The Einsatzgruppen: Operational Situation Report USSR No. 176

The Chief of the Security Police and Security Service

Berlin,
March 4, 1942

OPERATIONAL SITUATION REPORT USSR NO. 176

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Byelorussia

1) On the night of February 24/25, the Lithuanian guard posted near the Minsk waterworks was attacked and shot at by several partisans on skis. A search action against the partisans had no result.

2) During the last few days, telephone wires and cables belonging to the German Army were destroyed by partisan sabotage units.

3) The Jew Brasser was arrested on February 27 because he is highly suspect of being a spy. Brasser is one of the best known sculptors and painters in Russia and has worked for many political and military leaders in the Soviet Union. After the German occupation of Minsk, Brasser managed to gain access to almost all [German] units in Minsk. He made drawings of many officers and soldiers and thus succeeded in entering the private homes of offiecers and soldiers.

4) The arrest of two Russian Jews led to the disclosure of extensive bribery in the communal kitchen of Minsk run by the municipal administration for the Byelorussian population. Food that was to be distributed to the people was sold on the black market. About fifteen arrests are pending.

(The Einsatzgruppen Reports by Yitzak Arad, Shmuel Krakowski and Shmuel Spector, editors. p. 303)