Plunder of Jewish Property in the Nazi-Occupied Areas Of the Soviet Union

Plunder of Jewish Property in the Nazi-Occupied Areas
Of the Soviet Union

Yitzhak Arad

One of the by-products of the mass murder of the Jews in the Nazi-
occupied  areas of  the  Soviet Union between 1941  and  1944,  was  the

confiscation and plunder of their property. This also fit into the broader policy
of the Nazi exploitation of slave labor and economic resources in the occupied
territories for the benefit of the German war economy. The aim was to supply
the needs of the German armies in combat on the Eastern Front and of the
German administration and its institutions in the occupied zones, and to help
meet the essential needs of the population in Germany proper for agricultural
produce.

Due to the prevailing conditions in the Soviet Union, the murder and
plunder of the Jews there differed from the murder in other German occupied
countries. Soviet Jews were murdered at killing pits near their homes, and not
in distant extermination camps. Consequently, all their money, valuables and
other property were left on the spot at the disposal of the local authorities.
Another significant difference lay in the concept of    private property  in a
communist state including the property belonging to the individual Jew, which
was different from the property kept by Jews in capitalist countries occupied
by Nazi Germany. An array of German authorities operated in the occupied
Soviet territories: the Wehrmacht and military administration, various SS
formations, and the German civil administration. As a result, jurisdictional
competition and the question of who rightfully   controlled  confiscated Jewish
property were distinctive features associated with this pillage.

Since Jews and non-Jews often lived in close proximity, broad sections of
the non-Jewish local population also participated in the plunder of Jewish
property.

This article describes German policy regarding individual Jewish property
in the Nazi-occupied areas of the Soviet Union, the various authorities that

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commandeered these assets, the manner in which the pillage was carried out,
and the frictions among the various German authorities. The sources for this
study include archival materials and relevant research published over the
years, newly-available documentation from former Soviet archives, and new
research and documentation published in the successor states of the former
Soviet Union.

The Nature of Jewish Property in the Soviet Union

German  plunder of Jewish property  in the occupied areas of the Soviet
Union refers to all assets and anything of economic value that was in Jewish
possession. The scope of such property, however, was generally limited. In
the first years after the Bolshevik Revolution, during the period of  Military
Communism,  the Soviet authorities confiscated property from all  Soviet
citizens, including industries, workshops, large buildings, land, banks and
other property privately owned by Jews. Jewish communal property, such as
schools, synagogues, hospitals and cultural institutions belonging to local
Jewish communities, organizations and political parties, suffered a similar
fate. World War I, the revolution and subsequent civil war, along with the
pogroms and pillage that accompanied them reduced the Jews to economic
ruin. A portion of the property that small traders and Jewish artisans were able
to acquire in the years of the  New Economic Policy  from 1921 to 1928 was
later confiscated by the Soviet state during the era of collectivization in the
late 1920s and early 1930s.

Like other Soviet citizens, Jews were allowed to own very little: an apartment, generally small, along with furnishings and household items, clothing and personal belongings. In the kolkhoz collective farms or in small towns, Soviet citizens were permitted to own a few animals, such as a cow or goat. Private possession of a limited amount of currency and certain valuables was also permitted. This was the extent of Jewish property in the  old  areas of the Soviet Union; that is, within the Soviet boundaries before September 1939 and the outbreak of World War II.

The economic situation of the Jews in territories annexed by the Soviets in
1939-1940  in  western  Belorussia,  western  Ukraine,  the  Baltic  States,

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Bessarabia and the northern Bukovina differed slightly. Most Jews there belonged to the middle class, and a small number were even wealthy. However,  in  the  first  weeks  and  months  of  Soviet  rule,  the  Soviet administration in the annexed territories took immediate steps to nationalize the banks and their deposits, along with factories, businesses and apartment buildings. Apartments and their contents were usually left in their owner s possession, except in the case of persons regarded as  enemies  of the Soviet state. The latter were arrested or deported to interior areas of the Soviet Union. The Jews were hard hit financially by these measures and many were reduced to the barest minimum for existence.

Nevertheless, since the Soviet rule had only been in power for a short time
in these annexed areas, the Jews there still had more property than Jews
within the  old  territory of the Soviet Union. However, even without having
exact data, there can be little doubt that individual Jews throughout the Soviet
Union ( old and new territories) had less personal assets of all kinds than the
Jews  in  Central  and  Western  Europe.  Moreover,  unlike  the  Jewish
communities there, Soviet Jews had no communal property, like hospitals,
schools, clubs, synagogues, etc. On the other hand, because there were far
more Jews within the German-occupied Soviet Union than in Central and
Western Europe, the small amount of private property and valuables that were
owned by Jews added up to a substantial sum. What did that property consist
of? First, all the dwellings and their contents left behind by hundreds of
thousands of Jews who had fled or who had been evacuated eastward, inside
the Soviet Union, on their escape from the approaching German forces.
Second,  the  hundreds  of  thousands  of  apartments (and  their  contents)

formerly occupied by Jews who had been evicted and removed to the killing sites or to ghettoes as interim stage on their way to extermination. Third, all personal belongings, currency and valuables stolen from the victims at the sites where they were murdered.

The Structure of the German Administration:

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Economic Exploitation of Occupied Soviet Territories

The orders for Operation Barbarossa also set down the policy aims for the economic exploitation of the occupied areas in the Soviet Union. Instructions issued on March 13, 1941 by the Wehrmacht Supreme Command (OKW) in advance of the attack on the Soviet Union, pertaining to operational objectives to be pursued by army commanders in the rear areas, stated:

1.  Exploitation of the country and protection of economic assets of
            value to the German economy.

2.  Exploitation of the country for supply of the forces in accordance
            with the requirements of the Army Supreme Command [OKH]...

3.  The  F¸hrer  has  charged  the  Reichsmarshall          [Gˆring]  with  the

coordination  of  the  economic  administration   ...  the  latter  has

delegated this task to the head of the Armaments Office.1

To implement this economic aim in the areas occupied by the army,
Gˆring set up the Supreme Economic Staff-East (Wirtschaftsf¸hrungsstab
Ost)  under  his  leadership,  subordinating  to  it  the  Economic  Staff-East
(Wirtschaftsstab Ost). It had branch offices in all army groups down to
regional, local and city military administrations (Feldkommandanturen, FK,

Ortskommandaturen, OK). In the areas under German civil administration, economic matters and exploitation for the war economy and the needs of this administration  was  in  the  hands  of  the  Reich  Commissars  and  the administration organs subordinate to them. Exploitation for the needs of the Wehrmacht was handled by branches of the OKW Office of War Economy and Armaments (Wehrwirtschafts- und R¸stungsamt, WRA), commanded by Gen. Georg Thomas. These operated independently within the areas under civil administration. Thomas also had authority over the economic exploitation staffs active in territory under military administration.2

1  Walter  Warlimont,  Inside  Hitler’s  Headquarters     1939-1945       (London:

Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1964), p. 154.

2 Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (New York: Holmes and

Meier, 1985), pp. 355-357; Alexander Dallin, German Rule in Russia, 1941-

1945 (London: Macmillan, 1957), pp. 314-316.

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Within the frame of their overall mandate, these official bodies also considered themselves the sole authority for the disposition of Jewish property and its utilization. In contrast, SS authorities, in particular the Einsatzgruppen and branches of the Sipo and SD claimed that they had been invested with supreme authority over all matters pertaining to the Jews, including the fate of their property and valuables. As a result, a raft of arguments and differences of opinion developed among the various German authorities.

An additional and extremely important factor in the seizure and plunder of Jewish possessions was the local population. Local inhabitants pillaged large amounts of Jewish property, with or without the permission of the German occupation  authorities.  Economic  exploitation  also  encompassed  Jewish forced labor, but this is beyond the purview of this article.

Orders and Directives on Jewish Property

With regard to Jewish property, a memorandum from the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories, entitled  Instructions for Dealing with the Jewish Problem, stated:

It is necessary to seize and confiscate all Jewish possessions, except for what
is essential for their existence. As rapidly as possible and to the extent that
the economic situation permits, Jews must be dispossessed of their property
and belongings by means of orders and additional measures by the senior
officials of the Reich Commissariats. This is necessary in order to put an
immediate halt to the transfer of property [into the hands of others].3

In  the  temporary  orders  given  on  August     18,       1941  by  the

Reichskommissar of the Ostland4 Hinrich Lohse, Para. IV F stipulates that
Jewish property should be confiscated and registered, though no date for
implementation is specified. In any event, Jews were ordered immediately to

3 Nuremberg Doc., PS-212.

4 The Reichskommissariat Ostland encompassed the Baltic countries and
much of occupied White Russia. The civil administration in the Ostland and
Reichskommissariat  Ukraine  had  a  hierarchy  of   commissars   or

commissioners  who were the ranking officials, from Reich Commissar on
            down to Generalkommissar and Gebietskommissar.

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hand over all domestic and foreign currency in their possession, aside from the sum of 2 rubles a day per person for one month, to cover daily living expenses     far too little even for minimum subsistence.5 They were also ordered to deliver all stocks, bonds and other valuables, such as gold, diamonds and other precious metals and stones. In addition to its specific stipulations, the order was also meant to call the attention of all military and SS authorities to the civil administration s legal competence regarding the disposition and ownership of Jewish property.

Yet by the time that Lohse and the newly established civil administration
began to act, they discovered that various bodies and persons had already
begun the seizure and plunder of Jewish property. The army and military
administration that controlled the area prior to the establsihment of the civil
administration  had  seized  many  buildings  owned  by  Jews  and  had
commandeered large amounts of furniture and equipment for their offices and
units. They had also taken a sizable amount of currency and valuables worth
millions of RM. The Einsatzgruppen and units of both the German and local
police that had carried out Judenaktionen had seized the belongings and
valuables of their victims for themselves. Many local inhabitants had taken
their apartments and furnishings, plundering everything they could lay their
hands on    and even moving into the apartments after the Jews had been
taken to the pits to be shot.

Lohse s temporary orders of August 18, 1941, had been were somewhat
unclear regarding Jewish property; they did not stress the urgency of seizing
this property lest others, outside the civilian administration, take control of it
instead. Nor did these orders refer in any way to the question of Jewish
property already confiscated by other persons or authorities. In order to deal
with this situation, Lohse issued a detailed order on October 13, 1941, entitled

Order for Settlement of Jewish Property in the Reich Commissariat Ostland. It stated:

1.  All property, both movable and immovable, in the possession of
            Jews within the territory of the Reich Commissar Ostland is to be
            confiscated...

5 Nuremberg Doc., PS-1138.

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2.  Property is understood to mean movable and immovable chattels,
            their appurtenances and all associated rights...

3.  The confiscation is to be carried out by the Reich Commissar
            Ostland or the offices he has authorized. ... The confiscation does
            not include the following:

a. Household goods and effects necessary for basic needs.

b. Cash and bank deposits up to the value of 100 RM.

4.  The penalty of imprisonment and/or a fine will be placed on:

a.  All  persons  attempting  to  conceal  from  the  German  civilian administration  or its  representatives  any  article  of  property  or

attempting in another way to prevent its confiscation or to reduce the amount confiscated.

b. Anyone who by intent or through negligence fails to fulfill his obligation to report or give notice in accordance with this directive [on Jewish property].

c. ... if the accused acted for motives of willful resistance, or if the case
involves a particularly serious offense, the accused is to be sentenced
to death. ..

5.  The order takes effect from the day of its official publication.6

On December 1, 1941, Lohse issued an order to set up a  Trustee
Administration (Treuhandverwaltung) to centralize operations dealing with

Jewish  property.  That  authority  maintained  branch  offices  in  the  four
Generalkommissariats: Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and White Russia.7
            The most difficult problem facing the German occupation administration
was in gathering accurate information on Jewish property, in particular on the
large number of apartments and their contents. In the main, these had been
seized by local police officers and officials of the local administration or by the

6 Verk¸ndungsblatt des Reichskomissars f¸r das Ostland, October 24, 1941,
in   My Obvinianiem (Riga: Liesma, 1967, pp. 72-73), Latvijas Psr Centr lais
Valsts Oktobra Revol cijas un Soci listisk s Celtniec bas Arh vs, Fond 18

(Generalkommisseriat Riga) Opis 1, No. 2.

7  Letter  from  the  Trustee  Administration  Minsk,  June         23,       1942,  on

confiscation and subsequent handling of Jewish property, United States

Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive (USHMMA), RG 53002-M, Reel 22.

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neighbors of Jews from the local population. The task of recording Jewish
property was assigned to the Gebietskommissare (regional commissars).
They in turn utilized the local officials subordinate to them for carrying out this
job, namely the mayors and village heads (Soltys). For example, Minsk
Gebietskommissar Hans Kaiser s order of October 14, 1941, stated:

It is necessary to report by November 1, 1941 on all Jewish property. Anyone possessing or utilizing property belonging to Jews, and anyone who has or can exercise disposition over that property by legal or practical means, is required to file a report. Consequently, I demand to be provided with a report, particularly by persons safeguarding Jewish property or who have taken possession of it by one means or another. All these are required to file a report with mayors in the regions and counties. 8

Three days later, on October 17, Kaiser issued a supplementary order
stating that all Jewish property belongs to the state. 9 Subsequent to Kaiser s
order, the Belorussian county chief of the Minsk district, the Belorussian M.
Kontovt, issued an instruction stating that all the property left behind by Jews
should be handed over to the Gebietskommissariat Minsk by October 25,
1941. In the case of animals, they should be reported and temporarily remain
where they are. 10 This directive made no mention of apartments. Similar
orders were also handed down by other Gebietskommissars.11 In an order in
October 1941   on   Jewish   property  issued   by   Dr.  Walter   Alnor,
Gebietskommissar of the Libau (Liepaja) region in Latvia, mayors and village
heads were given the responsibility of safeguarding Jewish property and
providing Alnor with an inventory of this property. Alnor, cognizant of the

8          Raisa Andreevna Chernoglazova, Tragedie Yevreiev Belorusii v Gody

Niemetskoi Okkupatsi 1941-1944 (Minsk: Izdateli Dremach-Galperin, 1995), p.

69.

9  Ibid., p. 70.
            10  Ibid.

11  Yitzhak Arad, Ghetto in Flames: The Struggle and Destruction of the Jews in Vilna in the Holocaust (New York: Holocaust Library, 1982), pp. 200-201,
            order issued by Hans Hingst, Gebietskommissar, Vilna.

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problematic nature of this matter and in order to encourage his subordinates to file a report, noted:

I agree that it is necessary to give household objects of minor value to the needy and the deserving, even requesting a certain payment in return. As to other property, it can be appropriated and utilized only on the basis of my direct authorization.

Later in the order, he noted that there was a lack of furniture and other
household effects in various offices in Libau. Consequently, there was a need
for such items that had been left behind by Jews in the cities and towns of the
region.12

Jewish property, like Jewish forced labor, was a means to help finance the
budget and maintenance of the German civil administration and its activities,
which is why that administration struggled to ensure that income from this
property would be channeled into its coffers. At the beginning of August 1942,
Lohse transferred the authority over Jewish property from the Trustee Office
to  Dr.  Karl  Friedrich  Vialon,  head  of  the  Budget  Department  in  the
Reichskommissariat Ostland.13 On August 27, 1942, Vialon issued an order to
all  Generalkommissars,  entitled   Administration  of  Jewish  Ghettoes,
stipulating that while the administration of the ghettoes came under the
authority  of  the  Political  Department  of  the  Reichskommissariat,  all  the
financial aspects connected with property were to be handled by the Budget
Department. He noted that this was in accordance with instructions from the
Reich Ministry for the Eastern Territories. The order stated:

The minister for occupied territories in the East has delegated the authority
for administration of property to budget departments ... Articles of gold and
silver should be confiscated, carefully inventoried, sent to the Reich Credit
Bank in Riga and put at my further disposal. ... Their transfer to the Utilization
Office [for valuables, Verwertungsstelle] in Berlin will be handled centrally

12  Yad Vashem Archives (YVA), M-33/1045, JM 10606.

13  Letter, August 11, 1942, USHMMA, RG-53002-M, Reel 22.

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from Riga. ... Cloth and fabric collected and not passed on to the procurement departments  are  to  be  sent  to  the  central  and  local  branch  offices  of Ostlandfaser GmbH. In the case of objects sold, the funds received should be transferred immediately for deposit in the special account of the Finance Office of the Reichskommissariat. ... No other special accounts should be opened for this purpose. 14

One reason for Vialon s order was to ensure that funds from Jewish property would not remain in the hands of the Generalkommissars in Minsk, Kovno (Kaunas) and Riga, but would be deposited to the credit of the Reichskommissariat Ostland.

The problems concerning Jewish property and its seizure continued to
engage the top echelon of the civil administration in the occupied Soviet
Union. On September 7, 1942, the Ministry for the Eastern Territories issued a
document for the Reichskommissars of the Ukraine and Ostland regarding
confiscation and sale of Jewish property, property of the Soviet state and
ownerless property, based on decisions issued by Minister Alfred Rosenberg
on June 18, 1942. In order to expedite the seizure of property not yet in the
hands of the civil administration or other German authorities, announcements
were to be published in the press and by other means threatening punishment
to any person who failed to report such property. The document referred also
to  the  necessity  of  establishing  special  investigation  units.  Special
warehouses should also be set up in order to store Jewish property, and a
detailed inventory kept of the items. The document stipulated to which central
offices  in  Berlin  the  property  should  be  transferred,  what  items
Reichskommissars  were  permitted  to  leave  in  the  hands  of  local
administration authorities (furniture; household utensils) and what should be
sold off (clothing, fabric, etc.). Funds from the sale of precious metals in Berlin
were  to  be  transferred  to  the  account  of  the  Ministry  for  the  Eastern
Territories.15

14   Administration of Jewish Ghettos, YVA, 053/161.

15   V. I. Adamushko and G. D. Knatko et al., eds., “Nazi Gold” from Belarus,
Documents and Materials (Minsk: State Committee on Archives and Record
Keeping of the Republic of Belarus, 1998), pp. 110-113. The documents in the

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On October 14, 1942, Lohse issued a supplementary order by which all
past claims by Jews from any third party for money or other assets were also
considered as confiscated by the German civil administration. Any person who
owed money to Jews was therefore required to report this to the authorities. In
other words, the civil administration was now considered the owner of all
claims by Jews from any non-Jewish individual. Lohse s supplementary order
also stipulated that all persons or institutions, including German and local
offices, possessing Jewish property or now located in formerly Jewish-owned
premises  were  obliged  to  report  this.16  Lohse s  sought  to  establish
unequivocally that the civil administration and not any other authority, was the
body authorized to confiscate and even to retain formerly Jewish property,
currency  and  valuables.  The  civil  administration  circulated  a  letter  and
questionnaire in which various authorities were ordered to report in detail on
any Jewish or ownerless property they had in their possession.17

The confiscation of Jewish property in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine
encompassing Polesje, Volhynia and the eastern Ukraine as far as the areas
along the Dnieper River    and the problems of locating and collecting this
property,  resembled  the  situation  in  the  Reichskommissariat  Ostland.
Compared with German documentation on the Ostland, documentation on
Jewish property in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine is, as with other aspects
of the Holocaust, relatively scanty. That difference is not due to the nature of
Jewish property there or the manner in which it was handled. Rather, it stems
from the limited amount of paper work on the whole topic of property in the
Ukraine,  a  consequence  of  the  differing  personalities  of  the  individual
Reichskommissars. Lohse was a punctilious bureaucrat interested in detail
and issued numerous documents; by contrast, Erich Koch, Reichskommissar
of the Ukraine, prepared fewer documents and was less concerned about
details.18 Commenting on the Ukraine, Hilberg notes:

book are given in the German original, with a translation into English and
            Russian.

16 Order on Jewish Property, YVA, JM 10606, M-33/1049.

17 Document, Commander of the Regular Police (KdO) in Latvia, December
            22, 1942, YVA, JM.10606, M.33.1049.

18 Dallin notes that Lohse s work style led  to a flood of directives, instructions
and decrees which covered thousands of pages,  Dallin, German Rule in

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Reichskommissar Koch, was far less ambitious in his efforts to collect Jewish
belongings. On September 7, 1942, Koch received a directive, prepared in the
East Ministry, [Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories] to seize all
Jewish and abandoned property   Koch replied that the implementation of
this decree was a  political and organizational impossibility.  He had already
confiscated Jewish valuables,  particularly gold.  The remainder of the Jewish
property consisted primarily of furnishings, part of which he was using in his
offices and the rest of which he had burned To make lists now   to pay

Jewish debts    that in my opinion is a presumption about my administration

19

that cannot be justified in war-time

In the territory under military administration, which included eastern White Russia (except for the cities of Minsk and Slutsk), the Ukraine east of the Dnieper River and the occupied territories of the Russian Federation, authority for all matters relating to Jewish property rested with the  Economic StaffEast  and its branch offices in various cities and districts. There too problems surfaced and other persons or authorities seized control of Jewish property or property formerly belonging to the Soviet state. An order handed down by General Max von Schenkendorff, Rear Area Commander of Army Group Center, on October 19, 1941, stated:

Seizure of Jewish and Enemy Assets

It  is  emphasized  once  again  that  in  respect  to  all  matters  relating  to
confiscation or other orders dealing with all categories of property, be it
Jewish, enemy, formerly in German possession or commandeered by the
Soviets, the sole responsible authority is the Economic Staff-East. 20

Russia, p. 186. Dallin also notes that Koch had less interest in what was
happening in the Ukraine and points out the fact that Koch did not establish
residence as Reichskommissar in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, but rather in

Rovno, 300 km to the west, ibid., p. 127.

19  Hilberg, Destruction, p. 365.

20  Order on Confiscation of Jewish Property, YVA, JM.13084, 0.51.310.

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Plundering Jewish Money and Property

Contributions  were among the first forms of plundering Jewish currency and
valuables. In many localities, the German administrations, both military and
civil, imposed a special levy on the Judenr‰te, either monetary or calculated in
valuables equivalent to a certain sum. The task of the Judenr‰te was to collect
this levy from the Jews within an extremely short period of time and then to
pass this on to the German administration. The Jews dubbed this levy a

contribution.    These exactions had two purposes: first, to rob the Jews of
their funds in order to harm them economically and reduce them to ruin; and,
second, to serve as an initial and immediate source of funding for the German
administration to help meet its local  needs. The amount  was arbitrarily
determined, it was not formally registered, and no receipt was given. Part of
the assets, particularly gold and other valuables, were also pocketed privately
by administration officials. One such example was the contribution imposed
on the Jews of Vilna.

On August 6, 1941, Franz Murer, in charge of Jewish affairs in the Vilna
Gebietskommissariat, summoned representatives of the Vilna Judenrat to his
office and ordered them to deliver two million rubles [10 rubles = 1 German
Mark] or its equivalent in other valuables to him by 9 A.M. the next morning
and an additional amount of three million rubles by the end of the day. He
threatened that if the Judenrat representatives failed to deliver the money by
the appointed hour, the remaining members would be required to come one
hour later to pick up their dead bodies. The rest of the Judenrat members
soon learned about the fine and the news spread quickly among the Jews of
the town. Neighborhood committees were formed and began to collect money,
gold and other valuables.

Fear gripped the Jewish community. To collect such huge sums of money
from a population that had been worn down by the war and Soviet rule to the
point of destitution was an extremely difficult undertaking. The time allotted
was short, and, to complicate matters, Jews were under a strict curfew from
six in the evening until dawn. By the time Murer s deadline arrived, 667,000
rubles had been collected, along with half a kilo of gold, gold watches and
diamonds. Many Jews believed that handing over the required sum would

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ensure their survival and help in the return of thousands of persons who had
been abducted and about whose fate nothing was known. The money and
valuables  that  had  been  collected  were  handed  over  to  Murer  at  the
designated hour. He was informed that the collection of the balance was
continuing. Two of the three Judenrat representatives who brought the money
were taken into custody. After threats and prolonged negotiations between the
Judenrat and Murer, he agreed to postpone the final deadline for several more
days. He was finally given a total of 1,490,000 rubles, 16.5 kilograms of gold
and 189 watches. Murer did not provide any receipt for the money or other
valuables. The meetings between him and the Judenrat members were held
on the street, not far from the building in which the civilian administration was
housed.21 There were no witnesses or written protocol of what was said. All
this suggests that a portion of the money and valuables, if not indeed the
greater part, found its way into the private pockets of administration officials.

On July 18, 1941, the military administration in Baranowicze ordered the
Judenrat to collect five kilograms of gold, 10 kg of silver and one million rubles
from the local Jews. The civil administration, which took over in August 1941,
instructed the Judenrat to hand over an additional two million rubles.22 The
Jews of Brest-Litovsk were ordered to pay five million rubles; the Jews of
Pinsk were commanded to hand over 20 kilograms of gold; the Jews of Rovno
were ordered to pay twelve million rubles.23 The Jews of Lvov (Lemberg) were
told they must pay twenty million rubles under the pretext that this sum was
needed to repair the damage in the city caused by the war, which the Jews
had allegedly caused.24 The Jews of Minsk were required to provide the Minsk
municipality with a  contribution  of 300,000 rubles, supposedly to cover

21  Arad, Ghetto in Flames, pp. 94-98.

22  A. S. Stein, ed., Baranowicz, Sefer Zikaron (Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Association
            of the Survivors of Baranowicze in Israel, 1953), pp. 516-517.

23   Shmuel Spector, ed., Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities - Poland:
Volhynia and Polesie (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1990), vol. 5, pp. 198, 236,
295-296; Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv: Yad

Vashem and Sifriyat Poalim, 1990), vol. 1, p. 240.

24   Eliyahu Yones, Jews in Lvov During World War Two and the Holocaust 1939-1944 (Hebrew), Ph.D. dissertation, (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University,
            1993), p. 68.

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expenses for their confinement in the local ghetto.25 In Borisov in eastern
Belorussia 300,000 rubles were exacted from the Jews; in Dnjepropetrovsk,
an  contribution of millions of rubles was imposed on the Jews.26 In Kharkov,
the Jews were ordered to pay several contributions, and each time a greater
amount  was  demanded.27  In  Orsha  in  eastern  Belorussia,  the  Jewish
community was ordered to present over 150,000 (or 250,000) rubles to the
administration.28 Similar levies were imposed on the Jews in numerous other
cities and towns in the occupied territories, such as Drohoczyn, Kobryn and
Luck.

Even though the civil and military administrations regarded themselves
as the sole authority in matters relating to Jewish property in the areas under
their control, in actual practice all the German authorities in the field plundered
the Jews or demanded, at times via the Judenr‰te, an array of items. The
Judenr‰te, which understood that the Jews  survival depended on these
authorities  were  compelled  to  deliver  what  was  demanded.  A  unique
document in this respect is the Brest-Litovsk Judenrat s list,  Contributions of
the Judenrat in Brest-Litovsk for the German Authorities from October 5, 1941
to February 10, 1942.  The document details the plundering authorities and
the items of Jewish property demanded and received, as well as their
monetary value. Some of the eight German bodies listed were part of the civil
administration,  others  were  not:  the  Generalkommissariat,  SS,  German
municipality,   Wehrmacht,   Gebietskommissariat,   Regional   Agricultural
Administration, Labor Office and other authorities (apparently implied are the
local municipality, the local police, etc.). The list encompasses 115 items,

25   Hersh Smolar, The Minsk Ghetto: Soviet-Jewish Partisans Against the
Nazis (New York: Holocaust Library, 1989), pp. 12, 21; Vassily Grossman and
Eliah Ehrenburg, eds., The Black Book: The Nazi Crime Against The Jewish

People (New York: Nexus Press, 1981),  p. 454.

26   Grossman and Ehrenburg, The Black Book, pp. 366-368. Regarding
Dnjepropetrovsk, it is stated that on September 26, 1941 the Jews were
ordered to collect thirty million rubles. This amount seems exaggerated, and it

is likely the source is in error.

27        Ilya Altman, Yitzhak Arad et al., eds., Neizvestnaya Chernaya Kniga

(Moscow and Jerusalem: Garf and Yad Vashem, 1993), p. 86.

28        Sudebnyi Process po delu o Zlodeyaniach Nemecko-Fashistovskich

Zachvatchikov v Beloruskoi SSR (Minsk: Gosudarstrenniye izdetestvo BSSR,

1947), pp. 155-156, 167.

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grouped into six categories: furniture, bedding, kitchen utensils and other
items, tools, footwear accessories and winter clothing. The total value of all
the  objects  handed  over  was  estimated  at 293,560  RM,  equivalent  to

2,935,600 rubles. This sum also included the value of the items presented to
the  German  authorities  during  the  preceding  summer (July-September

1941).29 All the German institutions that set up their offices and apartments in Brest-Litovsk were fitted out almost entirely with furnishings taken from the Jews. The cash in the Jews possession in Brest-Litovsk was seized at the start of the occupation, when they were forced to pay a  contribution  of five million  rubles.  These  amounts  and  the  various  objects  itemized  in  the document did not include the apartments and their remaining contents when the Jews of the city were evicted and relocated to the ghetto in NovemberDecember 1941. Likewise not included was what the Jews left behind when the ghetto was liquidated in October 1942, and its residents were murdered. The total value of that property cannot be estimated, even in terms of local criteria at the time. In almost all the cities and towns in the occupied Soviet Union, Jewish property suffered a similar fate.

On September 25, 1941, a few weeks after the Jews had been removed to
the ghetto, the Vilna municipality sent a report to the Vilna Gebietskommissar
regarding the confiscation of 429 Jewish dwellings, 71 workshops belonging
to Jews, etc. The report was incomplete and stated that further information
would be provided in the near future on the buildings, furnishings, clothing,
tools and other confiscated items.30 Another report from Vilna, dated October
22, 1941, stated that after the Jews were murdered in Ponary, clothing and
other objects totalling 6,350 kg were transported to the warehouse of the

Center for Raw Materials  in Vilna.31 On December 17, 1942, in accordance
with Vialon s instructions cited above, the Vilna Gebietskommissar sent the
Reichskommissar in Riga a shipment containing some 1,200 gold objects,
among them 516 wedding rings and approximately 150 gold ruble and dollar

29   Leistungen des Judenrates in Brest-Litowsk f¸r die Deutsche Behˆrden,
            YVA, 0.51.333.

30   E.  Rozauskas, ed., Documents Accuse (Vilnius: Gintaras, 1970), pp. 225-
            226.

31  Ibid., p. 227.

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coins.32 On June 2,      1942,  Petersen, the Gebietskommissar in Gl bokie,

shipped 4.267 kg of gold to the Reich Commissar of White Russia. On July 2,
1942, Petersen sent another shipment containing 3.069 kg of gold, 20 gold
ruble coins embossed with the portrait of the Russian czar and 210 gold dollar
coins.33

After  Lvov  was  annexed  to  the  Generalgouvernement  in  Poland,
German firms and businessmen arrived on the scene immediately. They
received permits from the local German authorities to evict Jews from their
apartments and to confiscate the premises and their contents. In general,
these were large apartments in which prosperous Jewish families had lived in
the past. Maurycy Elerhand, a professor at Lvov University and one of the
Jewish communal leaders in the city during the 1920s, had his apartment
confiscated and handed over to a private German firm. He recorded in his
diary:

On August 6, 1941, a man came to my room ... and read from a slip he was
holding:  This apartment has been confiscated. It is permitted to take only
clothing and underwear, gold and silver. Everything else must be left in the
apartment.  He then went on to state that the apartment had to be handed
over by noon the following day, otherwise the police would be brought in, and
added:  Then you ll get out of here in worse condition ...  The person who
brought the confiscation order was director of the Viennese firm  Kompos

The apartment had a library with several thousand volumes ... It contained
many rare valuable editions ...   I had the following paintings [a detailed list of
dozens of paintings, their titles and names of the artists followed, Y.A.] ...
There were many stylish furnishings in the apartment, I owned more than ten
Persian rugs ... The chandelier in the salon was ancient Venetian. The large
glass case contained many Japanese statuettes ... bronze figures. 34

32  Ibid., p. 266.

33    Chernoglazava, Tragedia Yevreiev Belarusii, pp. 73, 75.

34    Bella Gutermann, ed., Days of Horror: Jewish Testimonies from German Occupied Lemberg 1941-1943 (Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University and
            Moreshet, 1991), pp. 38-41.

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In another diary from Lvov, Shmuel Chortkover described the plundering
of  Jewish  property  on  December 8, 1941,  simultaneous  to  a  German

Judenaktion and the removal of the Jews to the ghetto:

Two trucks arrived accompanied by units of the Schupo [Schutzpolizei] under the command of a major. They broke up into several squads and burst into the houses ... entering each and every apartment on the pretext they re searching for foreign currency. The frightened occupants were herded into a second room and then, over the span of two to three hours, they combed methodically through the rest of the possessions, from one end to the other. Not pausing, they packed their vehicles with suitcases, silver objects, candlesticks, cutlery, couches, mattresses, oil, smoked meats. ... The occupants, young and old, male and female, were forced to strip down naked for a body search. They had to carry down the heavier sacks themselves. 35

The plundering of the Jews continued even after they were evicted and
confined to ghettos. Though the methods sometimes differed, the result was
the same: Jewish property was robbed. In Kovno, the authorities gave the
Jews a month to move out into the ghetto but allowed them to take all their
belongings along. That  generosity  on the part of the German administration
was short-lived and apparently, was for its own convenience. They expected it
would be easier for them to seize property from the Jews inside the ghetto
rather than to take it from thousands of apartments scattered throughout the
city. A few days after they entered the ghetto, from August 19, 1941 to the first
week in September, teams of German and Lithuanian police conducted
house-to-house searches there. They confiscated currency, gold and silver
objects, good-quality clothing, linens, shoes, electrical appliances, medical
instruments, furniture and anything that caught their fancy. All the spoils were
transported to several synagogues, which had been turned into storage
depots. Leib Garfunkel, who witnessed these search operations, wrote:

35    Ibid., p. 77.

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During the searches the Germans were rough and extremely brutal ... The
Germans forced all the women into one room, ordered them to undress and
then conducted a thorough body search to check whether they might have
hidden something. Some of the women were subjected to a  gynecological
examination. During the final days of the searches, the soldiers did not suffice
with beatings; each day, they also murdered a few Jews who supposedly had
tried to conceal something ...This in order to terrify the Jews so they would
give them anything still in their possession ... On September 6, the Ältestenrat
was ordered by Jordan [the official in the Gebietskommissariat responsible for
ghetto affairs, Y. A.] to send over several representatives immediately ...
Jordan was furious when they came in ... You Jews living in the ghetto had to
hand over all your possessions to us ... I m giving you an order: go tell the
community immediately that they must deliver ... all the currency and other

valuables still in their possession to the Ältestenrat ... Each family may keep
only 100 rubles (10 RM) ...   For every valuable found in the possession of a
Jew, that person will be shot, together with 100  Jews from among his

neighbors ... The ghetto is faced with two possibilities: loss of life or loss of
possessions. The next day, there was a constant stream of Jews from
morning till evening. They came by the thousands to give up their beloved and
cherished belongings ... Mementos from their personal and family life and the
lives of their fathers and mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers ... watches,
rings ... precious pictures, rugs, cameras ... huge piles of paper money and
foreign currency ... Every day, men from the SA came from the municipal
administration, group after group, suitcases in hand. They filled the suitcases
with Jewish belongings. The Gestapo and other German authorities heard the
rumor about the huge  emporium  in the ghetto. They came to the ghetto by
the dozens, entered the collection rooms ... supposedly only to satisfy their
curiosity ... while in actual fact intent on filching something from all that loot for
themselves. 36

36Leib Garfunkel, The Destruction of Kovno’s Jewry (Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Yad
Vashem, 1959), pp. 58-61. Garfunkel was one of the members of the
Ältestenrat that Jordan summoned. See also Joseph Gar, Downfall of Jewish
Kovno (Yiddish) (Munich: Association of Lithuanian Jews in the American

Zone in Germany, 1948), pp. 57-60.

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In Jevpatoria in Crimea, the Jews were ordered to surrender all their valuables and money, except for the sum of 200 rubles per person. The order concluded with the words: failure to comply will result in execution. 37

Events in Lvov, Kovno, Jevpatoria and many other ghettos could be
defined as  official plunder. Along with this, there was a great deal of private
plunder  in many ghettos as well. Police officers and German soldiers would
break into the ghetto at night to seize the few belongings the Jews still had.
Commenting on the situation in the Minsk ghetto, Hersh Smolar noted:  Most
terrible of all were the night raids  groups of German soldiers    marauders
who more and more frequently began visiting the ghetto at night. They would
break into houses, conduct inspections, steal whatever came to hand. 38

Testimony on events in the short-lived ghetto in Kharkov located in the shacks of the tractor factory noted:

Robbery and murder became a daily occurrence. Generally, the Germans
would storm into the rooms on the pretext they were looking for weapons and
then would steal anything that caught their eye. Anyone who protested was
taken outside and shot. A day before Christmas [1941] we were required to
gather food and money for drinks for the camp guards. The people, poor and
famished, were forced to take the last morsel of sugar and oil from their
children for the sake of the thieves little celebration. In addition, every day the
devilish Nazis used to demand watches and expensive cloth from us. These
demands were met because they came with the threat of execution.39

A distinct aspect of the pillage of Jewish property involved collecting furs
for the German army. The Wehrmacht was not prepared for winter combat; its
attack on the Soviet Union was based on the assumption that victory would be
achieved  before  the  onset  of  winter.  Consequently,  the  army  was  not
equipped with winter clothing. In late December 1941, Goebbels called upon
the German people and other nations in Europe to contribute their fur coats or

37 Grossman and Ehrenburg, Black Book (Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Am Oved
            Publishers, 1991),  p. 234.

38  Smolar, he Minsk Ghetto, p. 22.

39  Altman and Arad, eds., Neizvestnaya Chernaya Kniga, pp. 87-88.

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other fur pieces to be used to sew coats for the army. While the Germans and others  were  asked  to  contribute  voluntarily,  the  Jews  were  ordered  to surrender their fur coats, and in some places other warm winter clothing; they were given a deadline of a few days in which to hand them over. The order came with a threat: anyone found in the possession of an article of fur after the appointed deadline would be executed. The Judenr‰te issued the call for the collection.40 Hermann Kruk mentions Goebbels  appeal in his diary and even notes he had attached to his diary the original German proclamation. Kruk wrote on the collection of furs in the Vilna ghetto:

December 27   [1941] ... Today at noon a group of Germans came to the

ghetto. Immediately after that Jewish police went from house to house, announcing: all fur coats, fur collars and anything else made of fur had to be handed over to the Judenrat within half an hour. Failure to do so would be punished by death. The residents immediately began to bring their [furs] and by eight p.m. the building was piled high with fur coats and other fur garments ... On the street you can see men wearing overcoats with collars where the fur has been removed and replaced by a piece of cloth. 41

Local heads of town councils and mayors appointed by the German
authorities also utilized Jewish property as a source of income and funding for
their activities. On November 27, 1941,  the mayor of Kiev, V. Bagazii,

announced that by December 16, all city residents were required to submit a
written report detailing all types of Jewish and ownerless property in their
possession and indicating whether they were interested in purchasing any of
these objects. The announcement also enumerated the types of property:
furniture,  clothing,  household  utensils,  books,  etc.  A  special  municipal
committee  would  estimate  their  value  and  residents  would  pay  the
municipality accordingly. The announcement warned that residents who failed
to  report  this  property  would  be  severely punished.  Property  that  local

40  See, for example, the January 4, 1942 proclamation, signed by the head of
            the Lvov  Judenrat, Dr. Rotfeld, Gutermann, ed., Days of Horror, p. 201.
41  Herman Kruk, Diary of the Vilna Ghetto (Yiddish) (New York: YIVO, 1961),

pp. 102-103.

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residents did not wish to purchase for themselves should be handed over to the municipality. The special municipal committee would also determine the prices of objects returned by the population and these would then be offered for sale to the public.42

There was no uniform standard practice regarding ownership of property left behind by Jews in their apartments or which authorities were entitled to dispose  of  the income  from their  transfer or  sale.  In  Kiev, as  can  be understood from the mayor s order, the German administration permitted the municipality to utilize income from the sale of such property for its own needs. In Belaja Cerkov in the Ukraine, the mayors were ordered on October 15, 1941 to collect all the Jews clothing, bedding, tools, etc. and to bring these to the local military headquarters.43

In areas of the military administration where Jews were murdered, the
administration used the Jews money and other valuables to finance its local
activities. The standing practice was that currency would remain in the hands
of the military administration while valuables had to be transferred to the
Reich Central Bank in Berlin. In return for these valuables, the central bank
transferred cash to the local administration equivalent to the value of the items
it  had  received.  Hauptmann  Paul  Aik,  Officer  for  Special  Tasks  in  the
Feldkommandatur in the town Orsha in eastern Belorussia, testified:

The  cash  was  not  transferred  anywhere.  It  remained  for  funding  the
management of the town s affairs ... The municipality in Orsha had no other
financial means at its disposal ... I was ordered by the Military Administration
to send the gold, silver and other valuables to Berlin... The [Orsha] municipal
administration could receive the monetary value in return from the bank in
Minsk. 44

In many localities, the orders issued for Jews to assemble for imminent
resettlement    i.e., removal to the killing pits    stated that they were to take

42        For the text of the announcement by the mayor of Kiev, see YVA, M-

52/205.

43  For the text of the order, see YVA, M-52/198.

44  Sudebnyi Process po delu o Zlodeyaniach, pp. 155-156.

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along all their cash and valuables, since they might require these in the new
places  to  which  they  were  going.  In  Rostov,  Jews  were  told:  It  is
recommended that Jews take along their valuables and cash.  Jews in
Feodosia in Crimea were ordered to return from the assembly point back to
their homes in order to take the concealed valuables they had left behind in
their apartments. There were similar situations elsewhere.45 In the assembly
areas, before the Jews were brought to the pits to be shot, and still unaware
of what awaited them, they were commanded to hand over all their currency
and valuables. Whoever failed to comply would be shot on the spot. Avraham
Shmoish from Murovanyie-Kurilovtsy southwest of Vinnitsa in the Ukraine
testified:

In the square where the Jews assembled ... SS men opened large sacks.
They ordered us to throw all our valuables into them for the benefit of the
German  army.  People  removed  their  rings,  earrings  and  bracelets  and
dropped them into the sacks. The SS men warned us that if they found any
valuable object concealed on a person, those individuals would be shot. When
this handover of valuables was completed, they seized Itzik Frishkolnik and
ordered him to strip naked. They conducted a body search, carefully checked
his clothes and then allowed him to redress. They announced that a similar
search would be done on everyone. People started tossing everything they
still had hidden on them into the sacks. After that one of the SS men
announced: OK, it looks to me like you ve handed over everything you ve got
for the German army. The sacks were tied shut and loaded onto vehicles. 46

Similar methods of plundering money and valuables were utilized by officials of the German administration in Berdichev and in most extermination operations.47

45   Lev Ginzburg, Bezdna (Moscow: Sovetskii Pisatel, 1967), pp. 65-66; the destruction of the Jews of Gaisin in the Vinnitsa district, YVA, M-33/224, M-
            33-78, M-33/76.

46  Testimony of Avraham Shmoish, YVA, 03/7064.
            47    YVA, M-33/114, 033/3133, pp. 14.

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A portion of the property taken from the Jews in the course of murder
Aktionen was not passed on to officials of the civil or military administration
but remained in the hands of the Einsatzgruppen that had perpetrated the
carnage. In general, they transferred the money and valuables to the Reich
Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt, RSHA) in Berlin. In certain
cases, mainly in the early period of the occupation, the Einsatzgruppen sent
on currency and valuables seized from Jews to the War Booty Office within
the Reich Central Treasury (Reichshauptkasse Beutestelle). Wehrmacht units
that participated in killing operations and the plunder of Jewish property, and
military administration officials who had come into possession of money and
valuables taken from murdered Jews also shipped portions of these spoils to
the War Booty Office.48 Einsatzgruppen reports cover not only the murder of
Jews but also note the spoils pilfered from them. A July 13, 1941 report
dealing with the murder of Jews in Vilna states:  About 500 Jews   are
liquidated daily. About 460,000 rubles in cash, as well as many valuables
belonging to Jews who were subject to Special Treatment, were confiscated
as property belonging to enemies of the Reich. 49

An   Einsatgruppe   report   of   October           26,       1941   states   that

Sonderkommando  7b  seized   46,600  rubles  in  the  possession  of  Jews

liquidated  by  the  unit.  Over  the  entire  period  of  operations  by
Einsatzkommando 8  in  the  occupied  Soviet  Union,  the  killing  squad

confiscated a total of 2,019,521 rubles. Other reports cited similar seizures
worth tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of rubles.50
            As a rule, the objects left behind by the victims at the scene of their
murder,  sometimes  along  with  belongings  abandoned  back  in  their
apartments as well, were sent on by the Einsatzgruppen for distribution

48   Martin Dean,  Research Note. Jewish Property Seized in the Occupied
Soviet Union in 1941 and 1942: the Records of the Reichshauptkasse

Beutestelle, in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, vol. 14, no. 1 (Spring 2000), pp. 83-101. The article cites reports that detail the currency and valuables
            received by the War Booty Office.

49        Yitzhak  Arad,  Shmuel  Krakowski  and  Shmuel  Spector,  eds.,  The

Einsatzgruppen Reports (New York: Holocaust Library, 1989), pp. 22-23.

50  Ibid., Report No. 125,  p. 208, and Report No. 133, p. 235.

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among the local ethnic German population (Volksdeutsche).51 Responsibility for Volksdeutsche matters rested with Himmler and the SS department, charged with attending to ethnic Germans in Nazi-occupied Europe.

The October 4, 1941 report noted the widespread poverty among the Volksdeutsche population in the Ukraine between the Dnieper and Bug Rivers (Transnistria), adding that Einsatzgruppe D, which was operating in that region, provided them with apartments, furniture, children s beds and other essential items that had been seized from Jews.52 The Einsatzgrupppe report of October 7, 1941, dealing with the liquidation of 33,771 Jews in Kiev and 3,145 Jews in Zhitomir also commented on this.53

The  Einsatzgruppen  report  of  January            16,       1942  stated  that  after

Sonderkommando 4a had murdered 1,538 Jews in Poltava, their clothing was
passed on to the mayor. He then distributed it among the local population,
with priority to the Volksdeutsche.54 A similar comment can be found in the
report of local command, No. 1/853 in Nikolajev, at the end of September
1941. It notes that Sipo distributed the clothing of Jews  evacuated (i.e.

liquidated) to needy Volksdeutsche and Ukrainians. The mayor was ordered to confiscate the Jews  apartments, to hand over a portion of the movable goods to army units and to allocate the apartments to Volksdeutsche who lacked proper housing.55

Such currency and valuables seized by the Einsatzgrupppen during the
eviction and transfer of the Jews to ghettos and in the course of liquidation
operations, mentioned in reports sent to Berlin, constituted only a fraction of
what the victims actually left behind. A large portion of the money and
valuables remained in the hands of Einsatzgruppe personnel, the German and
local police. In his testimony, Leonid Langman from Pikov in the Vinnitsa
region stated:

51  The Volksdeutsche migrated to Russia in the second half of the eighteenth
century, during the reign of Catherine the Great. They settled in sparsely
populated areas in the Volga region and the southern Ukraine, in the districts
of Nikolajev, Zaporozhe and Dnjepropetrovsk. There were some 400,000

Volksdeutsche in the Ukraine on the eve of World War II.

52  Arad, et al., eds., Einsatzgruppen Reports, report 103, p. 169.
            53  Ibid., Report No. 106, p. 174.

54  Ibid., Report No. 156, p. 281.
55  Nuremberg Doc., NOKW-1729.

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Almost every day, the Ukrainian police would enter one of the Jewish
dwellings and steal whatever they could lay their hands on. They then opened
a shop with the items they had plundered. These they sold, almost for nothing,
to Ukrainians, and used the cash to buy drinks. It is likely that a portion of the
items was sent on to regional authorities in Kalinovka, but the lion s share
from these sales went for drinks. Those Ukrainian police officers rarely looked
sober, and that was the condition in which they went about their duties,
plundering and beating. 56

As Jews in Kharkov were being removed for liquidation, the police officers
demanded they hand over the valuables on their person. They broke and cut
off fingers in order to remove gold rings and pulled gold crowns from the teeth
of the living. Senior officers also engaged in plundering valuables from Jewish
victims. A committee of the Reich Auditor s Office (Reichrechnungshof) found
money and valuables in the command post of SS-Hauptsturmführer Hans
Kr¸ger, commander of the branch office of the District Command of the Sipo
and SD (Kommandatur der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD) in the StanisławÛw
district (today Ivano-Frankovsk). This loot was to be distributed among Kr¸ger
and several of his own men. The committee report noted:

An especially extreme case has been uncovered in the branch at Stanislau in
Galicia. Large amounts of confiscated money and jewels were retained there.
During a local inspection of the rooms of the responsible administrative
official, police Secretary B., officials of the Reich Auditor s Office (RAO)

discovered large amounts of cash, including gold coins, and all sorts of
currency    even $6,000    as well as entire chests full of extremely valuable
jewels. These were stored in all manners of boxes and containers, desks, etc.
None of this had been listed or registered. In some containers, there was a
slip with the original amount; but in most, there was no written record of any
kind. It was no longer possible to determine how much had originally been
there. The RAO had to limit itself to establishing the exact contents of what

56  YVA, 03/7201, p. 23.

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was found there in order to prevent further valuables from disappearing. The cash alone amounted to 584,195.28 złoty. Added to this were the jewels uncovered there; their precise value could not be determined, but it is likely to be in the range of several hundred thousand Reichmarks. 57

The army, under whose jurisdiction the Einsatzgruppen operated, also wished  to  benefit  from the  valuables  pilfered  from the  murdered  Jews. General Otto Wˆhler, chief of staff of the 11th Army operating in Crimea sent an inquiry to Einsatzgruppe D, which was active in the army s sector and subordinate to it, regarding the fate of the watches of the Jews who had been liquidated.  Otto  Ohlendorf,  commander  of  Einsatzgruppe  D,  replied  on February 12, 1942 to the 11th Army commander:

1.  The watches confiscated during the course of operations against
            the Jews ... The valuable pieces (gold and silver watches) have
            been sent on in accordance with orders to the Treasury in Berlin.
            The others, of little value, were passed on to members of the armed
            forces (officers and enlisted men) and to men of Einsatzgruppe D,
            in return for a token price or as a gift, depending on the specific
            instance.

2.  The money seized during the course of operations against the Jews
            has been forwarded in accordance with standing orders to the
            Reich Credit Bank, aside from a small sum retained for official
            purposes (salaries, etc.).58

That reply did not satisfy the 11th Army command. Ohlendorf was ordered by telephone to hand over the watches in his possession. In a second letter on February 12, 1942 Ohlendorf wrote:

57   Dieter Pohl,  Hans Krüger and the Murder of the Jews in the Stanislawów
            Region (Galicia), Yad Vashem Studies, vol. XXVI (1998), pp. 258-259.

58  Nuremberg Doc., NOKW-631.

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In a telephone call from the commandant of Simferopol, I   was informed that the Commander-in-Chief [of the army] has demanded the watches still in our possession seized during operations against the Jews. They are to be utilized for official purposes. Consequently, I am forwarding 120 watches which have in the meantime been repaired. An additional 50 watches are still in repair, and some of these can be fixed ... Please inform me whether the army also requires the remainder of the watches. 59

Alongside the last sentence, the document contains a hand-written  yes.
The German authorities also distributed Jewish belongings to persons who
collaborated with them against Soviet partisans, especially those who had
sustained injuries as a result. A November 12, 1943 German document

mentions N. Tarasiuk among the citizens who had suffered from the partisans
and were evacuated to receive aid. He was given two robes, two women s
coats, etc., a total of twenty-six items of clothing, from confiscated Jewish
belongings.60

Thousands of apartments were seized by local residents after their Jewish
neighbors fled. Jews who attempted to flee but failed later returned to find
their apartments had been ransacked and looted. In many instances, local
residents had occupied them and did not even allow the former Jewish
occupants  to  enter.61  Some  of  the  apartments  were  requisitioned  to
accommodate the German authorities in various towns and to house military
personnel. Others were taken over by members of the local police, the local
administrations and their relatives. In localities where temporary ghettos were
set up, the inhabitants who had been living in those neighborhoods had to be
evacuated elsewhere. In return for the apartments they relinquished, they
were presented with living quarters confiscated from Jews. As a result of
bombardments and combat in numerous localities, many residents were left
homeless; for them, the apartments seized from the Jews were a welcome
solution. Moreover, there were some locals who wanted to move to a larger

59  Ibid., NOKW-3238.

60  Chernoglazova, Tragedia Yevreiev Belorusii, p. 76.

61        Daniel  Romanovsky,  Sovetskie  Yevrei  pod  natsiskoi  okkupatsiei,”

Almanach Yevreiskoi Kultury (Moscow and Jerusalem, 1990), pp. 307-308.

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apartment. A woman named Z. Grunievitch in the town of Belaya Cerkov in the Ukraine, wrote to the municipal housing department stating that she and the members of her family were living in cramped quarters. She wanted the former apartment of the Jewish family Pjatigorksi, who had been living in the same building, as it had two rooms and a kitchen.62 The letter is dated September 2, 1941, some two weeks after the Jews in the city had been murdered. The Pjatigorski family   was undoubtedly among the   victims. Sova Timnova, a student at the Art Conservatory in Kiev, asked to be given the piano in the apartment next-door from where Jews had been  evacuated,  so she would be able to continue with her playing.63

Yaakov Ganin, from the town of Beshenkovichi west of Vitebsk in eastern Belorussia related:

They gradually began to take the apartments from the Jews. Generally the
police took them for themselves. We had a math teacher, Ivan Michaelovits
Ivitski (he was my teacher), he became police chief. He took a Jewish house
for himself, and the cow to boot. Other policemen also grabbed houses and
moved in ... We were living in a house together with the Gurewicz family, but
one of the policemen took a liking to the place and we were all forced to move

out. 64

For the local residents to enrich themselves from the Jewish property, the
right time to pounce was when the Jews were being evicted and transferred to
the ghetto or while being transported to the killing pits. During this interval, the
police  were  busy  with  removals  or  liquidation  operations,  leaving  the
apartments and their contents abandoned and free for the taking. An article on
events in Berdichev in the Ukraine during Judenaktionen there on September
14-15, 1941 relates:

62        YVA,  M-52/200,  the  source  is  housed  in  Kievskyi  Oblastnoy

Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv, P-2225-1-639.

63  YVA, M-52/213, ibid., P-2412-2-23.

64   YVA, 03/4676; for similar testimony on a house taken by a policeman and

the eviction of the Jews living there, see YVA, 03/4677.

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The local vermin also took part in the slaughter, scum from the underworld who were greedy to cash in on the terrible calamity, profiteers whose aim was to enrich themselves at the expense of the innocent victims. Policemen and their families and girlfriends of German soldiers descended on the apartments being emptied and plundered their contents. In full view of the living dead, they grabbed dresses, pillows and cushions. Some of them even crossed over the barrier and tore off kerchiefs and woolen knitted blouses from the women and girls who were standing there, waiting to die. 65

Incidents similar to those in Berdichev occured in most of the cities and towns in the occupied areas of the Soviet Union. In a paragraph dealing with the local population, the operations report for November 1941 filed by Security Division 454, operating in the central Ukraine, noted:  the locals sought to enrich themselves, taking the now ownerless Jewish property illegally, and thanks to the profits from the property they sold or bartered in exchange for food, they are able to live even without having to work. 66

The main profiteers in the local population were members of the local
administration and the local police. This led to envy and quarreling. For
example,  on  January 22, 1942,  a  group  of  Lithuanian  collaborators

( Partisans ) in Ignalina in eastern Lithuania, wrote a letter of complaint to Svencionys District Agricultural Chief, the German Josef Beck.

The police in Ignalina and the former town mayor, Tijunelis, as well as the
present mayor, Albertas Olejunas, seized many objects of Jewish property for
themselves. Police personnel and the two mayors hid these things with their
relatives and friends in the villages ... We know that the police has the

following in its possession: 220 gold rings, 55 gold watches, 35 sofas in good
condition, 45 cabinets, 180 beds including mattresses, 45 cows, some 50 fur
coats, 250 tanned hides. In addition, there are many items that have been
sorted, including clothing, shoes, etc. Only a tenth of the Jewish property was
sold to the local residents when the Jews were liquidated. For example, gold,

65   Grossman and Ehrenburg, Black Book (Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Am Oved
            Publishers, 1991), p. 40.

66  Nuremberg  Doc., NOKW-2926.

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hides and other valuables were not offered for sale at all, and were not passed  on  to  the  German  army.  We,  the  partisans  from Ignalina,  are extremely grateful to the German army that liberated us. 67

Some 150 Jewish families lived in Ignalina before the war, and they were
murdered together with all the Jews of the Svencionys district on October 7-8,
1941. The property mentioned in the above letter belonged to them. In many
hundreds of small localities in the occupied Soviet Union where there were no
German officials on the spot, a large portion of the Jewish property suffered
was seized by locals.

Members of the military and civilian German administration located in the
cities, however, endeavored to prevent local residents from taking possession
of the apartments vacated by the Jews. Their aim was to sell off these
apartments. Working through the local administration, the Gebietskommissars
or military governors appointed committees to appraise the value of the
Jewish real estate. The committees passed their reports on to the mayors,
who approved their suggestions, and on that basis the apartments were sold.
The report presented to the mayor of Mogilev in eastern Belorussia noted:

Date: November 20-21, 1941. The committee, consisting of city engineer

M.  Gromakov,  head  of  the  municipal  housing  department,  Martinov, representative of the finance office, Y. Shembelev, and in accordance with the instructions of Mayor Felitskin, appraised the value of the houses formerly owned by Jews. In accordance with an order from the Feldkommandatur, they were offered for sale to the Russian inhabitants of the city of Mogilev. We ascertained this by an on-the-spot inspection. 68

Later in the report there is a table listing the names of local residents who
had called attention to the apartment and expressed their interest in acquiring
it, its address, the name of the former Jewish owner, the condition of the
apartment and its appraised value. The sale prices of the apartments in the

67  Lietuvos tsr Centrinis Valstybinis Archyvas, R-613-1-62, p. 211. 68   USHMMA, RG-53006-M, Reel 5; Mogilevski Oblastnyi Arkhive, Fond 418,
            Opis 1, Delo 1.

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two reports presented at the end of November 1941 ranged between 2,500 and 18,000 rubles, depending on their condition. According to the partial lists available to us, in Mogilev alone in the period from February to April 1942, more  than 300  Jewish  dwellings  were  sold  to  local  residents.  The Feldkommandatur certified the sale of the apartments.69

An article in the newspaper Nova Ukraina published in the occupied city of
Kharkov noted that in December 1941, 1,700 Ukrainian families received new
apartments.70  These  were  apartments  that  had  belonged  to  Jewish
householders. In Odessa, under direct Romanian rule, the mayor Herman
Pintia forbade local residents from entering the empty apartments of Jews.71

It was the mayor s intention to keep those apartments for personnel of the
Rumanian administration and the Romanian population who would be living in
town and to sell a certain number of the apartments in order to turn a profit.

The Struggle over Jewish Property Among the Various German Authorities

Parallel  with  the  German  administration s  efforts  to  acquire  the  Jewish
property seized by the local population or to obtain their monetary value,
frictions and struggles emerged among the various German authorities over
the Jewish property that these bodies had in their possession. In the main, the
friction was between the civil administration on the one hand, and the army
and officials of the Sipo and the SD on the other. This struggle is reflected in a
report by the Gebietskommissar of Wolmer (Valmiera), in northeastern Latvia
on events in October 1941.

We confiscated the property of Jews just liquidated as well as of Jews who
had been liquidated earlier. In the course of this, we encountered special
difficulties  in  getting  the  army  and  Sipo  to  hand  over  the  extensive
confiscations  they  had  carried  out.  The  army  refused  to  surrender  the
property, in the main furniture and various items in the homes of the officers. I

69  Ibid.

70  Yuri Liakhovitski, Zeltaia Kniga (Kharkov: Bensiakh, 1994), p. 13.
            71  Order of the Rumanian authorities, YVA, M-52/242.

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issued an instruction based on the order of the Reichskommissar [Lohse] to fully implement the handover of confiscations. In any event, the items should be handed over with the departure of the army units ... The Sipo are of the opinion that the items confiscated belong to them. They have already credited an enormous amount of Jewish property to their account. I feel it necessary to note that I find the present behavior of the Sipo intolerable. 72

The SS in the occupied territories had depots where stolen Jewish property or belongings that had remained with the victims were stored. In his testimony, Richard Dannler, who served in Riga in the headquarters of  Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF) Friedrich Jeckeln, noted:

My official duties brought me into frequent contact with Sturmbahnführer
Neurath, the man responsible for dealing with all matters related to the
clothing and other belongings that were left behind after liquidation [of Jews].
In a large warehouse in Riga, I saw huge piles of clothes, some of it drenched
with blood. I estimate this was part of the personal effects of at least 30,000
persons. In the offices of Transport Unit No. 9, located in the building that
housed HSSPF headquarters, I saw boxes full of silver, gold and diamonds.
Currency and bank notes were sorted into bundles and sent to the Deutsche
Handelsbank in Riga. There were large amounts of diamonds, jewelry and
gold watches. Jeckeln selected out the best pieces for himself. Sometimes
when I would bring him the mail I d notice various precious objects lying on his

desk. 73

The squabble over who was authorized to dispose of Jewish property that
had been seized or that Jews had left behind before their murder    and to
precisely  which  German  authorities  operating  in  the  areas  under  civil
administration such property belonged    reached as far as the top echelon in
Berlin. Rosenberg and Himmler decided the dispute in favor of the civil

72  USHMMA, R-69-1a-18.

73  Nuremberg Doc., NO-5124.

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administration.  On  March        3,         1942  Himmler  ordered  all  HSSPFs  in  the

occupied areas of the Soviet Union:

Gold, silver and other valuables confiscated during house searches or the
evacuation of the Jews shall be registered in the presence of two officials and
then  deposited  with  the  KdS [Kommandatur  der  Sicherheitspolizei]  for

safekeeping. Once a month, the items seized are to be transferred to the finance office of the appropriate Reichskommissariat, which is to issue a receipt. It is forbidden to hold back even small amounts. If the KdS or the KdO [Kommandatur des Ordnungspolizei] wish a portion of the monies confiscated to be retained for their use, I am in agreement that in exceptional cases, they may request permission from the Reichskommissar to keep the property. His consent should be certified in writing. 74

In practice, Himmler s last two sentences allowed SS men to negotiate and bargain to keep a portion of the confiscated money and valuables under their control and final disposition.

Himmler s order was not implemented in full; differences of opinion and controversy continued. The Sipo and the SD believed they had the final say in all matters pertaining to the Jews and the officials of the civil administration felt they had rights to the property.

On June 15, 1942, the commander of the Estonian branch of the Sipo,
Ain-Ervin Mere, informed the Generalkommissar of Estonia, Karl Litzmann,
that he had forwarded to Berlin the gold and silver coins confiscated from the
Jews and communists. He added that the valuables still in his possession
would also be sent to Berlin.75 Mere proceeded in this matter in accordance
with instructions he had received from his superiors in Sipo. On November 26,

74   USHMMA, R-70-5-34, Reel 5; Hilberg comments on the meeting between
Rosenberg and Himmler, which took place already on November 15, 1941.
They also dealt with the question of Jewish property and the complaints by
Lohse  and  Wilhelm  Kube,  Generalkommissar  for  Belorussia,  against
members of the SS who had taken the items for their own use. See Hilberg,

Destruction, pp. 336-364.

75        V. Y. Leede, A. T. Matsulevitch and B. L. Tamm, eds., Nemetsko-

Fashistskaya Okkupatsya v. Estonii (Tallinn: Institut Istorii Partii, Tsentralnyi

Gosudarstvennyi Archiv, 1963), p. 105.

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1942, the RSHA ordered all Jewish property in Sipo and SD hands to be
transferred to the authority of the finance departments of the competent
Reichskommissariats (Ukraine and Ostland),  except  for  precious  metals,

precious gems and foreign currency. These were to be sent to the WVHA (Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungshauptamt) SS Economic and Administrative Main Office. However, implementation of the order to transfer the currency was delayed for months. Not until May 1, 1943 did the KdS in the Ostland report to Lohse that he had received the funds:

The money confiscated by the Sipo and SD in the Ostland is now being transferred on a continuous basis to the Generalkommissars. In addition, the RSHA is transferring funds seized in 1941 and 1942. ... The confiscated funds mentioned in the letter of March 19, 1943, an estimated one million RM, have already been transferred by the Sipo and SD in Lithuania. On April 22, 1943, instructions were given to deposit the 1.8 million RM from confiscated Jewish property in the bank. In the meantime, that amount should have been received by the Reichskommissar in Riga. 76

The civil administration protested that SS officials were appropriating the valuables and currency for their own use. Only eleven months after the order of November 26, 1942, did the RSHA issue instructions for these items also to be transferred to the authority of the civil administration. On October 23, 1943, the KdS in the Ostland wrote to Lohse:

In concurrence with the WVHA, the order of November 26, 1942 has been amended: in the future, precious metals, precious jewels and foreign currency will  also  be  transferred  to  the  financial  departments  of  the  respective competent   Reichskommissariats,   except   in   cases   where   additional investigation is required. 77

76  USHMMA, R-70-5-34, Reel 5.
            77    Ibid.

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At this juncture, Sipo s agreement was of no great importance, as it
related only to the future. They had concurred: after the ghettoes and all their
inhabitants had already been liquidated and there were but few Jews still left
in the labor and concentration camps, virtually all the valuables and foreign
currency plundered from the Jewish victims were in the hands of the SS in
Berlin, and they had made no commitment to return these to the authority of
the civil administration.

The June 30, 1943 report by Fritz Katzmann, SSPF in the Galicia district, describes the implementation of the  Final Solution  in eastern Galicia and goes into extensive detail on the Jewish property seized and transferred to the staff of  Operation Reinhard.  Thus, we can have some idea as to the extent of the value of the goods that were plundered.

The report enumerates various gold objects totaling 206.58 kilograms that
were sent on. The total weight of silver objects was in excess of 5,400 kgs.
There were twenty-nine types of paper money and foreign currency (US
dollars,  British  pounds,  Polish  złoty,  rubles,  etc.), including  the  sum of
$261,589.75. The report also mentions that in the framework of the  fur
operation, 35 freight cars with furs and fur coats were sent on in December
1941.78

This report deals exclusively with what was forwarded to  Operation
Reinhard  staff. It did not include the property that remained in the pockets of
local administration officials, which may have been in excess of the amount
transferred.

Conclusion

The plunder of Jewish property in the occupied areas of the Soviet Union and the struggles among various authorities over its disposition and distribution commenced with the retreat of the Red Army and the beginning of the German occupation. The pillage and associated struggle for control continued during the entire period.

Many benefited from that property:

78    Nuremberg Doc., L-18.

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1.  Various SS and other formations involved in the murder of Jews: the
            mobile Einsatzgruppen, branch offices of the Sipo and SD, Orpo
            battalions, German soldiers, etc.

2.  The German military and civil administration, German institutions and
            banks in Berlin and throughout the Reich, and Germans who served in
            the various branches of the German administration in the occupied
            areas of the Soviet Union.

3.  Local policemen, collaborators and a sizable segment of the local
            population.

Jewish property was an important source for financing the activities of the
German  administration  in  the  occupied  territories.  The  property  was
distributed to Volksdeutsche and local non-German bodies and officials as
recompense  for  their  collaboration  and  in  order  to  attract  additional
collaborators.

Many of the local inhabitants who were allocated or seized Jewish property and apartments had a vested interest that their former Jewish owners should never return. As a result, some of them became interested parties desirous of a German victory.

There is no way of determining the precise monetary value of the Jews
property  in  the  occupied  areas  of  the  Soviet  Union,  including  the
contributions  of tens of millions of rubles. There are no figures available on
the value of the currency and valuables that various administrative and SS
officials transferred to central banks and to the War Booty Office in the Reich
Central Treasury in Berlin. There is likewise no way to estimate the value of
the Jewish property that local inhabitants took for themselves or purchased for
a small sum from German administrative personnel. However, the very fact
that there was friction and struggles among the various German authorities
over these assets and their disposition points to the huge value of this

property. The   2.8  million RM (28  million rubles) seized from Jews and

forwarded by the Sipo and SD in the Ostland to the civil administration in

spring 1943 doubtless represented but a small portion of what had actually

been pilfered.

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Katzmann s report only detailed that part of the property that had been
seized from the Jews in the Galicia district, and transferred to the  Operation
Reinhard staff, but it is possible to analogize on its basis and gauge the likely
magnitude of the property plundered from Jews in other areas as well.
Moreover, a substantial portion of the silver, gold and valuables of the Jews of
Galicia did not remain in Katzmann s possession but was transported to the
Be¯ ec extermination camp. As this was not under his control, it was not even
included in his report. In other areas of the occupied Soviet Union, the Jews
were generally murdered on the spot and their property also remained nearby.
Those belongings and assets, including currency and valuables, movable
possessions of various kinds, thousands of houses and apartments, were
worth many hundreds of millions of RM - perhaps even several billion.

Translated from the Hebrew by William Templer

Source: Yad Vashem Studies, Vol. 29, Jerusalem, 2001, pp. 109-148

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