The Police and the Holocaust
Very few people know that on 13 July 1942, German policemen executed some 1,500 Jews in a forest near the Polish town of Józefów, Biłgoraj County, and that German law enforcement officers were directly responsible for murdering at least 600,000 Jews throughout Europe.
Even now, almost eighty years since the end of the Second World War, the role of the police in the Holocaust remains unknown to most. While the horrors of Auschwitz-Birkenau have become a symbol of the Holocaust worldwide, few people know that of the 6 million Jewish victims, about half were shot dead outside the camps. In this ‘Holocaust by bullets’, police officers from Germany and Austria played a central role. Every tenth Holocaust victim was shot dead by a police officer of the German Reich.
These officers were also essential for implementing the deportations and guarding the Jewish ghettos across Nazi-occupied Europe. The policemen on the ground acted as agents of the state’s executive power. After the war, their misdeeds were largely left unprosecuted. With this project, we’re looking at the biographies of the involved police officers and the decisions they made on the job—as well as the life stories of those they persecuted and murdered.
We’ll visit the historical sites where they planned and executed their actions, while also discussing how and within what framework they became facilitators and perpetrators of the Holocaust.
The ‘Police and the Holocaust’ project offers twenty-five law enforcement officers from Germany and Austria a face-to-face look at the history of their profession during the Nazi period. They will participate in discussions on the importance of remembering this history, not only for society at large and for today’s police work, but also for the personal sensibilities of individual police officers.
After the first workshop in October 2024 in Münster and Westerbork, the second workshop took place in January 2025 in Vienna. At these sites of planning and coordination in Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands, we looked closely at the role of the Reich’s police in persecuting Jews.
In May 2025, we’ll travel to what is now Poland and visit various sites of Holocaust atrocity and remembrance in order to examine the crimes committed by the police at the time.
Three additional project modules are geared towards the multipliers and decision makers who are now shaping policy and training within Germany’s and Austria’s police departments. At gatherings in Germany and Austria, we will present this project to policymakers and police representatives in order to discuss its approach and results.
On the afternoon of 5 June 2025, we’ll hold an information session in Berlin as well. Further information will follow. If you’re interested in the event, please do contact us.
On Thursday, 12 June 2025, we will meet with interested parties in Vienna to discuss all aspects of the training project. Further information will follow. If you’re interested in the event, please do contact us.
The project’s final event will be an international conference at the Villa ten Hompel in Münster from 17 to 19 September 2025. This will be an opportunity to connect police training professionals with memorial institution representatives from multiple countries, and for all of us to discuss the importance of Holocaust awareness in the context of today’s police work.
The project is financed with funding from the EU Commission.
If you’d like to know more, please do get in touch: ba.raoatkhlz@.scernthdemarteiw
