BRUNS: Six men with tommy-guns were posted at each pit; the pits were 24 m in length and 3 m in breadth—they had to lie down like sardines in a tin, with their heads in the centre. Above them were six men with tommy guns who gave them the coup de grâce. When I arrived those pits were so full that the living had to lie down on top of the dead; then they were shot and, in order to save room, they had to lie down neatly in layers. Before this, however, they were stripped of everything at one of the stations—here at the edge of the wood were the three pits they used that Sunday and here they stood in a queue 1½ km long which approached step by step—a queuing up for death. As they drew nearer they saw what was going on. About here they had to hand over their jewellery and suitcases. All good stuff was put into the suitcases and the remainder thrown on a heap. This was to serve as clothing for our suffering population—and then, a little further on they had to undress and, 500 m in front of the wood, strip completely; they were only permitted to keep on a chemise or knickers. They were all women and small two-year-old children. Then all those cynical remarks! If only I had seen those tommy-gunners, who were relieved every hour because of over-exertion, carry out their task with distaste, but no, nasty remarks like: “Here comes a Jewish beauty!” I can still see it all in my memory: A pretty woman in a flame-coloured chemise. Talk about keeping the race pure: at RIGA they first slept with them and then shot them to prevent them from talking.205
Major General Walter Bruns’s description contains a number of astonishing details, including the length of the line of people waiting to be put to death and the enormous number of individuals this entailed. Another significant fact concerns those doing the shooting. Together with the procedure of having the victims line up in rows, this detail confirms the serial, mechanistic character of the executions. 206 Finally, we should also take note of the reference to the sexual aspect of the “Jewish actions.”
Bruns describes the mass execution as a highly organized procedure utilizing division of labor. In the removal of the victims’ clothes and the shifts of the shooters, for example, the perpetrators had clearly come up with an arrangement that allowed the killings to proceed in orderly fashion. That had not been the case with the earliest executions. The event Bruns described was the result of a swift professionalization of killing. As historian Jürgen Matthäus has summarized, executions followed a standardized schema: “Jews were first rounded up in raids and taken in groups of various size to a more-or-less nearby firing range. Immediately upon their arrival they were made to dig a mass grave. Then they were forced to disrobe and line up in front of the pit so that the force of the bullets propelled their bodies into the grave. Those who followed were made to lie down on top of those who had already been killed before they themselves were shot. What the perpetrators like to portray as an ‘orderly’ execution process was in reality a bloodbath. Near larger cities, although it was officially prohibited, something approaching an ‘execution tourism’ arose. Various types of Germans, sometimes while on duty and sometimes in their own free time, would visit the firing ranges to watch or take pictures.”207
