Hebertshausen shooting range
The victims were “singled out” according to ideological and racist criteria by Gestapo Einsatzkommandos in the POW camps of the military districts of Munich, Nuremberg, Stuttgart, Wiesbaden and Salzburg.
[1][2] According to Colonel General Franz Halder, Chief of Staff of the German Army High Command, Germany’s military campaign against Russia aimed, among other things, at the “destruction of the Bolshevik commissars and the Communist intelligence.” Fearing that the Soviet POWs held in camps on German territory could infiltrate the local population and spread communist propaganda, the SS, rather than the Wehrmacht, assumed control of Soviet POWs, in defiance of international law.
9 states, among other things, that the executions of the Russians who have been singled out in POW camps on Reich territory were to be carried out “inconspicuously in the nearest concentration camp.”[5] The mass executions of Soviet POWs began in August and September 1941, after the Stapostelle Regensburg, among others, initiated the “selection” (Aussonderung) process in the weeks prior.
According to the instructions stipulated by the SS leadership in Dachau, the names of these POWs were not allowed to be registered in the camp list.
In total, approximately 4,000 Soviet POWs were executed in Dachau, the majority of them at the SS shooting range near Hebertshausen.
[9] Some showed practically no reaction and “stood there as if paralyzed; others resisted, began to cry and scream ... that they were opponents of Bolshevism, that they were members of the Russian Church.”[10] While executions are normally aimed at a victim’s chest, the SS in some cases aimed at the victims’ heads, causing the heads to practically “explode.”[8] Coffins that were used to transport the bodies were stored in a shed built on the eastern edge of the shooting range.
An investigation in the Anthropological State Collection in Munich by Olav Röhrer-Ertl then showed "that at least part of the shootings were carried out with increased cruelty.
"[11] The executions served as an education in cruelty for the SS-men as they witnessed and perpetrated “a tremendous bloodbath,” as the shots to the head sent blood and brain mass splashing for meters around.
In order to increase motivation, the SS leadership offered “rewards” consisting of special promotions, schnapps and cigarettes, snacks (Brotzeit), days off duty, medals (War Merit Cross Second Class, with swords), and for particularly dedicated SS-men, holidays in Italy.
During a visit to the memorial site of the former “SS-Schießplatz Hebertshausen,” he read on an information board that SS men involved in firing squads were able to go on holiday in Italy in the summer of 1942 as a “reward.” Interestingly, he stated in an interview that, he was not sure, but there exist photos of his father vacationing in Palermo and Naples.
As the research in the book published in 2020 shows, some of SS men were proud of their role in the mass murder of Soviet prisoners of war.
[14] Source:[8] According to the prevailing consensus of historical research, many Soviet POWs were not registered upon arrival in Dachau, especially in 1941/42, due to an ideological indifference to their fates or to the predetermined intention to exterminate them.
Historians Dr. Reinhard Otto and Rolf Keller succeeded in locating these card index documents; some fragments lie in the German Information Office (Deutsche Dienststelle) in Berlin, the successor of the WASt.
The great majority, however, lie in the archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation in Podolsk (ZAMO); Otto and Keller subjected these documents to an initial review over a period of several visits.
These documents were torn out of their original arrangement after the war and were arbitrarily bound together into new volumes of files, each containing approximately 100 index cards.
[8] The Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site estimates that between 1500 and 2000 names of victims who were murdered in Hebertshausen can be identified over the long term.
On January 16, 2014, the Russian newspaper “Komsomolskaya Pravda” published a list of 62 Soviet prisoners of war who were shot at the SS shooting range in Hebertshausen, a publication that generated a flood of feedback.
[6] For many years, this brutal crime was suppressed from public view due to the East-West conflict, the annexation of Crimea and the political tensions in relation to Putin's Russia.
On June 22, 2011 the human remains found during the excavations were buried in a small wooden box in front of the memorial stone, in a multi-religious celebration with prayers.
Annual memorial ceremonies take place at the site on the anniversary of Operation Barbarossa (June 22), the day Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941.
In addition, yearly ceremonies are held at the site to commemorate the anniversary of the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp (April 29).
