Roger Moorhouse - The Devils' Alliance - Hitler's Pact with Stalin, 1939-1941

In Berlin, meanwhile, the piecemeal deportations from the provinces were brought to a halt in the spring of 1941. Frustrated that their previous efforts had achieved little beyond the shunting of unwanted peoples into the General Government, senior Nazis began talking rather delphically from late 1940 onward of a future “settlement of the Jewish question” through deportation to a territory “yet to be determined.” That territory was the Soviet Union. Deporting Europe’s Jews into former Soviet territory made logistical and ideological sense; after all, it was an easier solution than the previous suggestion to ship them to Madagascar. In addition, the destination was seen as a fitting, neatly encapsulating the Nazi belief in the link between Jewishness and communism. In the meantime, however, all further deportations were to be shelved, pending the expected destruction of the USSR.

Just as the Nazis were pondering their own program of “resettlements,” the Soviets were planning a new deportation of their own. Over the previous two years, the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland, the Baltic states, Bessarabia, and Northern Bukovina had been followed by a swift sovietization, with the rapid coordination of all administrative infrastructure, a thoroughgoing land reform, and a deliberate targeting of all those belonging to the old political elite. Now, a fresh impetus was given to consolidating the new territories and rooting out further potential sources of opposition from within the native populations.

Of course, Soviet repression and persecution of those who dared to transgress had continued apace. In Bessarabia, it was said that after only six months of Soviet occupation, the prisons were already so full that barracks were used to house those who had been arrested. Conditions and treatment were predictably brutal. In Lithuania, Juozas Viktoravičius was arrested in April 1941 for criticizing the Soviet system. After he had spent two weeks in the cells, the NKVD questioned him for the first time; placed in chains, beaten, and sexually abused, he fainted twice during a forty-five-hour interrogation. When he was finally returned to his cell, nobody recognized him. Elsewhere equally imaginative methods were employed. As one Bessarabian victim of the NKVD recalled, “Not only did they interrogate you but they also beat you like a dog. Their basements were filled with water and they would hold you in there, upside down, for hours. From time to time they would even touch you with electric wires.”

Now in a new phase of repression, the Soviet apparatus reverted to the time-honored tactic of targeting entire classes of otherwise innocent people in the belief that by their mere existence they posed a threat to Soviet power. A document drawn up by the head of the NKVD in Lithuania, Alexander Guzevičius, in the winter of 1940 listed some of the groups believed to constitute a “pollution” of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic:

1. All former members of anti-Soviet political parties, organizations, and groups: Trotskyists, rightists, socialist revolutionaries, Mensheviks, social democrats, anarchists, and the like

2. All former members of the national chauvinist anti-Soviet parties, organizations, and groups

3. Former gendarmes, policemen, and former employees of the political and criminal police and of the prisons

4. Former officers of the tsar, Petliura, and other armies

5. Former officers and members of military courts

6. Former political bandits and volunteers of the White and other armies

7. Persons expelled from the Communist Party and Komsomol for antiparty offenses

8. All deserters, political emigrants, reemigrants, repatriates, and contrabandists

9. All citizens of foreign countries, representatives of foreign firms, employees of offices of foreign countries, and former citizens of foreign countries

10. Persons having personal contacts and maintaining correspondence abroad, foreign legations and consulates, Esperantists and philatelists

11. Former employees of the departments of ministries

12. Former workers of the Red Cross

13. Religionists, sectants, and active members of religious communities

14. Former noblemen, estate owners, merchants, bankers, commercialists, shop owners, owners of hotels and restaurants

Clearly, the Soviet net was to be cast extremely wide. By one NKVD estimate, fully one in seven Lithuanians merited inclusion on a list of so-called unreliable people. In practice, however, the numbers implicated far exceeded those who actually met the criteria as, across the Baltic states, family members were considered guilty by association. In Latvia, for instance, Augusts Zommers was arrested because of his membership in the local national guard, the Aizsargi , but his wife and daughter were also labeled as “socially dangerous” and targeted for deportation. His daughter, Ina, was only five-years-old.

Having identified their opponents, the Soviet authorities in the newly annexed republics then moved to eliminate these groups in the early summer of 1941, mindful of the growing threat on the western frontier and the pressing need to preserve political control in any coming crisis. Three previous waves of deportations had already been inflicted upon eastern Poland, so by the early months of 1941, the Soviet authorities were well versed in the practicalities of swiftly identifying, arresting, and removing large numbers of people. The procedures to be followed in deporting these enemies of the Soviet state were laid down in the so-called Serov Instructions, issued by the deputy commissar of the NKVD, Ivan Serov, in early June 1941. Serov ordered that the deportations be carried out calmly, without panic and excitement. Persons to be deported were to be identified in the first instance by a three-man troika of local Communist Party and NKVD operatives and apprehended in their homes at daybreak, at which point they and the premises were to be thoroughly searched, with any offending items—counterrevolutionary materials, weapons, or foreign currency—being listed and confiscated. The victims were then to be informed that they would be deported to “other regions” of the Soviet Union and could take with them household necessities—clothes, bedding, kitchen utensils, and a month’s supply of food—not exceeding a total weight of one hundred kilograms. Trunks or packing cases were to be labeled with the Christian name, patronymic, and surname of the deportee, as well as the name of his or her home town or village. Once prepared, deportees were to be transported to the local rail station, where the male heads of families were to be separated from the others. After a railcar was loaded—an estimated capacity of twenty-five persons per wagon was given—the doors were to be locked. The entire process from arrest to entrainment should be completed, Serov ordered, in under two hours.

For all the calm and clinical precision demanded by Serov, the experience of deportation was terrifying. The operation began in Bessarabia on the night of June 12–13, continued across the three Baltic republics two days later, on the night of June 14–15, and concluded with a further deportation imposed on the northeastern region of occupied Poland from June 14 to 20, 1941. Those affected awoke in the early hours to the arrival of arrest parties, usually a couple of local militiamen accompanied by Red Army or NKVD personnel. In Latvia, Herta Kaļiņina’s experience was typical: “Everyone was woken by a loud knocking at the door. Accompanied by soldiers, a Russian man and a rather distant neighbour of ours barged into the room. They ordered us to pack as many things as we could and said that we had to go and live somewhere else.” There was no sympathy for their plight. When her father asked the men what he had done to hurt anyone, he was told, “You are a class enemy and we are going to annihilate you.”