Police
Nazi leaders relied on local police in Germany and across Europe to help carry out the Holocaust. Many police officers were not Nazis or extremists. Nevertheless, they often arrested Jews, helped deport them to camps, and killed them in mass shootings. Some acted out of deep hatred of Jews, while others claimed to be following orders. Opportunities to advance in the workplace, bonds with other officers, and a sense of duty also led many police to join in the persecution and murder of Europe’s Jews.
Background: German police and Nazi paramilitaries escort a group of Jewish men who were rounded up for arrest in the days after Kristallnacht. Stadthagen, Germany, 1938. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Stadtarchiv Stadthagen
1. German Police Support Nazi Attacks on Jews
German Police Support Nazi Attacks on Jews
Film: Standing by on Kristallnacht
Nazi leaders organized a wave of violence against Jews in Germany on the night of November 9, 1938. Over the following days, non-Jewish Germans joined Nazi security forces in terrorizing and beating Jewish people in the streets. Across Germany, they burned synagogues and looted businesses owned by Jews.
This amateur film documents how local firemen and police officers chose not to aid the victims of the attacks that became known as Kristallnacht. These officials refused to interfere with the burning and destruction of Jewish businesses and places of worship in Bielefeld, Germany. They intervened only to prevent fires from spreading to nearby property owned by non-Jews.
Courtesy of Gerlinde Lorenz
Stadthagen, Germany, November 1938
US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Stadtarchiv Stadthagen
German Police Support Nazi Attacks on Jews
Answering a Call for “Backup”
Hours before the violence of Kristallnacht began, the police in Stadthagen, Germany, received a message from the Gestapo asking for help in arresting members of the city’s Jewish male population. In this photograph, a Stadthagen police officer helps the Gestapo round up several local Jewish men. Many of those arrested in Stadthagen during Kristallnacht were beaten and sent to Buchenwald and other concentration camps.
Location: Nazi Germany
Beginning in 1933, Adolf Hitler and the Nazis transformed the country into a dictatorship. New anti-Jewish policies met with support among some Germans. The regime’s economic and foreign policy successes helped many ordinary people accept attacks on Jews. By early 1939, Nazi Germany had annexed Austria and the Czech lands.
2. German Police Become Mass Murderers
Bochnia, Poland, December 18, 1939US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Instytut Pamieci Narodowej
German Police Become Mass Murderers
Mobilizing Police in a “Racial War”
After the 1939 invasion of Poland, Nazi authorities sent German police to maintain security in occupied areas. At home, most of these officers had served in community roles, patrolling streets, directing traffic, and issuing tickets.
The police officers in this photo had specialized in crowd control in Vienna, Austria, before the war. On December 18, 1939, they shot 51 civilians at close range in occupied Poland. The unit executed these innocent civilians as revenge for an attack by Polish partisans that killed two police officers.
Nazi propaganda instructed the police units deployed to Poland to view the region’s Polish and Jewish populations as a “racial threat” inhabiting a dangerous and “primitive” place. While policemen were trained to be the “friend and helper” of the German people at home, they behaved with extreme brutality against supposedly “inferior” people in occupied Poland.
Location: Occupied Eastern Europe
Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939 and the Soviet Union in 1941. German authorities introduced brutal occupation policies and began isolating, shooting, and deporting Jews. Nazi leaders relied on ordinary people to help carry out their plans to murder all European Jews.
Łódź, Poland, December 25, 1940
US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Michael O’Hara
German Police Become Mass Murderers
Brothers in Arms
From 1939 to 1941, Nazi leaders sent German police officers to expel Polish and Jewish people from parts of Poland annexed by Germany. Police units forced Jewish families into camps and ghettos so that “racially pure” German people could settle in their place. Police used violence, often shooting those regarded as too elderly or sick to be removed.
This photo shows Reserve Police Battalion 101 at a Christmas celebration not long after completing one such mission. The men seem to be enjoying the chance to socialize with their fellow policemen, relaxing, drinking, and singing.
After Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, Battalion 101’s duties increasingly facilitated the mass murder of eastern European Jews. They moved victims to killing sites, guarded them, and shot them at close range. By the end of 1943, this unit of about 500 men had shot 38,000 Jews.
Although 101’s men were ordered to kill, those who refused did not receive any kind of punishment. How might bonds among the men in the unit have influenced their choice to obey?
Location: Occupied Eastern Europe
Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939 and the Soviet Union in 1941. German authorities introduced brutal occupation policies and began isolating, shooting, and deporting Jews. Nazi leaders relied on ordinary people to help carry out their plans to murder all European Jews.
3. Local “Auxiliary Police” Shoot Jewish Civilians
Chernigov, Ukraine, 1942
Hungarian National Museum Historical Photo Department
Local “Auxiliary Police” Shoot Jewish Civilians
“Dirty Work”
After the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, Nazi leaders increasingly relied on local collaborators to kill Jews in eastern Europe. So-called auxiliary police units took on what some police regarded as “dirty work.” They also provided thinly stretched German forces with more manpower and local knowledge.
“Auxiliaries” were usually non-German soldiers, militia men, public officials, and civilians. Few had any police training. Most joined in mass shootings because they wanted a job or a chance to seize Jewish people’s belongings. Others participated because they hated Jews or saw political opportunities in working with the Germans.
Over 2.5 million Jewish people were killed in these mass shootings. Mass murder on this scale would have been extremely difficult without “auxiliary police” forces. An ability to identify and locate local Jews made them particularly useful in the Nazi campaign to murder all Jews in occupied areas.
Location: Occupied Eastern Europe
Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939 and the Soviet Union in 1941. German authorities introduced brutal occupation policies and began isolating, shooting, and deporting Jews. Nazi leaders relied on ordinary people to help carry out their plans to murder all European Jews.
Local “Auxiliary Police” Shoot Jewish Civilians
Oral History: Juozas Aleksynas
Juozas Aleksynas had served in the Lithuanian military before the German invasion of 1941. Lithuanian officials called on soldiers and militia to support the German occupiers in a war against the Soviet Union.
Aleksynas joined an “auxiliary police” unit commanded by the German Security Police and participated in several massacres of Jewish people in eastern Europe in 1941. In this interview, Aleksynas strains to explain what led him to shoot Jewish parents and their small children—before finally blaming God for their murders.
US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of the Jeff and Toby Herr Foundation
4. Police in Occupied Europe Hunt and Imprison Jews
Police in Occupied Europe Hunt and Imprison Jews
Oral History: Halina Błaszczyk
Nazi Germany conquered vast areas of eastern Europe during the war. German forces looked to local police in the region for help in finding, capturing, and killing Jews.
Risking death if discovered, Halina Błaszczyk’s mother decided to help a Jewish boy named Chanan. She realized that, without a place to hide, he would surely be found by local police and killed. After they began hiding Chanan, Halina Błaszczyk’s family lived in constant fear of raids and roundups from police and auxiliaries.
Chanan Lipszyc survived more than two years in hiding with Halina’s family. Their families remained close for years after the war.
US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of the Jeff and Toby Herr Foundation
Warsaw, Poland, 1941
Bundesarchiv Deutschland
Police in Occupied Europe Hunt and Imprison Jews
A Steady Job—With “Benefits”
Local police in areas occupied by German forces often helped to enforce anti-Jewish laws. They also helped to confine Jews to ghettos, where many died of starvation and disease. Known as the “Blue Police,” Polish police inspected Jews’ identification at ghetto checkpoints to prevent them from escaping the deadly living conditions there.
Policing ghettos could offer men a source of stable employment. It also presented opportunities for financial gain at the expense of a desperate Jewish population. For many officers, blackmail, robbery, and bribes could provide additional income at a time of war and scarcity.
Location: Occupied Eastern Europe
Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939 and the Soviet Union in 1941. German authorities introduced brutal occupation policies and began isolating, shooting, and deporting Jews. Nazi leaders relied on ordinary people to help carry out their plans to murder all European Jews.
5. Resist or Comply? Police Face Choices at Work
Resist or Comply? Police Face Choices at Work
Oral History: Henry Kanner
After German forces deported his family from the ghetto of Krákow, Poland, 14-year-old Henry Kanner escaped into the countryside. He was soon caught and jailed in Ratibor, Germany.
A local policeman at the jail decided to secretly help him, offering food and protection. Henry remembered that the officer told him, “This is a terrible world. You belong in school, not in some jail cell.”
Despite the policeman’s help, the Gestapo ordered Henry deported to Auschwitz. Henry was the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust.
USC Shoah Foundation—The Institute for Visual History and Education
Officer Erich Troch
Stadstarchiv Felsberg/Klaus Troch
“Get with the times!”
Police treatment of Jews could shift rapidly. Police officer Erich Troch of Felsberg, Germany, protected Sigmund Weinstein and his family from a violent mob during the Kristallnacht attacks of November 1938. A man yelled at the officer to “Get with the times!” Despite threats, Officer Troch refused to join the violence against Jews on Kristallnacht.
Officer Troch’s actions were very different a few months later when the local mayor asked him for help expelling a Jewish man named Siegfried Mannsbach. Mannsbach was a 61-year-old German veteran who had refused demands to leave Germany or to hand over his business to authorities. Officer Troch and other officials increased pressure on him and eventually ensured that Mannsbach was drafted into forced labor. Mannsbach died in the Sachsenhausen camp in 1941.
What might have caused Officer Troch's behavior toward Jews to change in just a few short months?
Location: Nazi Germany
Beginning in 1933, Adolf Hitler and the Nazis transformed the country into a dictatorship. New anti-Jewish policies met with support among some Germans. The regime’s economic and foreign policy successes helped many ordinary people accept attacks on Jews. By early 1939, Nazi Germany had annexed Austria and the Czech lands.
6. Police Take Initiative in Arresting and Deporting Jews
Paris, France, May 14, 1941
Mémorial de la Shoah/Coll. Eizenberg
Police Take Initiative in Arresting and Deporting Jews
Deceiving the Victims
Paris police speak to Jewish couples during a wave of mass arrests of Jewish men in May 1941. Officers explain that loved ones will have to separate, as the men are to be sent to camps.
After Nazi Germany occupied France in 1940, French officials helped to implement anti-Jewish policies. In 1941, Paris police organized the first mass arrests of Jews in France, targeting mostly male Jews without French citizenship. Police sent these “foreign” Jews “green tickets” requesting what was described as a harmless “situation review.” These tickets deceived thousands into assembling at different locations. About 3,700 were then arrested and sent by train to internment camps.
After a year of uncertainty in the camps, the majority were deported and murdered in Auschwitz. Many loved ones never saw their husbands, fathers, brothers, and friends again.
Location: Collaboration with Nazi Germany
Most of Europe was under Nazi Germany’s control by 1942. In their efforts to deport and murder Europe’s Jews, German authorities found willing helpers across the continent. Police, public officials, and workers played a critical role in the Holocaust. A rare few took risks to aid the victims.
List of belongings that women were asked to bring after men were arrested in the green ticket roundup.
Mémorial de la Shoah, Paris
Police Take Initiative in Arresting and Deporting Jews
Packing List for an Unknown Journey
“Green tickets” sent by French police to many Jews living in Paris requested that they appear “along with a friend or family member.” Police had prepared a list to distribute to deportees’ loved ones specifying what they would need for the journey to internment camps. Families scrambled to piece together the items on the list in a matter of hours.
These supplies could scarcely have prepared the arrested men for the hunger and disease they would experience in the camps. However, for many deportees, these simple objects remained among their only connections to a former life.
One year later, most victims of the Paris police “green ticket” roundups were deported to Auschwitz and murdered there. Camp personnel would have confiscated any personal belongings the men had brought to the killing center before gassing them.
Translation
Please bring: 2 blankets; 1 bed sheet; 1 change of underclothes; 1 knife, fork, and spoon; 1 mess tin; 1 drinking glass; toiletries; ration card; food for 24 hours
Officer Théophile Larue
Le Comité Français pour Yad Vashem
Police Take Initiative in Arresting and Deporting Jews
A Rare Warning to Victims
Paris police organized another roundup in July 1942. This time, Jewish women and children were arrested along with Jewish men and sent to French internment camps.
While many police officers were carrying out arrests on July 16, an officer named Théophile Larue was warning Jewish neighbors of the approaching danger. Officer Larue and his wife then hid two Jewish women in their home for a week. To help the women flee, he obtained false papers to get them out and escorted them to the train station.
The roughly 13,000 Jews arrested in the roundups faced a very different fate. They endured suffocating summer heat with no access to sanitary facilities while imprisoned in a sports stadium for five days. Most were deported and murdered in Auschwitz weeks later.
Why would Officer Larue choose to help these victims at great personal risk, while fellow officers followed orders to arrest and deport Jewish families?
