1 SS Infantry Brigade - War Crimes

War Crimes

The brigade took an active part in the killing of the Jewish population assisting the Einsatzgruppen, in the town of Ushomir where it took part in the killing of all male Jews.

Untersturmführer Max Täubner commanded a workshop detail in the brigade and was tried by an SS court in May 1943, along with four other Waffen-SS men, for unauthorized and sadistic killings of a large number of Jews in 1941 and for taking photos of the killings showing them to wife and friends. In the indictment the SS court states "The accused allowed his men to act with such vicious brutality that they conducted themselves under his command like a savage horde". The case was dismissed by the judge Standartenführer Dr. Reinecke. The photos and negatives were later ordered to be destroyed.

In another version of this trial cited in Taubner is convicted of disregarding secrecy provisions surrounding the exterminations, expelled from the SS, deprived of his civil rights and sentenced to ten years imprisonment, for behavior that was "unworthy of an honorable and decent German man."

Vasyl Valdeman, a Jewish resident of Ostroh reported: "We knew something would be done to us here. When we saw people hit and driven along here with spades, even small children realised why people were carrying the spades. One of the members of the 1st SS Infantry Brigade at the time was Hans Friedrich. He claims not to recall exactly which actions he took part in that summer, but he does admit to participating in killings like the one in Ostrog. "They were so utterly shocked and timid, you could do with them what you wanted.'"

Vasyl Valdeman: "Kids were crying, the sick were crying, the elderly were praying to God. Not on their knees but seated or lying down. It was very tough to go through it all, hearing all this wailing and crying. Then they had everyone get up and said 'Go', and as soon as people started moving, they selected people for shooting, for execution." The selected Ukrainian Jews were taken out to this spot and a pit was dug. In scenes which were repeated right across the areas of the Soviet Union occupied by the Nazis, men, women and children were ordered to strip and prepare to die. The killings went on into the evening. Vasyl Valdeman and his mother managed to escape and hide in a nearby village. But the SS killed his father, grandfather and two uncles.

Vasyl Valdeman: "That's how it was—the first execution—the most horrible one. It wasn't the last one. There were three more large executions after that with 2000 to 3000 people shot at every one of them. More people were executed afterwards in smaller scale ones and this is how the Jewish community of Ostrog was annihilated."