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Erich Karrasch (married with 3 children) was an NCO in Polizei Btl 303 which he had joined on 9th September 1940 at a time when it was stationed in the Generalgouvernement. Two days after the start of Operation Barbarossa Polizei Btl 303 was sent to Russia as part of Polizei Regiment Sud (the other two battalion’s in this regiment were Pol.Btls. 45 & 314). Polizei Regiment Sud was assigned to Einsatzgruppen C and participated in the numerous Aktions against the Jewish populations of the newly conquered lands.
Reports show:
25 August: Pol.Rgt Sud shot 1,324 Jews
27 August: Pol.Rgt Sud shot 1,463 Jews
…and so on through the remainder of August & September including shooting 3,145 Jews at Zhitomir on 19th September. However it was on the dates of 29 & 30th September that Pol.Rgt Sud firmly placed its name in the history of the Holocaust with the massacre of over 33,000 Jews at Babi Yar, an Aktion that Erich Karrasch took part in.
As well as the Dienstpass there are a few slips of paper that list the Aktions Erich Karrasch participated in as a member of Pol.Btl 303/Pol.Rgt Sud with the relevant unit stamp and signature.
Babi Yar: The decision to exterminate the Jews of Kiev was made on September 26, in retaliation for guerrilla attacks against German troops, by the military governor, Generalmajor Friedrich-Georg Eberhardt and SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln, the SS and Police Leader at Rear Headquarters Army Group South. Einsatzgruppen C carried out the Babi Yar massacre and a number of other mass atrocities in Ukraine during the summer and fall of 1941. Its commander SS-Brigadefuhrer Dr. Otto Rasch and the officer commanding Sonderkommando 4a, SS-Standartenfuhrer Paul Blobel were at the September 26 meeting as well.
The following is taken from Masters Of Death: The SS Einsatzgruppen by Richard Rhodes (ISBN: 1-903985-56-0) (Pages 174-178):
Jeckeln had planned the Babi Yar Aktion along the same basic lines as the Kamenets-Podolsky massacre. When the first Jews approached the Jewish cemetery on the morning of 29th September 1941, Sonderkommando 4a, two commandos of Polizei Rgt Sud [Polizei Btl’s 45 & 303] and Ukrainian militia were waiting for them.
Testimony from a truck driver (name of Hoefer):
“Once undressed, the Jews were led into Babi Yar. Two or three narrow entrances led to this ravine through which the Jews were channelled. When they reached the bottom of the ravine they were seized by members of the Schutzpolizei [the Polizei Btl’s] and made to lie down on top of Jews who had already been shot. This all happened very quickly. The corpses were literally in layers. A police marksman came along and shot each Jew in the neck with a submachine gun at the spot where he was lying….There was a ‘packer’ at either entrance to the ravine. These ‘packers’ were Schutzpolizisten whose job it was to lay the victim on top of the other corpses so that al the marksman had to do as he passed was fire a shot.”
An Einsatzgruppen report on 2nd October 1941 summarized the Babi Yar Aktion brazenly, not even bothering to justify it as retaliation [for the recent explosions in Kiev after German forces had occupied the city]:
Sonderkommando 4a in collaboration with the group staff and two commandos of Police Regiment South on 29th & 30th September 1941 executed 33,771 Jews in Kiev.
The first two signatures on the units page and on various other pages belongs to the Kompaniefuhrer during the time of Babi Yar, Oswald Altendorf
