Murder story of Glebokie Jews in the Glębokie Ghetto

From the verdict against Willi Thiermann, a former member of the 26th SS Police Regiment: …The sixth Company of the 26th SS police regiment arrived in Glębokie on the night of August 20, 1943, taking up lodgings in the town itself and in its vicinity. Some of the men were quartered in a school in Glębokie; others stayed in a barn in an open area, and still others were billeted in Dokscyce, a locality situated 15-20 km from Glębokie. On the morning of August 20, 1943, the company, in heavy marching order, moved toward the ghetto, both by truck and on foot. The ghetto was located in the eastern section of Glębokie, and was surrounded with a wooden fence.… After reaching the outskirts of the ghetto, the company commander… issued operational orders. According to them, the ghetto was to be combed for hidden Jews, and any Jews found in the area were to be brought to an assembly point. The weapons were to be used only for overcoming the expected resistance. At the ghetto entrance, some of the company men… were assigned to the outer cordon surrounding the area. The rest of the men… advanced from various directions into the ghetto, which looked abandoned. They combed through it in a so-called spread-out rifle formation. The bodies of the inmates, including women and children, lay scattered in the streets and squares, and they were recognizably Jewish. The dead had apparently been lying there for a long time. Some of them had swollen bellies, and they already exuded the smell of decomposition. The buildings were still burning in some parts of the ghetto, and visibility was obscured by clouds of smoke. During the combing of the ghetto, some of the company members…saw fleeing people, who were fired upon by the [men maintaining] the outer cordon… A ghetto inmate was hiding in a toilet hut in the center of the ghetto. He was taken out and shot with a rifle, on the orders of a non-commissioned officer, by a company member named Strazieni. After searching the ghetto further, some company men entered a larger stone structure near the assembly point, where timber and sacks – which may have been filled with grain – were stored. It was clearly either a warehouse or a mill, not a residential building. It was searched by the witness Hänig together with two other company members. When the witness Hänig descended a ladder leading down from the entrance and entered a room illuminated by daylight, he noticed that one of the sacks in a corner of the room was moving. Hänig discovered some Jews, including a young girl in a white lambskin coat, hiding in a hollow space between the sacks. The witness gestured to the Jews to keep quiet and left the house. However, other company members following him later discovered these hidden Jews and forced them out of the building. One of the company members… ordered these Jews to lie face down on the ground. The Jews, who had been whining loudly prior to that – with one elderly Jew even offering his daughter – now lay face down next to each other, packed tightly in a small depression. Afterward, a company man armed with a submachine gun approached the Jews lying on the ground and shot each of them in turn through the back of the head with his gun….

From the indictment of Willi Thiermann, a former member of the 26th SS Police Regiment: …On August 20, 1943… the rest of the ghetto [of Glębokie] was annihilated on the orders of the commander of the Security Police in Minsk. The operation was carried out by the powerful units of the main branch of the Wilejka command office of the Security Police and the SD. On the previous night, the ghetto had been surrounded by armed men. The Jewish population was ordered to report to the market square and get ready for evacuation to Lublin. However, the Jews feared that they were going to be murdered, and panic broke out. When the Jews tried to tear down the ghetto fence to escape, the Germans opened fire. The ghetto buildings caught fire, and those inmates who had not perished in the flames were shot. Only a few managed to flee into the forests…. In early August 1943, the 26th SS Police Regiment… with the exception of the 6th Company, was ordered by the Reich Main Security Office to move to Bialystok, to carry out a special operation in support of the commander of the Security Police and SD…. The 6th Company, to which the defendant belonged, received orders to report to the head of the Glębokie branch of the Wilejka main branch of the Minsk command office of the Security Police and SD, in order to support the latter unit in the final liquidation of the Glębokie Ghetto. The company arrived in Glębokie by train on the night of August 20, 1943, and stayed in a school near the train station. At this point, the company members heard the sounds of gunfire, and they could guess that the cleansing of the ghetto by the other units was in full swing. Shortly thereafter, two… Gestapo officials showed up, and they apparently gave the… company commander his operational orders. On the morning of August 20, 1943, the company, in heavy marching order, reported for duty and moved out toward the ghetto. Upon reaching the fenced-off ghetto, the company commander read out the operational orders to his men. According to these orders, the ghetto was to be combed for hidden Jews, and any such Jews were to be taken to an assembly point. The men were to use their weapons only to overcome the expected resistance. The company then entered the ghetto and combed through it. The men were arranged in a loose formation, with rifles at the ready. The ghetto looked abandoned. The bodies of men, women, and children lay in the streets and squares. The yellow stars on their clothes clearly indicated that these were Jews. Many of the buildings were burning, and visibility was limited by the clouds of smoke. During the combing operation, the company men also searched the cellars of a warehouse in which wood and grain were stored. In one of the cellar rooms, they discovered a group of at least six Jews, including women and children. The Jews were driven outside and taken to the assembly point. There, one of the company men, who could not be identified – possibly even the defendant – ordered them to lie face down next to each other. The defendant then approached each victim in turn and shot him/her dead through the back of the head with his submachine gun....