; Ralf Gerrets was appointed his deputy. On 5 September 1942 a train with approximately 1,500 Czechoslovak citizens arrived to the Raasiku railway station. Mere, Laak and Gerrets personally selected who of them should be executed and who should be moved to the Jägala death camp. More than 1,000 people, mostly children, the old, and the infirm, were translocated to a wasteland at Kalevi-Liiva where they were monstrously executed in a special pit. In mid-September the second troop train with 1,500 prisoners arrived to the railway station from Germany. Mere, Laak, and Gerrets selected another thousand victims that were condemned by them to extermination. This group of prisoners, which included nursing women and their new-born babies, were transported to Kalevi-Liiva where they were killed.
In March 1943 the personnel of the Kalevi-Liiva camp executed about fifty Gypsies, half of which were under 5 years of age. Also were executed 60 Gypsy children of school age..."[19]
Eesti Omakaitse (Estonian Selbstschutz; approximately between 1000 and 1200 men) were directly involved in criminal acts, taking part in the round-up (and possibly killing) of 200 Roma people and 950 Jews.[8]
Few witnesses pointed out Heinrich Bergmann as the key figure behind the extermination of Estonian Roma people.
According to Soviet sources, camp commandant Laak used the women as sex slaves, killing at least one who refused to comply.[27]
Since the reestablishment of the Estonian independence markers were put in place for the 60th anniversary of the mass executions that were carried out at the Lagedi, Vaivara and Klooga (Kalevi-Liiva) camps in September 1944. [28] On February 5, 1945 in Berlin, Ain Mere founded the Eesti Vabadusliit together with SS-Obersturmbannführer Harald Riipalu.[29] He was sentenced to the capital punishment during the Holocaust trials in Soviet Estonia but was not extradited by Great Britain and died there in peace. In 2002 the Government of the Republic of Estonia decided to officially commemorate the Holocaust. In the same year, the Simon Wiesenthal Center had provided the Estonian government with information on alleged Estonian war criminals, all former members of the 36th Estonian Police Battalion.
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