JKS referred us to an AP article at http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gtnQa-18G3aloRVhhKeHUXgLMcWgD8SS9RAO1

This is, however, “no longer available”; if anyone copied it, please post it in this thread.

Thanks to all who have done research and contributed to this discussion.

Stephen

See post #6 of this thread.

See post # 6 of this thread.

One of my Christmas Santa’s gift requests was a copy of the book “The Mascot” and behold Santa came through. After I get done through reading the book I will be reviewing it knowing the facts as written.
Otherwise I wish you all a Merry Christmas and many happy New Years.
http://www.lacplesis.com/Es_Skaistu_Rozit_Zinu.mp3

JKS et al.,

“The latter of the above weblinks also mentions Latvians in Minsk although it calls them police rather than SD. “

There never was a latvian SD.  Members of the SD were germans and party members.  They had the power to decided who is to be sent to the concentration camps.  They only carried side arms, and for major operations at times various military units were put under their command (deputized} for the duration of the operation.  The chain of command is comparable to the US military police where in a military camp the camp provost is a MP.  Regular soldiers pull guard duty under MP command, put on MP armbands during the operation(deputized) and when the duty is over, revert back to what they were before.

Operations by the partisans in the middle of the winter consisted almost entirely of raiding villages, robbing the people of their food, clothing, and other valuables, and murder.  They were regarded as bandits.

Visu labu,

Bruno-
Sorry to be rude, but the partisan raids were regarded in that way by who? The Germans?
And on what evidence do you make this statement?

It seems to me that you are making these statements about and against people who in many ways could be seen as the equivalent of anti-communist partisans in various parts of the world. Just because LV forces were deployed against them doesn’t define them as bad. LVs lose a bit of the moral superiority of having been press-ganged into service if we then buy into seeing people such as partisans in other occupied lands as being the enemy. I acknowledge ignorance of the partisans in Belarus, but I think that we should be careful of blankets statements about them.

It strikes me that some people (piemeram the Soviets) would have said the same thing about the Forest Brothers in the 40s through 50s. Perspective means lots.

tom

I would have to disagree with you Tom
The word bandit was used by both the Germans, Latvians, Russians etc.  It is easier to explain killing bandits then partisans and it lowers the partisans status. The Russians killed Latvian bandits through 1956.
I am almost done with the book “The Mascot” and I suggest you don’t make any one any richer by buying the book. As one Holocaust professor told the author ” take your father to a psychiatrist”. I shall post a small revue a bit later.

See post # 6 of this thread.

After reading the book “the Mascot” I’m sorry Santa wasted her money on this book but then I could only conjecture about the validity of the story.
I conclude that the story is plausible but not to be used as a historically correct document. The timeline cannot be verified for this is told by an old man trying to remember his activities from 5 years old on up. Also everything was only told to his son who I have a suspicion helped in the memories with such statements from page 80.

“What time of the year was it?”
“Not long after I was picked up by the soldiers,” my father replied. “They told me later that they had found me in late May 1942, so it must have been early June the same year.”
“That would have made it summertime.”
“Exactly, and that is where I am confused, because my impression is that it was cold, and that there was snow on the ground.”
“They might’ve lied about when they picked you up,” I suggested.
“But why would they?” my father said, genuinely mystified.
“Perhaps to hide their involvement in this massacre,” I mused. “If
only there was some way to find out more about the movement of Lat
vian troops.”
“Perhaps `Koidanov’ or `Panok’ is the key to where I was born. If that were the case, we could learn a lot about my movements and the soldiers as well.”
“What about this building?” I asked. “What was it?”
My father shrugged. “At that time I didn’t recognize the building as anything in particular. But I wonder now if it was a synagogue.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” I replied. From my limited knowledge of the Holocaust, I knew that it had been a commonplace occurrence. “The people were likely Jewish,” I added.
My father looked momentarily bewildered. “Sergeant Kulis used the word `partizani.’”
“The Nazis often used that term for the Jews they hunted in the forests. They also called them Bolsheviks.”
“I didn’t know,” my father said, visibly shocked. “To be honest, I wouldn’t have had the slightest idea who was Jewish and who wasn’t, even if they were my people. I was only five or six.” Then he added: “All I thought was that they looked like people from my village. Certainly now, looking back, I am sure that they were Jewish.”

Later at the end of the book it was verified by other Jewish survivors that they had joined the partisan movement so it was Jews and partisans and the Geneva rules for treating partisans are different then soldiers.

His survival in the woods before being given to the Latvians in my opinion was that he was found by a woman and her son and lived with them during this time. He calls the son an “ogre” smelly and dirty, so with having witnessed a massacre and maybe the son molested him, it was put out of his mind. If someone other then his son interviewed him at first, then the story might have been revealed. The son according to him gave him up to the Latvians while they were hunting partisans by saying “Another one for you! From the forest”
The Latvians placed him in the schoolhouse where he found an “enormous” crate full of rifles. Since soldiers on patrol do not carry crates of rifles with them, it must have been a partisan cache the Latvians discovered.
The only mention of SS is done by the son and only by the father after previous mentioning by the son.
The massacre he saw was at the village of Koidanov October 21, 1941 where his mother was killed, but later in the book we learn not his father. Also the massacre was committed by the Lithuanian Second Brigade which was operating in a number of villages southwest of Minsk.
The question of Slonim and if he witnessed it, the quotes are such.

“Had my father in fact been taken to Slonim, where he witnessed the massacre?
When I put the question to him, my father had prevaricated.
“It could’ve been another time and place.” “

I probably will waste money and see the movie to see how they wrote the script but I will not expect a favorable view of the Latvians.

JKS et al.,
“Bruno-
Sorry to be rude, but the partisan raids were regarded in that way by who? The Germans?
And on what evidence do you make this statement? “

The three links that you provided in the previous post go into more detail about ” Operations by the partisans in the middle of the winter consisted almost entirely of raiding villages, robbing the people of their food, clothing, and other valuables, and murder.  They were regarded as bandits. “.  I merely restricted my assesment to the winter months of 1941, which in your previous post was described as an extremely harsh winter.  Serious damage done by partisans to the german military took place later when the germans started to retreat.

To the latvian SD company question:  What distinct uniforms did they have?.  What was their command structure ?  Who were they accountable to ?  The most likely answer is that it was a police company deputized, and put under command of the german SD for the duration it was in Belarus.

I certainly agree with you about making blanket statements about events that took place in Belarus.  All the three links that you gave state that the answer are not simple.

Visu labu,

See post #6 of this thread.

See post #6 of this thread. 

As for the question about the SD - I know that sometimes schutzmannschaft battalions had to work alongside German SD but there were also separate Latvian SD units whose members killed Jews. From what I have quickly skimmed through in Ezergailis, I believe they were under the overall command of the local German SD commander.

In reply , No They Were Not Hunting Jews. I failed to elaborate on his first meeting of the Latvians as HE STATED . The ogre son brought him to an unspecified city and first he saw a line of bodies laying against a wall and the soldiers were prodding them to see if they were still alive. He only specified that they were men of all ages. The crate of rifles in the school would tell me that the dead were partisans from the area.
There are comments of things his son said he saw and he says he saw but nothing of any specific time that can be specifically verified. It is his son that keeps name dropping “SS”.
To me the most perfect way to hide a Jew under the Nazi Regime is to dress him as a Nazi. Many times he states that the Latvians told him to not allow anyone to undress him for he might be hurt for he was circumcised. If he was found out then the Latvians hiding him also would be punished. His son turns things around (my opinion) and talks of making fun of him and degradation.
I think the media is pushing a poor Jewish boy being used by evil Latvian Nazi SS soldiers sent out to kill Jews and it will be advertised that way when the movie comes out.
Your final question is one that is hard to answer for no soldier writes about murdering people but might about killing partisans in a battle and the victor gets to do the writing.  The Geneva rules do not give partisans any legal protection so those battles from Leningrad to the Balkans against the partisans were not subject to law so you have to interpret the reports yourself. I did not see any reference about partisan prisoners in the reports of the 18th Battalion but that doesn’t mean they were not there. If there were prisoners, the question would be” What will the Germans do with them?”

JKS et al.,

“Would it be fair to say that shooting captured partisans would have been a common aspect of the battalion’s role? “
Anyone in civilian clothes caught with unouthorized weapons is in danger of being executed.  Notices to that effect are put up by all occupying forces , german,american,russian,yugoslavian, and so on.  And notices are also put up that occupants of homes where weapons are found, after two hours or so notice is given to give them up, face the danger of execution.

Would it be fair to say that russians shot captured soldiers in uniform, the murdered poles ?

Visu labu,

See post #6 of this thread.