Operation Hornung - The Operation

The Operation

The preamble of Operation Hornung was the destruction of the Słuck ghetto on February 8, 1943 by the almost completely employed unit of the commander of security police and SD Minsk with the help of several other police units. They murdered more than 3,000 people there. Within the following week, the area of the operation was concentrically crossed by 13 battalions and numerous smaller units of the participating forces in five combat groups. The population, which was to be murdered at the end of the operation, was pacified with the assurance that only actual partisans were being targeted. But there was hardly any fighting. On February 14/15, the tactic was changed, as had been established already before the operation, and the last and in this case longest phase began. The wounded Oskar Dirlewanger was replaced by Franz Magill, the deputy commander of Special Battalion Dirlewanger, who issued the following order:

The battalion is to again comb through the combat zone of February 15 to February 17 up to the line Starobin-Powarczycze. Everything that may give shelter or protection is to be destroyed. The area is to become no mans land. All inhabitants are to be shot. Cattle, grain and other products are to be taken and delivered to Starobin. The Russian company is to go back into the combat zone and destroy everything and lead the cattle out in a northerly direction. The sled column is to be kept so far from the location to be destroyed that the civilian drivers are not present at the executions.

Combat Group Binz of Police Regiment 23 (SS-Polizei Regiment 23) issued the following radio message:

The radical destruction of all buildings, even the smallest and most remote and the destruction of all persons not required to drive cattle or collect agricultural products where possible (flachs); the area is to become no mans land. The commander of combat group north takes complete responsibility for this.

The order had not been issued by a major of the Schutzpolizei, (gendarmerie), Siegfried Binz, however, but at a higher level. At first there had been a total collection of agricultural products for the final phase of the operation, which boded no good for the population. All participating combat groups in the operation area adopted this procedure, not only Combat Group Binz. Last but not least, Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, according to his own statements, arrived at the (Headquarters of?) Combat Group Staff von Gottberg on February 15 probably a day earlier, and thus in time to give the order himself or at least be present when it was issued. Until then, apart from the Jews of Słuck, 2,483 people had been killed. This was also one of the first operations in which the SS-Special Battalion Dirlewanger took part since Bach-Zelewski had put it at von Gottberg's disposal. Its deputy commander, Magill, was head of SS for special tasks at Bach-Zelewski's staff and had been specifically detached to von Gottberg. Magill thus had the chance to continue in this region what he had already begun with the SS Cavalry Regiment 2 in 1941. Other units taking part in Operation Hornung included a detachment of Einsatzgruppe B with the collaboration of the Rodianov battalion, which in turn came from the rear area of Army Group Centre and was noted for its brutality. The contemporary Wehrmacht commander in White Ruthenia, Bronislaw Pawel, stated that the immediate direction of the operation had been carried out by von Gottberg but that the overall direction had resided with Bach-Zelewski.