Einsatzgruppe H was one of theEinsatzgruppen, the paramilitarydeath squads ofNazi Germany. A special task force of more than 700 soldiers, it was created at the end of August 1944 to deport or murder the remainingJews in Slovakia following the German suppression of theSlovak National Uprising. During its seven-month existence,Einsatzgruppe H collaborated closely with theHlinka Guard Emergency Divisions and arrested 18,937 people, of whom at least 2,257 were murdered; thousands of others were deported toNazi concentration camps (primarilyAuschwitz). The victims included Jews,Romani people, actual or suspectedSlovak partisans, and real or perceived political opponents. One of its component units,Einsatzkommando 14, committedtwo of the largest massacres in the history of Slovakia, atKremnička andNemecká.

On 14 March 1939, theSlovak State proclaimed its independence under the protection ofNazi Germany.^[1] According to theUnited States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the persecution of Jews was "central to the domestic policy of the Slovak state".^[2] Between 26 March and 20 October 1942, about 57,000 Jews, two-thirds of theJews in Slovakia at the time, were deported. Only a few hundred survived the war.^[3][4] In 1943, thedefeat at Stalingrad turned many Slovaks against theAxis-aligned regime, and the government refused to continue with deportations.^[5][6] It was now evident to the Slovak population that Germany would not win the war, and high casualties on the Eastern Front caused many ordinary Slovaks and large sections of the army to turn against the fascist regime; many retreated to the mountains and formedpartisan groups. Concerned about the increase in resistance and suspecting the loyalty of the Slovaks, Germany invaded Slovakia, precipitating theSlovak National Uprising, which broke out on 29 August 1944.^[7]

TheReich Security Main Office (RSHA) assignedEinsatzgruppe H to implement theFinal Solution in Slovakia,^[8] and deport or murder the 25,000 ethnic Jews remaining in Slovakia. Most of these were converts to Christianity, in mixed marriages, deemed essential to the economy, or protected by other exemptions that had prevented their deportation in 1942.^[9] Because of theadvance of the Red Army into Poland, theNazis wanted to deport Slovakia's remaining Jews to Auschwitz as soon as possible, as the camp would shut down itsgas chambers in November.^[10]

Einsatzgruppe H and its two main component units,Einsatzkommandos 13 and 14, were formed inBrno (in theProtectorate of Bohemia and Moravia) upon the outbreak of theSlovak National Uprising, on 28 or 29 August. Its commander wasSS-ObersturmbannfuhrerJosef Witiska.^[11] Other German units were tasked with the military suppression of the uprising;Einsatzgruppe H's main focus was to implementthe Final Solution in Slovakia. To this end, it intervened with the Slovak government and public life, carried out military actions against partisans, engaged in roundups, and committed massacres.^[12] The unit also submitted regular, detailed reports to Berlin concerning all aspects of life in Slovakia, including the military situation, Jews, public opinion, and culture.^[13] It exceeded its remit by targeting other groups, including partisans andRomani people.^[8]

SS GeneralGottlob Berger, who was appointed German military commander in Slovakia to suppress the uprising, and his superiors in Berlin, believed that the partisans would be defeated in a few days, despite warnings fromKarl Hermann Frank and others. Too few German troops were dispatched, soEinsatzgruppe H was drafted into active military actions, focusing on disarming Slovak Army units perceived to be unreliable. Due to his failure to suppress the uprising, Berger was recalled after three weeks and GeneralHermann Höfle replaced him.Banská Bystrica, the rebel headquarters, fell on 27 October, and the partisans shifted their strategy toguerrilla warfare.^[14][11]

Two days after the outbreak of the rebellion, Witiska met with Berger; the German ambassador to Slovakia,Hanns Ludin;Erich Ehrlinger of the RSHA; andErwin Weinmann, the commander of the SS andSD in the Protectorate. The object of this meeting was to discuss how to implement a "radical solution" (German:radikalen Lösung) to the "Jewish question" in Slovakia.^[15][16]

Most Jews were captured during roundups; either they were imprisoned at local prisons or else taken to theEinsatzgruppe H office inBratislava, from which they were sent toSereď concentration camp for deportation. In many cases, the local authorities provided lists of Jews. By this time, the Jews knew that deportation meant probable death, so many tried to flee, go into hiding, or otherwise avoid arrest. The attitude of the local population was ambivalent; some risked their lives to hide Jews, while others turned them in to the police.^[17]

Following the uprising,Einsatzgruppe H collaborated with theHlinka Guard Emergency Divisions (POHG) and a localVolksdeutsche paramilitary organization, theHeimatschutz (HS), to create an atmosphere of terror in rural Slovakia, perpetrating public executions and massacres of Jews, Romani people, and those suspected of supporting partisans.^[11][18] The success ofEinsatzgruppe H was largely due to denunciations and the cooperation of the POHG and the HS, were able to impersonate partisans due to their local knowledge and ability to speak Slovak. These collaborators participated in the massacres, aided with interrogations, and searched houses for Jews in hiding.^[19]

Einsatzgruppe H was organized hierarchically as were otherEinsatzgruppe units. It was run from a central headquarters in Bratislava, where Witiska maintained an office at Palisády 42 with about 160 personnel. At its peak, the unit had six subunits with stationary headquarters:Sonderkommando 7a,Einsatzkommandos 13 and 14, and zb-V Kommandos 15, 27, and 29. Of these,Einsatzkommandos 13 and 14 and zb-V Kommando 27 were newly formed, while the other units had been transferred from other duties. Not all were subordinated toEinsatzgruppe H for the entirety of their activities in Slovakia; for instance, zb-V Kommando 27, which operated in eastern Slovakia from September 1944, was subordinated to the SD office inKraków until January 1945. Except for zb-V Kommando 15, dissolved in February, the units continued to exist until the liberation of Slovakia by theRed Army, at which point most of the personnel fled intoMoravia. More than 700 soldiers served inEinsatzgruppe H at one point, although the exact numbers cannot be determined.^[20]

Organizationally, the unit was part of theWehrmacht, but it was never under Wehrmacht operational control.^[21] On 15 November 1944, the unit was transferred to the control of the SD and ceased to be calledEinsatzgruppe H officially, but the unit maintained the same personnel. A few days later, Witiska was promoted to the head of the SiPo and SD in Slovakia, but maintained control over the unit.^[22]

Although the members of the unit were very diverse in terms of age, education, and affiliation with theNazi Party, most had previous experience with combat or rear-area operations.^[23][24] Some were Slovaks.^[25]

Einsatzkommando 13(sk) was commanded by Otto Koslowski, Hans Jaskulsky, and then Karl Schmitz.^[22] 446 Jews were rounded up in western and central Slovakia byEinsatzkommando 13; they were held atIlava prison before being deported fromŽilina toconcentration camps in Germany.^[26]

• On 13/14 September, the unit did a roundup in Žilina, arresting hundreds of Jews who were held inSereď andIlava before their deportation to concentration camps, especially Auschwitz. Few survived the war.^[27]

Einsatzkommando 14(cs,sk), commanded byGeorg Heuser [be;de;ru], was the main unit ofEinsatzgruppe H.^[28] Heuser had been the commander of theSiPo inMinsk, where he had helped organize themass shootings of Belarusian Jews.Einsatzkommando 14 advanced behind the SS front-line unitKampfgruppe Schill [cs;sk] fromNitra toTopoľčany, where it set up a temporary headquarters. In mid-September, the unit moved farther east toBaťovany, and after the fall ofBanská Bystrica in late October it moved to that location.^[29]

The unit was responsible for 2,876 murders, including the largest massacres on Slovak territory:^[25]Kremnička massacre, with at least 747 victims, andNemecká massacre, with some 900 victims. These massacres were committed in cooperation with the POHG and the HS.^[28][30]

• On 3 September, the unit conducted a hunt for hidden Jews inTopoľčany.^[27]
• On 11 September 1944, the unit shot 350 Jews atNemčice (near Topoľčany), including women, children, and a four-month-old infant.^[19]
• On 3 October, 48 people were shot atMartin for alleged partisan activities.^[19]
• On 24 November the unit arrested 109 Romani people from the village ofIlija, including women and children, who were later shot atKremnička.^[19]
• On 12 December, 31 people were removed from the prison inBrezno and murdered in a nearby field. The bodies were buried in a shallow trench and exhumed ten days later after the Germans were persuaded that it was a health hazard. Victims included several partisans and an entire Jewish family, including seven-year-old Ladislav Ferenc.^[31]
• In January 1945, four alleged guerillas were hanged inZlaté Moravce.^[19]
• Also in January, seven Jews found in hiding inDonovaly were shot along with their rescuer, and the house burned down.^[19]

Einsatzkommando 29 and local collaborators committed the28 September roundup in Bratislava, organized byAlois Brunner.^[32] On 26 September, the Germans raided theJewish Center, obtaining a list of Jews, with which they prepared the operation.^[33] On the night of 28 September, 1,600^[34] or 1,800 Jews in Bratislava were arrested and held in the Jewish Council's headquarters until 6 am, when they were loaded onto freight cars and transported toSereď, arriving at 2 am on 30 September. They were deported toAuschwitz concentration camp later that month, where most were murdered.^[35] Notably, the victims included most of the leadership of theWorking Group, a Jewish resistance organization.^[36][32] This was the largest roundup in Slovakia^[34] and an example of Slovak collaboration.^[27] After the September operation, Einsatzkommando 29 established an office in the former Jewish Center (Edelgasse 6) to hunt down Jews in hiding. When Jews were captured, they were interrogated and tortured if they did not give the names and addresses of other Jews in hiding. The bodies of victims who were tortured to death were thrown into the Danube.^[37] This was staffed largely from members of theHeimatschutz.^[38]

According toEinsatzgruppe H's official records, the unit arrested 18,937 people: 9,653 Jews, 3,409 "bandits" (actual or suspected partisans), 2,186 defectors, 714 resistance members, 172 Romani people and 546 others. Of these, 2,257 were subjected toSonderbehandlung (summary execution).^[39][9] The unit captured the leaders of the uprising, GeneralsJan Golian andRudolf Viest, as well as a few American and British military personnel and German soldiers suspected ofdefeatism orhomosexuality.^[9]

After the liberation of Slovakia by the Red Army, 211mass graves with 5,304 victims shot by Axis forces in late 1944 and early 1945 were discovered; a quarter of the victims were women and children. Some 90 villages were razed.^[40][18] Of the approximately 25,000 Jews present in Slovakia at the beginning of the uprising,^[7] 13,500 were deported—most of whom died—and several hundred massacred in Slovakia.^[41]

Witiska committed suicide in American captivity in 1946, in order to avoid being brought to trial in Czechoslovakia. Koslowski, the commander ofEinsatzkommando 13, was sentenced to death by a Czechoslovak court and executed inBrno in 1947.^[42] Twenty-two of the officers were convicted, four of them in Czechoslovakia for crimes committed in theCzech lands, three in Yugoslavia, two in Poland, and one each in Austria, Slovakia, and France (the remainder were convicted by Germany) but these convictions were for other crimes.^[24] Most members of the unit avoided prosecution forwar crimes and made successful careers inWest Germany.^[42]

Fifteen judicial proceedings relating to the unit were opened in West Germany, mostly relating to the deportation and murder of Slovak Jews. Only one man, Silvester Weiss, was ever indicted by a German court for crimes committed as part of the unit; he was born on 27 November 1925 in Slovakia and prosecuted under juvenile law in 1964. After being convicted for his role in the murder of a hostage, he was conditionally released and did not serve any time in prison. According to Czech historian Lenka Šindelářová, part of the failure to hold the perpetrators accountable was the lack of will on the part of German investigators, although the difficulty of obtaining evidence 20 years after the fact andstatute of limitations also prevented cases from coming to trial. A few other members ofEinsatzgruppe H were convicted as accomplices to murder for crimes committed with other units, but these sentences were typically light; one person was sentenced to six years in jail for the murder of 28,450 people. Heuser, responsible forEinsatzkommando 14's massacres, rose to a senior position in the West German police service before being convicted for assisting in the murder of 11,000 people in and around Minsk as a member of theGestapo. He was released after serving six years of a 15-year sentence.^[42]

The topic of Einsatzgruppe H was understudied until the publication of Šindelářová's book,Finale der Vernichtung: die Einsatzgruppe H in der Slowakei 1944/1945 (End of the Extermination: the Einsatzgruppe H in Slovakia 1944/1945) in 2013. It was based on her dissertation at theUniversity of Stuttgart.^[43]

Citations

Bibliography

• Šindelářová, Lenka (2013).Finale der Vernichtung: die Einsatzgruppe H in der Slowakei 1944/1945 (in German). Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.ISBN 978-3-534-73733-8.
• Šindelářová, Lenka (2015).Einsatzgruppe H: působení operační skupiny H na Slovensku 1944/1945 a poválečné trestní stíhání jejích příslušníků (in Czech). Banská Bystrica: Academia.ISBN 9788020024275.

• Einsatzgruppen
• Slovak National Uprising
• The Holocaust in Slovakia

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