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

The Wehrmacht set up special detention camps (Endlager) near Ozarichi (today Azarychy in Belarus) (map 9c) on March 12, 1944. The camps lay in the German Ninth Army sector of the eastern front, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) south of the town of Bobruisk in Belorussia. They were, however, only in existence until March 19, since their sole purpose was to allow the Ninth Army to rid itself of those civilians who were incapable of labor, by shifting them into the no-man’s-land between the Wehrmacht and the advancing Red Army.

The history of this group of detention camps is unlike that of almost any other set of camps under the Third Reich. It is tightly interwoven with the Ninth Army’s military situation at the onset of 1944 as well as with the German policies of occupation, exploitation, and extermination. It is, thus, also a history closely connected with the civilian population, which was crowding together in increasing numbers in the shrinking territories under German control.

In March 1944, the forces of the Ninth Army were positioned in a perimeter of about 60–70 kilometers (37.3–43.5 miles) east and south of the city of Bobruisk. Among them were the LV Corps with the 5th Armored Division (Panzerdivision) and the 20th Armored Division; the XXXV Corps with the 6th, 45th, 296th, and 707th Infantry Divisions; the XXXXI Armored Corps (Panzerkorps) with the 36th and 253rd Infantry Divisions and the 4th Armored Division; and the LVI Armored Corps with the 35th, 110th, 129th, and 134th Infantry Divisions.

In the winter of 1943–1944, the Ninth Army faced the problem of having to provide food for thousands of civilians in its sector, some of them local, some of them already the victims of German deportations from farther east. The Wehrmacht had already deported all the able-bodied people to Germany for forced labor, leaving the old, infirm, sick, and women with young children. These people were mostly incapable of supporting themselves, but the Wehrmacht did not want to allocate precious food for their upkeep.

At the beginning of March, Adolf Hitler authorized a frontline adjustment within the 35th Infantry Division’s sector, withdrawing from a salient in the German front line that was proving difficult to defend. This decision provided the Ninth Army with an opportunity to implement its radical plan: the elimination of “superfluous” civilians from the entire territory under its occupation by placing them in the territory that German troops would soon vacate, which lay within the sector controlled by the LVI Armored Corps, with General of Infantry Friedrich Hossbach in command. Directly pursuant to this authorization of retreat, the 35th Infantry Division began to set up the first camp.¹

General Josef Harpe, the commander of the Ninth Army, had pressed ahead vigorously with the enforced recruitment of civilian manpower for the Wehrmacht and the German war effort in 1943 and 1944, with full knowledge of the demographic consequences.² On March 9, he issued Order No. 233/44 in an effort to deal with those consequences. This order decreed that those persons incapable of labor be deported into the front area from which the army was retreating, starting at 4:00 a.m. on the morning of March 12. This measure also offered the advantage that it would help to control the spread of typhus, since the order included all civilians with the disease.³

The plan that the headquarters developed from this order called for German forces to establish a series of unloading points and collection camps (Sammellager) as well as the final detention camps. The quartermaster sections of the army headquarters, its corps, and the divisions were to organize and implement the operation. Besides the divisional troops, forces that reported directly to the corps as well as 150 men from Sonderkommando 7a of the SD were all to be involved.

Because of the local geographic conditions and the available means of transportation, the LVI and XXXXI Armored Corps, which were stationed nearest to the planned disengagement zone (Absetzzone) to the south of the Ninth Army sector, were to round up civilians and bring them to the camps, either on foot or by truck or horse-driven cart. The XXXV and LV Army Corps (Armeekorps), which were stationed farther away to the north, had the rail network for transport at their disposal. The order also regulated the deployment of Wehrmacht units under the command of Sonderkommando 7a to manage the victims’ march up to the frontline zone and into the final detention camps.⁴ Apart from regulating issues relating to the supply of provisions, the order of March 9 further stipulated that, in the event of a retreat of the German frontline forces, the camps were to be shelled by artillery in order to prevent civilians from escaping and from approaching the German lines.⁵

The Germans established a system of fenced off areas, with no buildings and no sanitary facilities, in the area designated for the deportations. These collection camps would facilitate the concentration and transport of the civilians into the frontline area. The 129th Infantry Division, for example, set up a collection camp in the vicinity of the railroad depot at Rudobelka, which was a key point for the prisoners’ transport [End Page 571] via rail. The camp was designed to hold 6,000 people. In fact, between March 13 and March 15, about 12,000–16,000 people were herded into it. From there, they were to be transported farther via a transit camp to the so-called Final Camp South (Endlager Süd), which the 35th Infantry Division had set up to accommodate 12,000 people. Sonderkommando 7a, aided by units of the Wehrmacht, was to guard the civilians during the last phase of the operation, the foot march from the depots to the detention camps.

In addition to this main axis for the transportation of the civilians, the 35th, 129th, and 110th Infantry Divisions set up smaller camps near to the villages of Nestanovichi, Porosslishche, and Mikul Gorodok, respectively, to take in those civilians brought in from the sectors for which the LVI and the XXXXI Armored Corps were responsible. Later on, they were moved to Endlager I near Myslov Rogor to Endlager II near Litvinovichi.

Each of the so-called Endlager consisted of a double-strand barbed wire fence and simple guard towers. The surrounding area was marshy woodland. To avoid the Red Army discovering the operation before the retreat had taken place, the civilians were forbidden to make fires, despite the severe cold.

According to the original plans, on which the order of March 9, 1944, was based, the intent was to deport 20,000 “diseased persons, crippled persons, old persons, women with more than 2 children under 10 years of age, and other persons incapable of labor” out of the Ninth Army sector.⁶ However, analysis of the available records shows that at least 30,873 persons were accounted for in the sector under the two northern corps alone, 23,519 of whom were brought by rail to Rudobelka. This is twice the number that was intended for this area. Correspondingly, conditions for the civilians in these camps became more acute, since food provisions were inadequate, as were the available means of transportation. As a measure against the typhus fever epidemic, those civilians who had already contracted the disease and were being held in quarantine, in so-called disease villages, were included in the deportations. A total of around 7,000 sick persons were brought to the camps, where they were not segregated from the still healthy victims. The consequences, both for those who had the disease to begin with and those who contracted it while in the camps, were often fatal.

The war diary of the quartermaster’s section contains information on the influx of victims into the camps between March 14 and March 16. It states that a total of 39,597 adult civilians in addition to “several thousand small children” were deported into the three detention camps.⁷ Furthermore, the Sonderkommando 7a registered a total of 47,461 persons.⁸ After liberating the detention camps, the Red Army spoke of 33,000 survivors and 9,000 dead.⁹ It is not possible to verify the accuracy of these figures, but they clearly indicate the deportation of up to 50,000 civilian victims.

Overall, the deportations covered an area of about 5,000 square kilometers (1,930 square miles). However, only some of the deportees originated from the area controlled by the Ninth Army. A lot of them had already been rounded up and brought there from other regions of the Soviet Union under occupation by the German army. Some had been evacuated during the Ninth Army’s recent retreats; others had been in different Wehrmacht camps for weeks.

Wehrmacht units—particularly the supply units—were actively involved in all these activities.¹⁰ For the transportation into the detention camp at Dert, the escorting guards of the trains arriving in Rudobelka and “particularly resolute officers and NCOs of the LVI Armored Corps” reported directly to the Sonderkommando 7a.¹¹ In the areas under divisional control, the deportations were carried out by the troops of the Military Police (Feldgendarmerie) together with the units of the Supply Service, which reported directly to the quartermasters.

In agreement with the head of the Sonderkommando 7a—Sturmbannführer Helmuth Loos—the 110th Infantry Division took on the supervision of the northern transit camps (Zwischenlager) and detention camps. During the first days of the operation, the division supervised the civilians in the Transit Camp North (Zwischenlager Nord) near Mikul Gorodok and implemented their own truck transports from Rudobelka to the Transit Camp Center (Zwischenlager Mitte) near Porosslishche. Sonderkommando 7a, on the other hand, concentrated on the southern route, which was most heavily used and served as the main axis for the deportations. To guard the camps, the Supply Services of the Field Replacement Battalion (Feldersatzbataillon) of the 129th and 110th Infantry Divisions and reserve units of the Army Weapons Training School (Armeewaffenschule) and of the 35th Infantry Division were called in.

With regard to the conduct of the guards and soldiers during the operation, survivors reported later that even while rounding up the civilians initially, divisional units had reacted to any attempt at escape or any form of resistance with brutal force. Sonderkommando 7a prepared written documentation of the excessive brutality and killings, which took place above all on the marches from the railway station at Rudobelka to the detention camp at Dert. During the march, Sonderkommando 7a guarded the front and the rear of the column of civilians, while units of the Wehrmacht marched at their sides.¹² The guards ruthlessly killed those civilians who could not keep up with the rest. There are no exact figures available; however, the Ninth Army itself states in its corresponding report that about 500 people had perished during the rail transport alone¹³ and advised that for similar operations in the future, the marching columns should be followed by burial commandos, who would dispose of the dead bodies.¹⁴

Reports by surviving witnesses provide a picture of the horrid conditions on the marches and in the camps, over and above what one can glean from the available facts, such as the poor ratio between camp capacity and camp inhabitants, or the distances that the old, the sick, and the children were required to cover, the weather and ground conditions, and the pace at which the victims had to walk. Within the camps, the guards shot without warning any person who approached the fencing in search of water. Similarly, any [End Page 572] attempt to light a fire was met with shots from the Germans in the watchtowers.¹⁵

A dramatic diary entry made by a German army chaplain when he arrived at the huge camp near Dert, where at that time more than 20,000 civilians were already interned, illustrates the dreadful reality of the deportations:

I noticed that something had changed first of all because of a strange sound which I could not identify until I saw the camp in the distance. A continuous, low wail of many voices rose out of it up to the sky. And then I saw right in front of me how they were dragging the dead body of an old man as though he were a piece of cattle. They had tied a rope around his legs. An old woman lay dead by the wayside, a recent gunshot wound in her forehead. A man of the Military Police gave me further insight by pointing to a bundle that lay in the dirt: dead children whom he had covered up with a pillow. Women who could no longer carry their children left them at the roadside, where they were shot—“eliminated” like anybody else who cannot carry on due to illness, age, or infirmness.¹⁶

Once all the victims were in the camps, the camp entrances were blocked with mines and the units of the Wehrmacht left, leaving behind only some small surveillance commandos. On March 17, the last remaining guards also drew back to the new front line of the 35th Infantry Division, which shelled the camps to prevent any of the internees from escaping.

On March 19, reconnaissance units of the Red Army discovered the three camps near Ozarichi. After removing the German mines, which had killed numerous camp internees as they attempted to leave the camps after the guards withdrew, Soviet soldiers moved the survivors to different military hospitals in the surrounding area. The Ninth Army, in its final report to the Army Group Center (Heeresgruppe Mitte), stated that Luftwaffe aircraft had observed the survivors being transported into the Soviet rear some days later.¹⁷

As the extent of the deportations became clear following the liberation of the camps, the Soviet officials began to carry out investigations and to secure evidence. The “Extraordinary State Commission for ascertaining and investigating crimes perpetrated by the German-Fascist Invaders” demanded, in its report of May 6, 1944, that charges be brought against the eleven German officers responsible for the crime. In February 1946, at the Nuremberg Trial, Chief Counselor of Justice Smirnov, acting on behalf of the USSR, provided evidence in the form of a detailed report. In a Soviet war crimes trial in Minsk, General Johann-Georg Richert, commander of the 35th Infantry Division, who had been taken into Soviet captivity at the end of the war, was only one of those sentenced to death. Among other things, he was accused of involvement in the deportations near Ozarichi. He was executed at Minsk on January 30, 1946. Some lower ranks, whose involvement in the deportations was proved, were sentenced to 25 years of hard labor. However, most of the men directly responsible for the planning and execution of the Ozarichi deportations, first of all Helmuth Loos, commanding officer of Sonderkommando 7a, Josef Harpe, commanding general of the Ninth Army, Friedrich Hossbach, commander of the LVI Armored Corps, and Werner Bodenstein, chief quartermaster of the Ninth Army, were never held accountable for their crimes. Hossbach, in fact, has gone down in history as a staunch anti-Nazi.