Raised in Hamburg, Battalion 101 was one of thirteen
police formations that were put at the disposal of the German army during
its invasion of Poland in
September 1939.
Members of the battalion crossed into Poland at the border town of Oppeln
and then moved through Czestochowa to Kielce, where they rounded-up
Polish soldiers and military equipment and guarded a POW camp. On December
13, the police battalion returned to Hamburg where many of its recruits
were transferred to other units and replaced by middle-aged reservists.
In May 1940,
the battalion was again dispatched to Poland where it was engaged throughout
the Wartegau (the districts of western Poland formally annexed by the
Third Reich) in the expulsion and resettlement of Poles, Gypsies and
Jews. It is estimated that close to 37,000 people were evacuated by
Police Battalion 101 alone in a five month period during the spring
and summer of 1940. Following the resettlement actions, the battalion
was involved in efforts to hunt down Poles who had evaded the evacuation
order.
On November 28, 1940 the police battalion was re-deployed to guard the perimeter of the Lodz
ghetto, which had been sealed seven months before. These policemen
had a standing order to shoot any Jew who came too close to the fence
that enclosed the ghetto.
In May 1941,
Police Battalion 101 was sent home to Hamburg, where it was totally
reconstituted. After most of its earlier recruits were distributed to
other police units, its ranks were filled with drafted reservists. While
most of its members still hailed from Hamburg, a group from Luxembourg
now joined its ranks. For the next twelve months the new battalion underwent
extensive training in and around Hamburg. This period coincided with
the deportation to eastern Europe of the Jewish population of Hamburg
and its environs in four transports that departed between October 25
and December 4, 1941.
Members of Police Battalion 101 were involved in several
aspects of the deportation process, including the guarding of the assembly
center (at the Freemason Lodge in Hamburg) and the Sternschanze train
station, where the Jews were boarded onto trains, and the escorting
of transports to their final destinations: Lodz, Minsk and Riga. In
June 1942, Police
Battalion 101 was sent back to Poland. Posted to the Lublin district,
the battalion arrived during a temporary lull in the mass deportations
of Jews to the three Operation
Reinhard killing centers of Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka.
For the next four weeks members of the battalion were deployed in rounding-up
Jews from smaller settlements and concentrating them in larger ghettos
and camps, particularly Izbica and Piaski, the two major assembly camps
in the southern Lublin district.
Beginning in mid-July 1942 with the round-up of Jews
in the town of Jozefow near Bilgoraj, members of Police Battalion 101
were utilized for the mass shooting of Jewish civilians in towns throughout
the Lublin district. These included (in addition to Jozefow) Lomazy
(August 1942), Miedzyrzec (August 1942), Serokomla (September 1942),
Kock (September 1942), Parczew (October 1942), Konskowola (October 1942),
Miedzyrzec (a second action in October 1942) and Lukow (November 1942).
Police Battalion 101's participation in the Final
Solution culminated in the Erntefest [Harvest Festival] massacre
of November 3-4, 1943. In the course of this killing action, perhaps
the largest directed against Jews of the entire war, an estimated 42,000
Jewish prisoners at the Lublin district concentration camps of Majdanek,
Trawniki and Poniatowa were wiped out. It is estimated that during the
period between July 1942 and November 1943,
Police Battalion 101 was alone responsible for the shooting deaths of
more than 38,000 Jews and the deportation of 45,000 others.
In the final sixteen months of the war Police Battalion
101 was engaged in actions against partisans and enemy troops. Almost all battalion members survived the collapse
of the Third Reich and returned safely to Germany. In the immediate
postwar period only four members of the unit suffered legal consequences
for their actions in Poland. These policemen, who were arrested for
their part in the killing of 78 Poles in the town of Talcyn, were extradited
to Poland in 1947 and tried the following year. Two were sentenced to
death and two to prison. It was not until 1962, however, that Reserve
Police Battalion 101 as a whole came under investigation and legal prosecution
by the Office of the State Prosecutor in Hamburg. In 1967 fourteen members
of the unit were put on trial. Though most were convicted, only five
received prison terms (ranging from five to eight years), which were
subsequently reduced in the course of a lengthy appeals process.
