Narratives of Perpetrators

In order to be able to judge historical events, the source situation is crucial. Which person wrote a document or took a photograph and what purpose did they pursue with it? Questions like these help in the source-critical assessment of documents from the past. At the same time, they open up a space for interpretation: how a historical source is interpreted ultimately also depends on the current viewer.

In the case of the crimes against humanity in Maly Trascjanec, the vast majority of victims can no longer speak. For about 60,000 people murdered in Blahaǔščyna, Šaškoǔka and a barn on the camp grounds, there are only a handful of survivors and witnesses. The reconstruction of the events must therefore be based predominantly on the stories told by perpetrators; perpetrators who were racist and anti-Semitic.

Excerpt from the activity report of the II. Platoon of the Waffen-SS Battalion zb V. (Arlt Group) in Minsk, 17 May 1942

Excerpt from Otto Drews' interrogation protocol of 11 April 1961

Sources are positions and opinions that are in no way to be equated with an "objective" truth. Rather, they convey what the producer of a document felt to be true and false. Trials of the post-war period (including the Hamburg trials) included activity reports and field post letters from the German occupying forces in the proceedings. In other words, opinions of the accused, declarations of innocence and letters from prison camps, some of which read like holiday greetings to the family. It is mainly about descriptions of seemingly normal work, such as getting firewood or digging in the forest, where each worker was given a shovel. The above seems too harmless in the context of mass torture and murder. It is precisely this context that is crucial when considering perpetrator narratives; the perpetrators were not only sworn to secrecy, but often considered their actions to be “right” and “necessary”.

It's people like Otto Goldapp who claimed to have been "normal" police officers. His participation in "Sonderkommando 1005" in Maly Trascjanec could be proven by witness statements. It's people like Paul Blobel, who protested until they were sentenced that they acted out of “loyalty to the fatherland”. Blobel could be proven that he was responsible for the "Aktion 1005“ – and thus the exhumation of thousands of corpses of Jewish people from mass graves. It is their testimonies that enable the reconstruction of the crimes against humanity in Maly Trascjanec and other Holocaust scenes.