Himmler Orders Liquidation of Ostland Ghettos
(June 21, 1943)
Field Command, June 21, 1943
Reichsfuehrer SS
Secret
To:
1. The Higher SS and Police Leader (Hoherer SS- und
Polizeifuehrer) Ostland
2. Chief of the SS Economic and Administrative Main
Office (Chef des SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamtes)1) I order that all Jews still remaining in ghettos in
the Ostland area be collected in concentration camps.2) I prohibit the withdrawal of Jews from concentration
camps for [outside] work from August 1, 1943.3) A concentration camp is to be built near Riga to
which will be transferred the entire manufacture of clothing and equipment
now operated by the Wehrmacht outside. All private firms will be
eliminated. The workshops are to be solely concentration camp workshops.
The Chief of the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office is requested to
see to it that there will be no shortfall in the production required by the
Wehrmacht as the result of this reorganization.4) Inmates of the Jewish ghettos who are not required
are to be evacuated to the East.5) As many male Jews as possible are to be taken to the
concentration camp in the oil-shale area for the mining of oil-shale.6) The date set for the reorganization of the
concentration camps is August 1, 1943.
signed H. Himmler
NO-2403.
Sources: Yad
Vashem
* Ostland was one of the two major
administrative units of the German civil administration in the occupied
territories of the Soviet Union, headed by Alfred Rosenberg, as Reich
Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories; the other was
Reichskommissariat Ukraine. Ostland included the three Baltic states --
Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia -- as well as western Belorussia and the
western Minsk district in Soviet Belorussia.
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