PSKOV
Pre-1941: Pskov, city and raion center, Leningrad oblast’, RSFSR; 1941–1944: Pleskau, initially Rear Area, Army Group North (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Nord), then Gebiet Petschur, Generalkommissariat Estland; post-1991: Pskov, Pskov oblast’, Russian Federation
Pskov is located 256 kilometers (159 miles) southwest of Leningrad on the Velikaia River. According to the 1939 census, 1,068 Jews lived in Pskov (1.77 percent of the total population).
On July 9, 1941, two and a half weeks after the initial German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, units of the 4th Panzer Division occupied the city. A significant portion of the Jewish population was able to evacuate to the east. Eligible men were mustered into the Red Army or enlisted voluntarily. Around 25 percent of the pre-war Jewish population remained in the city at the start of the occupation.
In the summer and fall of 1941, a German military commandant’s office ran the city. A local administration was set up, and an auxiliary police unit (Ordnungsdienst) was recruited from among the local population.
At the start of 1942, authority was transferred to the German civilian administration. Pskov became part of Gebiet Petschur. SA-Standartenführer Bombe became the Gebietskommissar. Major Warnholz of the Schutzpolizei became the SS- und Polizei-Standortführer (senior police leader) in the town. Leutnant Hermann Hidde of the Schutzpolizei became the Gendarmerie-Gebietsführer. In turn, Gebiet Petschur was incorporated into Generalkommissariat Est-land. Initially the residence of the Gebietskommissar was located in Petschur but it was moved to Pskov in 1942 and remained there until 1944.1
From July 10, 1941, the German Security Police detachment Sonderkommando 1a was located in Pskov. It was later reorganized into an outpost of the Security Police (Sipo-Hauptaussenstelle), which was subordinated to SS-Sturmbannführer Martin Sandberger, the Commander of the Security Police and SD (KdS) in Tallinn. The head of the Sipo-Hauptaussenstelle in 1941–1942 was SS-Obersturmführer Otto Bleymehl.
Shortly after the occupation of the city, the German military commandant’s office ordered the registration of the Jews and the institution of forced manual labor. Jews were also required to wear a distinctive yellow patch on their clothing.
In August 1941, a ghetto was created in the city.2 During the forced resettlement into the ghetto, 13 Jews were murdered.3 The ghetto existed until some time between December and February 1942, when German forces liquidated the ghetto by shooting all the Jews in the nearby village of Vasilevo.4 In June 1942, a number of Jewish doctors were murdered. They had been working in a hospital for those wounded in the war.5 Under these various circumstances, according to German sources, the Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei) shot 232 Jews in total.6
In November 1941, the commander of Sonderkommando 1a, SS-S turmbannführer Martin Sandberger, forcibly resettled more than 100 Jews from Estonia together with other prisoners into a labor camp near Pskov. From February to April 1942, Höhere SS- und Polizeiführer (HSSPF) Russland-Nord under the command of SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln was stationed in Pskov. Jeckeln’s command ordered that these Jews from Estonia should be eliminated quickly.7 The shootings were carried out by members of the Sipo-Hauptaussenstelle in Pskov with the assistance of the local police.
In September 1943, the Germans started to burn the bodies of the victims at the grave sites near Pskov in an effort to remove all traces of their crimes. The Red Army liberated the city in August 1944.
After the war, Otto Bleymehl was under investigation for some time, but the investigation was eventually discontinued.8
SOURCES
Documents and witness statements regarding the persecution and annihilation of the Pskov Jews can be found in the following archives: BA-L; GAPO (R-903-3-1 and 12); GARF (7021-97-881); and RGASPI (17-1-313).
NOTES
1. BA-BL, BDC, SSHO 2432, Organisationsplan der besetzten Ostgebiete nach dem Stand vom 10. März 1942, hg. vom Chef der Ordnungspolizei, Berlin, den 13. März 1942.
2. I. Al’tman, Zhertvy nenavisti: Kholokost v Rossii 1941–1945gg. (Moscow: Fond Kovcheg, 2002), p. 99.
3. P. Vagin and M. Nikitin, Pod igom gitlerovskikh palachei (Moscow: OGIZ, 1943), p. 4.
4. Pskov: Ocherki istorii (Leningrad, 1971), p. 291; Shmuel Spector and Geoffrey Wigoder, eds., The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life before and during the Holocaust (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem; New York: New York University Press, 2001), p. 1037. Wolf-gang Curilla, Die deutsche Ordnungspolizei und der Holocaust im Baltikum und in Weissrussland 1941–1944 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2006), p. 821, mentions that the Schutzpolizei unit in Pskov carried out a mass shooting of at least 150 Jewish men, women, and children on December 27–28, 1941, but does not mention the precise location of this Aktion (although it was probably in Pskov); see also Sta. Hamburg, 141 Js 220/61, indictment of December 12, 1961, against P. and others, p. 3.
5. Al’tman, Zhertvy nenavisti, p. 251.
6. Annual report of the Security Police and SD commander in Generalkommissariat Estland from July 1, 1942, on affairs from July 1941 to June 30, 1942, appendix no. 12, GARF, 7021-97-881. According to the materials of the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK), around 1,000 Jews were shot in February 1942. However, this figure seems too high. See Pskov: Ocherki istorii, p. 291.
7. Testimony under oath by Martin Sandberger, November 19, 1945 (N-Doc., NO-3844); testimony under oath by Martin Sandberger, April 23, 1947 (N-Doc., NO-2891). The prison was probably established at the end of 1941 in the village of Mogilno, near Pskov. Prisoners of war and civilians were held captive there. The civilians included Jews and Gypsies (Roma). The total number of victims was around 700 people. Among them were 112 Jews: 14 men, 57 women, and 41 children; see RGASPI, 17-1-313, p. 114.
8. BA-L, ZStL/207 AR-Z 246/59 (Sonderkommando 1a—Bleymehl).
