By late January 1942, virtually all of the 950 to 1,000 Estonian Jews unable to escape Estonia before its occupation by Nazi Germany (25% of the total prewar Jewish population) were killed in the Holocaust by German units such as Einsatzgruppe A and/or local collaborators. The Romani people in Estonia were also killed or enslaved by Nazi occupiers and their collaborators.
The occupation authorities also killed around 6,000 ethnic Estonians and 1,000 ethnic Russians in Estonia, often claiming that they were Communists or Communist sympathizers, a categorization that also included relatives of alleged Communists. In addition around 15,000 Soviet prisoners-of-war and Jews from other parts of Europe were killed in Estonia during the German occupation.
Before the Holocaust
Prior to World War II, Jewish life flourished in Estonia with significant autonomy, allowing the local Jewish population to have full self-determination of education and other aspects of cultural life. In 1936, the British-based Jewish newspaper The Jewish Chronicle reported that "Estonia is the only country in Eastern Europe where ... Jews are left in peace and are allowed to lead a free and unmolested life and fashion it in accord with their national and cultural principles."
Murders of Jews Round-ups and killings of the remaining Jews began immediately; the first stage of Generalplan Ost required the "removal" of 50% of Estonians. The killings were undertaken by the extermination squad Einsatzkommando 1A (Sonderkommando) under Martin Sandberger, part of Einsatzgruppe A led by Walter Stahlecker, following the arrival of the first German troops on July 7, 1941. Arrests and executions continued as the Germans, with the assistance of local collaborators, advanced through Estonia, which became part of the Reichskommissariat Ostland. The Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police) was established for internal security under Ain-Ervin Mere in 1942. Estonia was declared Judenfrei quite early by the German occupation regime, at the Wannsee Conference.Museum of Tolerance Multimedia Learning Center The Jews who remained in Estonia (929 according to the most recent calculation) were murdered. Fewer than a dozen Estonian Jews are known to have survived the war in Estonia.
German policy toward the Jews in Estonia The Estonian state archives contain death certificates and lists of Jews executed dated July, August, and early September 1941. For example, the official death certificate of Rubin Teitelbaum, born in Tapa on January 17, 1907, states laconically in a form with item 7 already printed with only the date left blank: "7. By a decision of the Sicherheitspolizei on September 4, 1941, condemned to death, with the decision being carried out the same day in Tallinn." Teitelbaum's crime was "being a Jew" and thus constituting a "threat to the public order".
On September 11, 1941 an article entitled "Juuditäht seljal" – "A Jewish Star on the Back" appeared in the Estonian mass-circulation newspaper Postimees. It stated that Otto-Heinrich Drechsler, the High Commissioner of Ostland, had issued ordinances requiring all Jewish residents of Ostland from that day on to wear a visible yellow six-pointed Star of David at least . in diameter on the left side of their chest and back.
On the same day regulationsERA.F.R-89.N.1.S.1.L.2 issued by the Sicherheitspolizei were delivered to all local police departments proclaiming that the Nuremberg Laws were in force in Ostland, defining who is a Jew, and what Jews could and could not do. Jews were prohibited from changing their place of residence, walking on the sidewalk, using any means of transportation, going to theatres, museums, cinema, or school. The professions of lawyer, physician, notary, banker, or real estate agent were declared closed to Jews, as was the occupation of street hawker. The regulations also declared that the property and homes of Jewish residents would be confiscated. The regulations emphasized that work to this end was to begin as soon as possible, and that police were to compile lists of Jews, their addresses, and their property by September 20, 1941.
The regulations also provided for the establishment of a concentration camp near the south-eastern Estonian city of Tartu. A later decision provided for the construction of a Jewish ghetto near the town of Harku, but this was never built. A small concentration camp was built there instead. The national archives contain material pertinent to the cases of about 450 Estonian Jews. They were typically arrested at home or in the street, taken to the local police station, and charged with the 'crime' of being Jews. They were either shot outright or sent to concentration camps and shot later. An Estonian woman, described the arrest of her Jewish husband:Quoted in Eugenia_Gurin-Loov, Holocaust of Estonian Jews 1941, Eesti Juudi Kogukond, Tallinn 1994: pg. 224
Foreign Jews The Nazis intended mass genocide after the German invasion of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Jews from countries outside the Baltics were deported there to be killed.The Holocaust in the Baltics at University of Washington An estimated 10,000 Jews were killed in Estonia after having been deported to camps there from elsewhere in eastern Europe. The Nazi regime established 22 Nazi concentration camps in occupied Estonian territory for foreign Jews, where they were slave labor. The largest, Vaivara concentration camp, served as a transit camp and processed 20,000 Jews from Latvia and the Lithuanian ghettos. Usually able-bodied men were selected to work in the oil shale mines in northeastern Estonia. Women, children, and old people were killed on arrival.
At least two trainloads of Central European Jews were deported to Estonia and were killed on arrival at the Kalevi-Liiva site near Jägala concentration camp.
Murder of foreign Jews at Kalevi-Liiva
According to testimony of the survivors, at least two transports with about 2,100–2,150 Central European Jews, arrived at the railway station at Raasiku, one from Theresienstadt (Terezín) with Czechoslovak Jews and one from Berlin with German citizens. Around 1,700–1,750 people were immediately taken to an execution site at the Kalevi-Liiva sand dunes and shot. About 450 people were selected for work at the Jägala concentration camp.
Transport Be 1.9.1942 from Theresienstadt arrived at the Raasiku station on September 5, 1942, after a five-day trip.De dödsdömda vittnar (Transport Be 1.9.1942 ) According to testimony given to Soviet authorities by Ralf Gerrets, one of the accused at the 1961 war crimes trials in USSR, eight busloads of Estonian auxiliary police had arrived from Tallinn. The selection process was supervised by Ain-Ervin Mere, chief of Security Police in Estonia; those transportees not selected for slave labor were sent by bus to a killing site near the camp. Later the police, in teams of 6 to 8 men, killed the Jews by machine gun fire. During later investigations, however, some guards of camp denied the participation of police and said that executions were done by camp personnel. On the first day, a total of 900 people were murdered in this way. Gerrets testifies that he had fired a pistol at a victim who was still making noises in the pile of bodies. The whole operation was directed by SS commanders Heinrich Bergmann and Julius Geese.Jägala laager ja juutide hukkamine Kalevi-Liival – Eesti Päevaleht March 30, 2006 Few witnesses pointed out Heinrich Bergmann as the key figure behind the extermination of Estonian gypsies. In the case of Be 1.9.1942, the only ones chosen for labor and to survive the war were a small group of young women who were taken through a series of concentration camps in Estonia, Poland and Germany to Bergen-Belsen, where they were liberated. Camp commandant Laak used the women as sex slaves, killing many after they had outlived their usefulness.Omakaitse omakohus – JERUUSALEMMA SÕNUMID
A number of foreign witnesses were heard at the post-war trials in Soviet-occupied Estonia, including five women who had been transported on Be 1.9.1942 from Theresienstadt. According to witness testimony, the accused Mere, Gerrets and Viik actively participated in mass killings and other crimes that were perpetrated by the Nazi invaders in Estonia. In accordance with the Nazi racial theory, the Sicherheitspolizei and Sicherheitsdienst were instructed to exterminate the Jews and Gypsies. To that end, during August and September of 1941, Mere and his collaborators set up a death camp at Jägala, from Tallinn. Mere put Aleksander Laak in charge of the camp; Ralf Gerrets was appointed his deputy. On 5 September 1942, a train with approximately 1,500 Czechoslovak citizens arrived at the Raasiku railway station. Mere, Laak and Gerrets personally selected who of them should be executed and who should be moved to the Jägala death camp. More than 1,000 people, mostly children, the old, and the infirm, were transported to a wasteland at Kalevi-Liiva, where they were executed in a special pit. In mid-September, the second troop train with 1,500 prisoners arrived at the railway station from Germany. Mere, Laak, and Gerrets selected another thousand victims, who were then condemned by them to extermination. This group of prisoners, which included nursing women and their newborn babies, were transported to Kalevi-Liiva where they were killed. In March 1943, the personnel of the Kalevi-Liiva camp executed about fifty Romani people, half of whom were under 5 years of age. Also were executed 60 Roma children of school age...
Romani people Estimates of Estonian Roma victims vary around 1000, although some estimate the number as being over 2000. A number of adolescent Roma boys were also kept in a special facility for young criminals in Laitse, together with young people of other nationalities. Some of them were among the people who were compensated for their sufferings by the EVZ. A few witnesses pointed out Heinrich Bergmann as the key figure behind the extermination of Estonian Roma people.
Estonian collaboration
Units of the Eesti Omakaitse (Estonian Home Guard; approximately 1000 to 1200 men) were directly involved in criminal acts, taking part in the round-up of 200 Roma people and 950 Jews.
Even during the preparatory phase of Operation Barbarossa, the military intelligence and security services of the Third Reich had been in contact with some members of the former Kaitseliit in order to gather information about the Red Army's armed forces, the mood of the population, and “potential” enemy elements. For the members of the former paramilitary organizations of the Baltic states, the armed forces of the Third Reich were an important potential ally in the fight against the Soviet occupying power. In the wake of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, German diplomats negotiated the “Rücksiedlung” of Baltic Germans “Heim ins Reich”, resulting in 61,858 Balts moving to the German Reich in early December 1939. Around 17,100 followed in 1941 during the “Nachrücksiedlung,” whereby, due to their experience with the Soviets, many Estonian military personnel and civil servants also attempted to declare themselves ethnic Germans and flee Estonia. Due to their coveted local knowledge the resettlers were courted and recruited in Germany by Heinrich Himmler's Schutzstaffel (SS), Reinhard Heydrich's rapidly growing military wing of the SS, the Waffen-SS, and intelligence services such as the Wehrmacht's Abwehr.