KLINTSY
Pre-1941: Klintsy, town and raion center, Orel oblast’, RSFSR; 1941–1943: Klinzy, Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte); post-1991: Klintsy, Briansk oblast’, Russian Federation
Klintsy is located approximately 150 kilometers (93 miles) southwest of Briansk on the railroad from Moscow to Kiev. In 1939, the Jewish population was 6,505 (16.07 percent of the population).
German units of the 10th Motorized Division, belonging to Panzer Group Guderian’s XXIV Panzer Corps (Army Group Center), occupied Klintsy on August 20, 1941, almost two months after the start of the German invasion of the USSR. It was one of the few towns that fell to the Germans intact, and it became an important administrative base. Prior to the Germans’ arrival, some Jews had managed to evacuate to the east, while men of military age were drafted into the Red Army. Approximately half of the pre-war Jewish population remained in the town under German occupation.
Throughout the occupation, the town was ruled by a German military administration. In October 1941, a military field commandant was established in the town (Feldkommandantur 528), which also supervised the activities of the local commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur). At the beginning of March 1942, a new local commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur I/888) arrived in Klintsy from France, assuming control of the town and also the surrounding area. In the fall of 1941, Unit 729 of the Secret Field Police (Geheime Feldpolizei, GFP) arrived in Klintsy; it was mainly engaged in fighting against Soviet partisans. In the last days of September or the beginning of October 1941, a subunit of the Security Police’s Einsatzgruppe B, Sonderkommando 7b (commanded by SS-Sturmbannführer Günther Rausch), arrived in Klintsy, where it was stationed until the end of February, being replaced up to the end of April 1942 by Sonderkommando 7a (commanded by SS-Obersturmbannführer Albert Rapp). Sonderkommando 7b established a local town administration in Klintsy, headed by the ethnic German (Volksdeutsche) Gretskii, and also a Russian local police unit (Ordnungsdienst) recruited from local citizens, which played an active role in the anti-Jewish Aktions.1
Immediately after the occupation of the town, the military administration ordered the registration of all local Jews and their recruitment for hard labor. An order published in the German-controlled Klintsy newspaper (issue no. 1, September 26, 1941) announced that by the end of September all Jews, male and female, aged over 10 years were obligated to wear a yellow Star of David 10 centimeters (4 inches) in diameter.2
At the end of September 1941, Sonderkommando 7b organized the first anti-Jewish Aktion in Klintsy. According to an Einsatzgruppen report, during this Aktion “83 Jewish terrorists and 3 Communist Party leaders were killed (liquidated),” and during subsequent Aktions “3 Communist officials, 1 [End Page 1800] politician, and 82 Jewish terrorists” were murdered, making a total of at least 165 Jews and 7 Communist victims.3
At the beginning of October 1941, Sonderkommando 7b ordered that the Jews in town were to be relocated into a ghetto on the edge of town, which was guarded by the Russian local police.4 In the ghetto, the Germans established workshops for shoemakers. Jewish doctors, barbers, and typists were conscripted to serve the German and local authorities.5 One Jewish female baby was rescued from the ghetto and eventually adopted by her family’s non-Jewish house keeper.6
The ghetto in Klintsy existed for more than two months. On December 6–7, 1941, Einsatzkommando 8, which was located in Gomel’ (commanded by SS-Obersturmführer Wilhelm Schulz), assisted by men of the Russian Ordnungsdienst, murdered the inhabitants of the ghetto.7 In the course of these two days they shot about 2,500 people. Afterwards a number of Jewish specialist workers remained in the town with their families. These Jews were arrested successively and held in prison before being murdered in March 1942. The order for this mass shooting of at least 100 Jews was given by Rapp of Sonderkommando 7a. In addition to the Jews, the Security Police shot 30 Gypsies (Roma), who had also been collected in the prison.8
SOURCES
There is an article in Russian by the author (Alexander Kruglov) on the destruction of the Jews in the Smolensk and Briansk oblasts, “Unichtozhenie evreev Smolenshchiny i Brianshchiny v 1941–1943 gg.,” published in Vestnik Evreiskogo Universiteta v Moskve, no. 3 (7) (1994): 205–220. Some additional information can be found in Il’ia Al’tman, Zhertvy nenavisti: Kholokost v SSSR 1941–1945 gg. (Moscow: Fond Kovcheg, 2002). A published German contemporary account of Klintsy during the occupation was written by Walter Engelhardt: Klinzy: Bildnis einer Stadt nach der Befreiung vom Bolschewismus (Berlin, 1943). Some details of the German occupation can also be found in the local history volume compiled by A.S. Balaev et al., Klintsam 250 let (Briansk, 1959).
Documentation and witness testimonies on the extermination of the Jews of Klintsy can be found in the following archives: BA-L (ZStL, II AR-Z 399/63); GABrO; GARF (7021-19-5); and VHF (# 26511). See also the German trials of Albert Rapp and Kurt Matschke conducted by the regional court (Landgericht) in Essen in 1965 and 1966.
NOTES
1. LG-Ess, 29 Ks 1/64, verdict of March 29, 1965, in the case of Albert Rapp, published in Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, vol. 20 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1979), Lfd. Nr. 588.
2. Balaev et al., Klintsam 250 let, p. 38.
3. BA-BL, R 58/218, Ereignismeldung UdSSR no. 106, October 9, 1941.
4. LG-Ess, 29 Ks 1/64, verdict of March 29, 1965, in the case of Albert Rapp, in Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, vol. 20; the ghetto is mentioned also in VHF, # 26511, testimony of Dina Kozina.
5. Al’tman, Zhertvy nenavisti, p. 172.
6. VHF, # 26511, testimony of Dina Kozina.
7. GARF, 7021-19-5, pp. 9, 10, 21.
8. LG-Ess, 29 Ks 1/64, verdict of March 29, 1965, in the case of Albert Rapp, Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, vol. 20. See also LG-Ess, 29 Ks 1/65, verdict of February 10, 1966, in the case against Kurt Matschke and others, published in Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, vol. 23 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1998), Lfd. Nr. 620.
