Jäger Report

The so-called Jäger Report was presumably authored in early December 1941 by Karl Jäger, then commander of Ein­satz­kom­man­do 3a of Ein­satz­grup­pe A. This unit operated mainly in Lithuania.

This document was allegedly discovered by the Soviets in Lithuania after the reconquest of Lithuania by the Red Army in 1944. For inscrutable reasons, they hushed up the existence of this document until 1963, when it was made available to the West-German Zentrale Stelle, the country’s central organization investigating National-Socialist crimes.

The document lists 95 executions of a total of 137,348 persons until late 1941, most of them Jews from Lithuania. However, most of the individual execution events mentioned cannot be found in Ein­satz­grup­pe A’s Event Reports (Ereignismeldungen, EM) of that time. In fact, the EMs “confirm” only eleven of these alleged executions with a total of some 2,900 victims, hence just over two percent. However, EM 8 of 30 June 1941 mentions “thousands” executed in Kaunas on 28 June, and EM 48 of 10 Aug. 1941 lists a total for Kaunas and Riga of 28,000 victims, without giving any specifics.

The following table contains the total number of victims listed in the Jäger Report for each location, in comparison to the number of victims found in the Event Reports of Ein­satz­grup­pe A.

Location	Victims	EM
Aglona	544	27
Alytus	2,231
Ariogala	700
Babtei (Babtai)	91
Butrimonys	740
Carliava	247
Cekiake	146
Dagda and Kraslawa	216
Darsuniskis	99
Daugavpils	9,606	1,150
Eysisky	3,446
Georgenburg	412
Girkalnis (Girkalinei)	6
Herkine	854
Jahiunai	575
Jasvainai	282
Jesuas	144
Jonava	2,108
Joniskis	355
Kaisiadorys	1,911
Kaunas, total, of which	23,205	209†
Fort IV	3,420
Fort VII	3,238
Fort IX	16,013
Kedainiai	2,201	93
Krakes	1,125
Lazdijai	1,535
Leipalingis	155
Mariampole	5,328	103
Nemencing	403
Novo-Vileyka	1,159
Obeliai	1,160
Panevezys	8,837	249
Pasyalis	1,349
Petrasiunai	125
Pleschnitza, Bicholin, Scak, Bober, Uzda	3,050
Pogrom	4,000
Pravenischkis	253
Prienai	1,078
Rasainiai District	3,603	254
Rieza	1,767
Rokiskis	99
Rumsiskes and Ziezmariai	784
Seduva	664
Seirijai	953
Semeliskes	962
Seredsius	193
Simnas	414
Svenciany	3,726
Trakai	1,446
Ukmerge	6,356	296
Utena and Moletai	4,609	251
Uzunalis	43
Vandziogala	305	15
Varena	831
Velinona	159
Vilnius	21,169	*
Wilkia	402
Wilkowiski	115
Zagare	2,236	250
Zapiskis	178
Zarasai	2,569
Totals	137,348	2,897
† Plus “thousands” on 28 June; total for Kaunas & Riga in EM 48 of 10 Aug. as 28,000. * A total of 2,231, but all at other (mostly later) dates.

In addition to this December Jäger Report, an earlier version of it also exists, which is dated 10 September 1941. It lists a total of 76,355 victims of executions, over 13,000 more than are listed in the December Jäger Report as of that date. An update requested on 6 February 1942 by the commander of the Security Police and Security Service in Kaunas lists a total of 138,272 victims, 136,421 of them Jews. If we follow Jäger, these massacres were committed by a squad of just 10-11 SS men from Ein­satz­kom­man­do 3 with the assistance of 50 to 100 Lithuanian collaborators.

The December Jäger Report has several odd features which make it suspicious:

• Although Jäger was to submit regular reports to his superior Stahlecker, the document in question has as its (rubber-stamped) letter head Stahl­ecker’s official position. However, there is neither an addressee or address on this report, nor a sender.
• If connecting on a map the claimed execution locations in chronological order, then a completely erratic pattern of chaos and disorganization emerges of a team going around in circles and crisscrossing Lithuania back and forth. Some listings even exclude one another chronologically.
• Some entries claim death tolls for single-day executions that are difficult to believe for a team of just some ten men plus auxiliaries:
  • 9,200 victims on 29 October 1941
  • 7,523 victims on 23 August
  • 5,090 victims on 1 September
  • 3,782 victims on 29 August.
• EM 88 of 19 September 1941 reports that Ein­satz­kom­man­do 3, together with their Lithuanian auxiliaries, had executed a total of 46,692 Jews. However, the Jäger Report reports 78,305 persons shot as of this date, which is 68% more.
• Although Jäger had reported Lithuania free of Jews in his report, except for some 35,000 “labor Jews and their families,” later data show that there were more Jews alive in these areas than the Jäger Reports would have us believe.
• The Jäger Report mentions the wholesale slaughter of some 5,000 Jews deported from Germany to Kaunas (at Fort IX) in five deportation trains in November 1941. However, numerous other German wartime documents, among them also EMs, clearly demonstrate that these Jews were accommodated in camps and ghettos, and deployed at forced labor wherever possible.

On the corroborative side, a letter written by the medical examiner of Trakai County to the district commissar Vilnius dated 8 July 1942 lists mass graves in that area, including their size. With a few exceptions, their location and size by and large agree with the number of executions mentioned in the Jäger Report for these locations – provided that these mass graves indeed contain executed Jews, which the letter does not mention.

Hence, if this Jäger Report is a genuine document – and this is highly dubious – its claims are questionable, to say the least. Ultimate certainty about the veracity of claims made in this document could be gained only with thorough forensic examinations of mass grave located at the claimed locations. However, considering the present zeitgeist of accepting any atrocity claim against German wartime units at face value, such investigations seem highly unlikely.

(For more general information, see the entries on the Ein­satz­grup­pen and on Aktion 1005; for more details, see Mattogno 2022c, pp. 198-242, 641-646.)