The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945

Pre-1942: Elista, capital, Kalmyk ASSR, RSFSR; August–December 1942: Army Group A (Heeresgruppe A); post-1991: Kalmyk Republic (Kalmykia), Russian Federation

Elista is located about 250 kilometers (155 miles) south of Stalingrad. Between June 1941 and August 1942, a number of Jewish refugees arrived in Elista from Gomel’, Dnepropetrovsk, Kiev, and other places occupied by the Germans. The lack of any rail communications made it difficult for Jews to flee from Elista in the face of the rapid German advance across the Kalmykian steppe in the summer of 1942.

Units of the German LII Corps occupied Elista on August 13, 1942. During the period of occupation, which lasted until December 31, 1942, German Ortskommandantur I/649 administered the town’s affairs. The German military administration created a town authority and a police force (Ordnungsdienst) made up of local residents. For part of the occupation, units of the German 16th Motorized Infantry Division were stationed in the town.

Among the German punitive organs based in the town from the end of August to the end of December 1942 was the Security Police Sonderkommando Astrakhan, part of Einsatzgruppe D. The Sonderkommando, consisting of about 10 to 20 men, was headed by Hauptsturmführer Rolf Maurer, who died in February 1943.

Shortly after the occupation of the town, the German authorities ordered the registration and marking of all Jews, the confiscation of Jewish property, and the use of Jews for forced labor. All Jews had to wear distinguishing badges in the form of a white six-pointed star. After their registration and marking, the Jews were forced into a ghetto, for which one of the buildings on Rosa Luxemburg Street was designated. The Jews were not allowed to leave the ghetto, and they were deprived of food and water. They remained in the ghetto for 10 days.

On September 9, 1942 (or shortly thereafter), Sonderkommando Astrakhan under Maurer’s command carried out the liquidation of the ghetto. According to testimony by members of the unit, about 80 to 100 Jews were taken out into the steppe outside the town to a place where a large ditch had already been prepared. Maurer and his men then shot all the Jews in small family groups (composed of men, women, children, and the elderly).¹ Soviet sources place the number of victims considerably higher, at 93 families, or more than 300 people altogether. The site of the mass shooting is reported to have been near the town’s waste dump.²

Shortly after the mass shooting, the Germans began to encounter partisan resistance in the region and acts of sabotage in Elista, organized in part by the German-appointed mayor of the town and other local officials, who apparently were working for the NKVD. Sonderkommando Astrakhan responded by executing a number of non-Jews before its retreat at the end of December. [End Page 1791]