Last revised august 30, 2004

, originally published in the Journal of the Center for Holocaust Studies, vol. 6, no. 4 (spring 1990).

105 Celia K. (Celia (Tsila) Kassow (Kasovsky) née Cymmer, from Szarkowszczyzna) Holocaust Testimony (HVT–36), interviewed February 25, 1980, Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimones, Yale University Library. Celia K’s testimony is also cited in Joshua M. Greene and Shiva Kumar, eds., Witnesses: Voices from the Holocaust (New York: The Free Press, 2000), 99–100: “We used to kill indiscriminately. We killed off an awful lot of people we knew that were against Jews.”

106 Dean, Collaboration in the Holocaust, 127.

107 Viktar Khursik, Kroŭ i popel Drazhna: Historyia partyzanskaha zlachynstva, Second revised and expanded edition (Minsk: Radyela-plius, 2006). A member of Captain Nikitin’s detachment, which included many Jews who had escaped from the Minsk ghetto, provides the following typically overblown description of the assault: “Our detachment and detachment named after Suvorov took charge of crushing the Nazi garrison in the village of Drazhna. It was one of their biggest and strongest garrisons. The village guarded well enough that our scouts could not enter. When finally two partisans disguised as peasants entered the village, it was decided we would attack at dawm. Both detachments spent all night walking toward our meeting place. When ours reached a small forest near the village that was our arranged destination, we realized that the other detachment had not yet arrived. Their guide had lost his way in the dark. The surprise factor was lost. The battle was long and bloody. More than 100 Nazis were killed, but it wasn’t an easy victory. Both groups suffered serious losses.” See Albert Lapidus, My War Childhood: A Prisoner of the Ghetto and Partisan of World War II Remembers, Internet: Belarus Online Newsletter, no. 1/2006, January 2006, Internet: .

108 Account of A.I. in Trunk, Jewish Responses to Nazi Persecution, 239. After surrendering to the Germans in July 1941, Lieutenant Colonel Rodionov was held captive in a labour camp. He started collaborating with them the following year and became commander of a brigade of Russian renegades that participated in anti-partisan operations. He eventually switched allegiance again in August 1943, bringing over some of the collaborating forces.

109 The sabotaging of railroads (through delayed-detonation mines) had little impact on developments on the military front, never obstructed German transports for long periods, and had a detrimental impact on the civilian population because of German reprisals. According to Alexander Brakel, “The fact that the great majority of the population would have been better off without partisan activity holds especially true given the partisans’ insignificant military effect: their main aim was to sabotage German lines of communication. In the Baranovich [Baranowicze] region they achieved very little in this regard. Although in 1943 the Germans were forced to put some railway sidetracks out of service, the vital main lines remained in working order until the end of the occupation. Besides, the Germans managed to repair most of the damage quickly. Only in summer 1944 did partisans manage to blow up a significant number of tracks at once.” See Alexander Brakel, “The Relationship between Soviet Partisans and the Civilian Population in Belorussia under German Occupation, 1941–4,” in Shepherd and Pattinson, War in a Twilight World, 94.

110 In reprisal for an attack by Markov’s partisans near Łyntupy on a vehicle carrying three German officials on May 19, 1942, the Germans ordered the execution of 400 men. In fact, as many as 1,200 Poles may have been killed in a series of reprisals carried out primarily by the Lithuanian police in a number of localities, based on lists drawn up local Lithuanians. See Roman Korab-Żebryk, Biała księga w obronie Armii Krajowej na Wileńszczyźnie (Lublin: Wydawnictwo Lubelskie, 1991), 38–44; Maria Wardzyńska, “Mord popełniony latem 1943 r. przez partyzantów sowieckich na żołnierzach AK z oddziału ‘Kmicica,’” Pamięć i Sprawiedliwość: Biuletyn Głównej Komisji Badania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu–Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej, no. 39 (1996): 136; Wołkonowski, Okręg Wileński Związku Walki Zbrojnej Armii Krajowej w latach 1939–1945, 80; Jarosław Wołkonowski, “ZWK-AK a problem mniejszości etnicznych na Wileńszczyźnie,” in Piotr Niwiński, ed., Opór wobec systemów totalitarnych na Wileńszczyźnie w okresie II wojny światowej (Gdańsk: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2003), 46; Monika Tomkiewicz, Zbrodnia w Ponarach 1941–1944 (Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej–Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, 2008), 151–52. See also Zizas, Persecution of Non-Jewish Citizens of Lithuania, Murder of Civilian Populations (1941–1944), 55–56, who suggests a lower, though unspecified, number of victims who were mainly Poles. News of these mass reprisals even reached the Wilno ghetto. See Kruk, The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania, 294, 319–20. Communist historians falsely claim that these retaliations were evidence of widespread support for the Soviet partisans on the part of the local population. See, for example, Juchniewicz, Polacy w radzieckim ruchu partyzanckim 1941–1945, 290. Contemporary Lithuanian historiography covers up the fact that the victims were Poles and that they were killed by Lithuanians. See Bubnys, Nazi Resistance Movement in Lithuania, 1941–1944, 11, 23.

Other pacifications were equally brutal. See, for example, Krajewski, Na Ziemi Nowogródzkiej, 42, which describes German pacifications in 1943 in a number of localities (Tuliczewo, Nowosady, Kołki, Sitnica, etc.) in reprisal for Soviet partisan activities. In some instances, Soviet partisans undertook activities that were calculated to incite German reprisals, as, for example, an ambush on some Germans near the Polish village of Jatołowicze on February 21, 1943, which resulted in a punitive expedition in which 90 residents were burned alive. Jewish reports claim that the mining of railway tracks was carried out with remarkable precision and resulted in the derailment of trains loaded with munitions and soldiers. See, for example, Nechama Tec, “Reflections on Resistance and Gender,” in John K. Roth and Elisabeth Maxwell, eds., Remembering for the Future: The Holocaust in an Age of Genocide (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire and New York: Palgrave, 2001), vol. 1, 569; and “Operations Diary of a Jewish Partisan Unit in Rudniki Forest, 1943–1944,” in Yitzhak Arad, Yisrael Gutman, and Abraham Margaliot, Documents of the Holocaust: Selected Sources on the Destruction of the Jews of Germany and Austria, Poland, and the Soviet Union (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1981), 463–71. Polish sources tell a different story: the victims of train derailments were for the most part ordinary civilian passengers, with relatively few German casualties. Moreover, this form of warfare never took precedence over the constant “economic” operations. See Ryszard Kiersnowski, Tam i wtedy: W Podweryszkach, w Wilnie i w puszczy, 1939–1945 (Warsaw: Editions Spotkania, 1994), 50; Krajewski, Na Ziemi Nowogródzkiej, 136, 139–40.

111 The Trial of Adolf Eichmann, Session 27 (Part 9 of 10), Internet: