Battalion 101 Trial Was Highly Informative

Actually, there were two RPB 101 trials – but he really informative was the second one, held in Hamburg (where the Battalion 101 was initially formed). It yielded two kinds of highly valuable information.

First, it exposed the contribution made by Order Police battalions to the “Holocaust Project” – which was enormous. Order Police (Ordnungspolizei or Orpo) was the uniformed police force in Nazi Germany from 1936 to 1945.

It was created in 1936 (right after Heinrich Himmler became Chief of German Police) out of Orpo in Weimar Republic, immediately integrated into the SS and grouped into battalions in 1939 – in anticipation of the invasion of Poland.

Reserve-Polizei-Battalion 101 (RPB 101) was formed in Hamburg and was deployed in September 1939 to occupied Poland. Following a personnel change and retraining from May 1941 until June 1942, it became a major perpetrator of the Holocaust in occupied Poland… just like other RPB pretty much everywhere.

After the commencement of Operation Barbarossa, Orpo joined Einsatzgruppen in the massacres of Jews. According to mainstream Holocaust statistics, the first mass-murder of 3,000 Jews by the Orpo occurred in Bia;ystok on July 12 1941.

It was followed by the Bloody Sunday massacre of 10,000–12,000 Jews by RPB 133, perpetrated in Stanis;aw;w (now Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine) on October 12, 1941 with the aid of Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo) and Ukrainian Auxiliary Police.

Thanks to revelations by Arthur Nebe (and to independent historians) we know that these numbers were inflated by a factor from 3 to 10… and that the much-publicized Babi Yar massacre (allegedly carried out by RPB 45) did not happen.

However, even if you divide the numbers above by five (the average “inflation rate” in Orpo reports), it was still a horrific serial mass murder that continued well into 1943 – even severely reduced death toll does not change a bit the essence of the Holocaust – or the scale of Orpo involvement in Shoah.

The Order Police battalions became indispensable in the implementation of the Final Solution. They rounded up tens of thousands of Nazi ghetto inmates for deportations to extermination camps during the “Holocaust by Gas” stage, and were heavily involved in the “Holocaust by Bullets”.

Battalion 101 committed serial mass murder of Jewish men, women, children and the elderly, most notably during the Aktion Erntefest of 1943, the largest German single massacre of Jews during the “Holocaust by Bullets”, with estimated 42,000 victims (it will be the largest even if you divide this number by three).

The first mass murder known to have been committed entirely by RPB 101 was the massacre of 1,500 Jews from J;zef;w “open” ghetto, approximately 100 km south of Lublin in south-eastern Poland, on July 13 1942.

This massacre proved beyond the reasonable doubt that all mass shootings in Orpo were strictly voluntary (Einsatzgruppen were a different matter entirely – they were composed of volunteers from the start).

Twelve out of 500 policemen opted out and were immediately transferred to non-shooting duties. As were those who asked for transfer after their first murders – being unable to continue shooting Jews begging for mercy point-blank. 1,800 Jews were shot (bodies were buried later by the locals).

The next ghetto liquidation action took place less than a month later in ;omazy lacking a rail line.[40] The infants, the old, and the infirm were shot by Battalion 101 during the early morning round-ups on 17 August 1942.

Later that day some 1,700 ghetto prisoners were marched on foot to the Ha;y forest outside the town, where the stronger Jewish men dug a trench with entrance on one side. The Jews were stripped naked and shot, the killings taking until 7:00 p.m.

Soon after the war ended, RPB 101 Commander Major Wilhelm Trapp was captured by the British authorities and placed at the Neuengamme Internment Camp. He was extradited to Poland along with four other RPB 101 officers. Trapp was charged with war crimes, sentenced to death on 6 July 1948 and executed by hanging on 18 December 1948 along with Gustav Drewes – his second-in-command.

In 1964 several RPB 101 men were arrested in West Germany. In 1968 after a two-year trial in Hamburg three men got eight years imprisonment, one six years and one five years. Six other policemen – all lower ranks – were found guilty but not sentenced. The rest lived their normal lives.

This trial was vitally important because it established the exact procedure followed by Orpo and Einsatzgruppen in “Holocaust by Bullets”. It proved beyond the reasonable doubt that it was physically impossible to shoot more than 150 victims an hour by a battalion-strong firing squad.

Which means that even if Babi Yar massacre took place (it didn’t) it was physically impossible to shoot more than 3,500 Jews in two days – let alone over 33,000. It does not mean that “Holocaust by Bullets” did not happen (it did); it only means that the number of victims was severely inflated – and some alleged massacres never happened at all. No surprise here – every homicide detective knows that everyone lies.