6. Fundamental Questions
6.1. Regarding the Number of Victims
The 'precise' figure of 33,771 murdered Jews stems from Event Report 106 of October 7, 1941.[3] In the following, we shall just briefly show why even the very few figures given in Event Report 106 prove that what we have here are clumsy fabrications. Other evidence for the fabrication has been provided by Walendy,[24] among others.
One must assume that the destruction of the Jews was led by German experts. Wiehn[7] emphasizes that the Einsatzkommandos were headed by intellectuals (p. 17). But it is an unforgivable mistake for experts to claim that there were about 300,000 Jews in Kyiv, especially two-and-a-half weeks after that city had been occupied, by which time there would have been a relatively reliable overview of the situation.
140,256 Jews lived in Kyiv in 1928-1931.[102] It was a known fact that prior to the Second World War the Jewish population of the Ukraine had dropped by about one-third due to emigration to the less anti-Semitic northern and eastern regions of the Soviet Union;[103] this rate was a little lower for Kyiv due to the urbanization of the Jews. And it was also a known fact that the population of Kyiv had shrunk from some 850,000 - 930,000 persons to about 305,000 due to evacuations.[104],[105] So if there had still been 300,000 Jews in Kyiv on about October 7, then these 'experts' would have found practically no one in Kyiv who was not Jewish - and it would not have taken experts to notice that.
Thus the 'non-Jewish population of Kyiv' which Event Report 106 mentions and which expected the German authorities to take retaliatory measures due to the arson perpetrated by the Jews, would have consisted almost entirely of ghosts. And the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust,[5] too, would have been conjuring up ghosts in speaking of non-Jewish sectors of the Kyiv population that helped the Jews to hide, or that wrote denunciatory letters by the laundry-basketfull.
The literature[31],[54]-[58] shows that fewer than 40,000 Jews, most primarily the elderly, remained in Kyiv by the time the German troops arrived.
Reitlinger[106] states that in early 1946, at a time when the great remigration of deportees and evacuees from Siberia had only just begun, there were already 100,000 Jews in Kyiv again. In 1959 there were 154,000.[107] Wiehn states that in 1959 15% of the inhabitants of Kyiv, i.e., about 166,500, reported Yiddish as their mother tongue.[108] Added to this there is a significant unreported number, for the Russian census did not check the information regarding religion or ethnic origin and many Russian Jews preferred, and continue to prefer, to conceal their ethnicity. Furthermore, many were left out of the group at issue due to mixed marriages. One can thus safely assume that at least as many Jews lived in Kyiv in 1959 as had lived there in 1939. And finally, it is beyond dispute that a great many Jews died in the camps in Siberia, and that the birth rate was also noticeably below normal.
What would an unbiased court do when the numbers of alleged victims in a crime under investigation diverge this dramatically?
6.2. Regarding the Time of the Murder
According to the Brockhaus Enzyklopadie[109] the 'order for the final solution of the Jewish question' was issued on July 31, 1941 (Nuremberg Trial Document NG 2586e), and was announced on the occasion of the 'Wannsee Conference' (January 20, 1942).[110]
Quite aside from the fact that historians and other interested persons are still searching in vain for this order for mass extermination, it is more than odd that many tens of thousands would have been slaughtered in Babi Yar before the order was even made known. Therefore, let us take a closer look at the relevant documentation.
In the January 26, 1942, letter from the Chief of the Security Police and the Security Service (Heydrich) to Under Secretary of State Luther in the Foreign Office, we read:
'Now that the fundamental line to be taken with regard to the practical final solution of the Jewish question has been determined and the authorities involved are in complete agreement, I would ask you [...]'
and farther down:
'[...] to assign your official in charge of completing the outline requested by the Reich Marshal, in which the organizational, factual and material prerequisites for the practical implementation of the tasks involved in the solution are to be identified, to the required discussions of specific details. I intend to hold the first discussion of this kind on March 6, 1942 [...].'
In other words, considerations of all the organizational, factual and material prerequisites for a practical implementation of the tasks involved in the solution were not even begun until about mid-March 1942. Heydrich announced his appointment as delegate for the preparations for the Final Solution. This further confirms our earlier arguments.
Fundamental questions were to be settled. It is a big step from settling fundamental questions to planning details, and another step to implementing detailed plans. Heydrich mentioned retrospectively: 'forcing [the Jews] back, speeding up [their] emigration', and:
'The goal was to cleanse the German sphere of Jews in a lawful manner. After prior approval by the Fuhrer, the evacuation of the Jews eastward has replaced emigration as a further possible solution.' (Emphasis added.)
How likely are mass murders months before the prior approval of the victims' evacuation? Part of the purpose of the evacuation was also to gain experience 'relating to the coming final solution of the Jewish question.' So, there was not even an overall concept at that time.
To deal with the final solution (which the document shows to be, at this point, evacuation and the use of Jews as labor force), consultations between experts from the Foreign Office, the Security Police and the Security Service are suggested. Again there is nothing definite.
This gives rise to a pressing question: On whose orders were the '33,771 murders' committed on September 29 and 30, 1941, four months before the Wannsee Conference was convened and easily five months before the disputed Wannsee Conference Protocol copies finally reached the participants? Surely mass murder without backing from higher-up is anything but likely. All the more so, considering that even later on, i.e., after the Wannsee Conference, a good number of concentration camp commandants were convicted by Hitler's justice system, some of them even executed, for cruelty and other irregularities.[111]
So when did the murders really take place?
6.3. Regarding the Site of the Crime
Where was the crime committed?
• In the cemetery, beside the cemetery, in a forest and if so, in which one?
• At the edge of the ravine, in the ravine, and in which ravine anyhow?
• In a brickworks, in Kyiv, in gas vans, or perhaps even in the Dnjepr River?
