Sabina Spielrein, Harry Freud, etc

[EtienneSC]

I have been reading E. Michael Jones's book Degenerate Moderns (Fidelity, 2012). In one chapter, he discusses psychoanalysis and introduces the character of Sabina Spielrein, the patient and (alleged) lover of Carl Jung. I find the following holocaust-related passage:

"Spielrein eventually returned to Russia, where she practiced psychotherapy until Nazi troops entered Rostov and rounded up that city's Jews. She was shot in the fall of 1941 along with her two daughters." (page 155)

He doesn't say by whom or for what reason, but it doesn't look good. Jones later wrote a book on "The Williamson Affair" (currently banned from Amazon, along with his other books) and is not anti-German. In his earlier works in particular, he evokes the Third Reich as a symbol of evil, as in the above passage. He occasionally makes factual errors, probably through writing from memory, relying on secondary sources, or rounding matters out for the sake of a story. Generally he is accurate though. He does not give a reference for this passage.

Would anyone know about Sabina Spielrein or Rostov in 1941?

Incidentally, I came across an indication of possible falsification of documents relating to Nazism and psychoanalysis in another book, The Escape of Sigmund Freud, by David Cohen (JR Books, 2009). Cohen writes of Harry Freud, a relative who had raised a court case to recover Freud family documents after the war from a trustee, Sauerwald:

"At the end of October 1945, at Harry Freud's insistence, Sauerwald was arrested. [.....] This completely normal man was charged with war crimes.

When the proceedings started, the court had asked Sauerwald whether he pleaded guilty or not guilty. "Not guilty" Sauerwald had replied. Over the next 18 months, he protested his innocence in many statements provided for the court, insisting that it was incredible he should be so charged.

Harry Freud had excellent reasons to press for the arrest of Sauerwald. But Harry tended to be flamboyant. He managed to get hold of some of Adolf Hitler's personal notepaper, for example, and wrote a note on it to the Freud's housekeeper, Paula Fichl - not that he said anything of importance in it. Paula, who revered the Freuds, said that Harry was the only member of the family who was not really clever." (pages 2-4)

Harry Freud was an American officer and well- connected with the American authorities and psychological warfare theorists of the time, e.g. Edward Bernays.

[EtienneSC]

With 350 reads of this thread and no responses, I might as well try to answer my own questions about the fate of Sabina Spielrein and her two daughters. The basic facts per Wikipedia and other sources (listed below) are as follows:

Sabina Spielrein (1885-1942) is said on Wikipedia (accessed 04/24/2021) to have died on 12 August 1942. She was from a well-connected Russian-Jewish family, spoke German, French and Russian and had an interesting life as a psychotherapist in Switzerland, Germany and Russia. However, I am here looking into the circumstances of her death. Wikipedia says;

"Spielrein and her daughters survived the first German invasion of Rostov-on-Don in November 1941, which was repelled by the Red Army. However, in July 1942, the German army reoccupied the city. Spielrein and her two daughters, aged 29 and 16, were shot dead by an SS death squad, Einsatzgruppe D, in Zmievskaya Balka, or "Snake Ravine" near Rostov-on-Don, together with 27,000 mostly Jewish victims. Although most of the members of the Spielrein family were killed in the Holocaust, the wives and children of her brothers all survived, and there are currently around 14 of their descendants living in Russia, Canada, the United States and Israel."

Firstly, Jones (cited in the post above) is thus wrong to say that she died in the Fall of 1941. The sources given for the above extract are a book, a lecture, two documents deposited with Yad Vashem and a defunct website, as follows:

1. Sabina Richebächer, Eine fast grausame Liebe zur Wissenschaft. ("An almost gruesome love for science".Munich: BTB, 2008), pages 294-302.
2. John Launer. Sex versus Survival (Bloomsbury, 2014). This is a talk available here: http://thefreudmuseum.podbean.com/e/sex-versus-survival-the-life-and-ideas-of-sabina-spielrein/
3. The testimonies of a friend and a cousin held in Yad Vashen: https://namesfs.yadvashem.org/YADVASHEM ... 13/178.jpg (Hebrew and Russian). https://namesfs.yadvashem.org/YADVASHEM ... /26185.jpg (Hebrew). Yad Vashem gives the friend's and cousin's names as Valeria Elvova and Anna Kojanin. Her surname is also written "Shpilrain" and she is described as "murdered". I don't see any reference to daughters in the Yad Vashem records, though this may be for reasons of language.
4. A defunct website http://www.rememberingrostov.com.

A Russian website (auto-translated) says:

Spielrein did not believe in the atrocities of the Nazis. In terms of mind and character, she was always a bit "out of this world." She was persuaded to run. But she refused and told her niece that rumors of Nazi atrocities were exaggerated by propaganda. She was still working as a doctor, and her daughters were working as hard as they could with music. During the second occupation of the city on July 27, 1942, the Nazis began the mind-blowing mass executions of tens of thousands of Jews. This conveyor of death worked until February 14, 1943. Sabina and her daughters were last seen in the summer of 1942 in a column of Jews destined for extermination, which was driven into the Smeyow beam.

See: https://web.archive.org/web/20070123205842/http://psychoanalyse.narod.ru/spielrein/spielbio.htm
This suggests that the date of death is uncertain. One daughter was called Renata (born 1913), another Eva (born on or after 1924). The article confirms that the family was very well-connected, but this meant that they ran into danger from Soviet authorities. Another website says:

During the 1930s, Spielrein's husband died and her three brothers, Isaak, Emil and Jean, were all killed during Stalin's reign of terror. In 1942, Sabina and her two daughters were murdered by a German death squad along with thousands of other citizens of Rostov-on-Don.

See: https://www.verywellmind.com/sabina-spielrein-1895-1942-2795521
Her diary and papers survive and there have been a number of writings about her, and a film, "A Dangerous Method" (2011), based on a book by John Kerr (1993). There is an active Spielrein Association with a website.

As we now have a revisionist book about the Einsatzgruppen (Castle Hill, 2018) by Carlo Mattogno, I will try to post a follow-up on his account of Einsatzgruppen D in Rostov-on-Don, in relation to Spielrein and her family.

[EtienneSC]

There are a number of sources that shed light on events in Rostov-on-Don around the time of Sabina Spielrein's disappearance in 1942. As she had a public reputation, it seems unlikely that she would simply have lived on and faded from the public eye. However, I will need to check her biography for primary documentation. There has been occasional mention of Rostov-on-Don on CODOH forum, but no systematic treatment. I will leave it to others to decide whether it deserves its own thread.

Rostov-on-Don
Rostov-on-Don is - as the name suggests - is a city on the river Don in south Russia east of Ukraine. The river flows into the sea of Azov that adjoins the Black Sea:

Volgograd on the map is the current name for Stalingrad. Rostov-on-Don grew from a population of around 120,000 at the end of the nineteenth century to over 500,000 by the 1950s. It was a port city that attracted industry and had a Russian, Armenian and Jewish population. Many Jews seem to have arrived there from the West, though I'm not sure of the timescale. The same is true of Tehran in Iran, or so I'm told. The Germans occupied it in WW1. This is all per Wikipedia, but likely not controversial:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rostov-on-Don
The architecture is beautiful and it looks worth a visit. Here is an image:

German Occupation
In the Second World War, the Germany Army Group South occupied Rostov briefly from 19 November to 2 December 1941. No atrocities are allged at this time. The Army under von Rundstedt retreated against Hitler's orders, which led to Rundstedt being replaced as commander by General Erich von Manstein, who was later tried under English law in a famous trial that refuted many allegations against the Wehrmacht. The town was reoccupied by the Germans for around seven months between 23 July 1942 to 14 February 1943. This is when the killing of Jews is alleged to have occurred among whom Spielrein and her daughters are included.

As Manstein was acquitted of knowledge of war crimes, the accusation of a Babi Yar scale killing of the Jewish population is usually attributed to Einsatzgruppe D under Otto Ohlendorf, which was attached to Army Group South. I will discuss the evidence against them in a further post.

(Incidentally, closer attention to the wartime history of these regions seems like a way forward for Holocaust studies and Revisionism alike.)

[EtienneSC]

Sabina Spielrein was alleged to have been killed in both the first and second German occupations of Rostov-on-Don. During the second and longer occupation, Jews were alleged in contemporary propaganda to have been drowned in a mine, gassed in gas chambers and electrocuted using a system of electrified wires. They are now said to have been shot in a ravine with some perhaps gassed in a gas van. I will cover the two periods separately:

First German Occupation in November-December 1941
Spielrein's biographer, Sabine Richebächer, explains:

"In the literature on Sabina Spielrein, it was long held that she was shot during the first occupation of Rostov along with other Jews in the Synagogue. That is not correct, as will be shown in the following." (Sabina Spielrein, 2005, page 357)

Richebächer does not explain the origins of this story or when and why it was amended. However, she refers to an article, Zum Tode von Sabina Spielrein (On the Death of Sabina Spielrein) by Burkhard Issel, in aGerman collection on the Historical Development of Psychology (Ed. Braun, Frankfurt, 2005) that she says cites sources from military history. The Synagogue still exists.

It would seem then, that E. Michael Jones was relying on this superseded literature in Degenerate Moderns.

Contrary to what I said above, the Soviets did make propaganda out of the German occupation of 1941. In press notes issued by Molotov, via the Soviet Embassy, on 7 January 1942, it was said:

"In Rostov-on-Don, Vitya Cherevichny, 15,-year-old pupil of a vocational school, was playing in a courtyard with his pigeons. German soldiers passing by began to take away the pigeons. The boy protested. The Germans took him out and shot him at the corner of 28th Avenue and First of May Street because he did not give them the pigeons. The Hitlerites stamped on the boy's face with their boots and deformed it beyond recognition. [.....]
The Nazi blood lust at Rostov gained wide notoriety. Having established themselves in Rostov for 10 days, the Germans murdered not only individuals and families, but in their bloody zeal annihilated scores and hundreds of residents, especially in the workers" districts of the city. Near the building of the railway administration, in broad daylight, the Germans shot down 48 persons with automatic rifles. On the sidewalk of a central street of Rostov, the Hitlerite murderers shot 60 persons. In the Armenian cemetery they killed 200 persons. Even after they were driven from Rostov by our troops, the German generals and officers publicly boasted that they would return for the specific activity of taking a bloody revenge on Rostov civilians who had actively helped to oust their sworn enemies from their native city."

See: https://phdn.org/archives/www.ess.uwe.a ... cities.htm This is fairly typical of the Soviet war propaganda of the period. It does not focus on Jews, though later propaganda sources did.

Second German Occupation July 1942 - February 1943
There are a number of sources that bear on this second period, including Mattogno's book on the Einsatzgruppen with its analysis of the Einsatzmeldungen (Mission reports) apparently found in Berlin at the end of the war, the main IMT and subsequent Einsatzgruppen trials at which Otto Ohlendorf testified and various web sources.

I will discuss this in a subsequent post here.

[zapper]

the "mission reports" are obvious fakes

My theory is Ms Spelrein, as well as many others, were housed in "village camps" throughout the Ukraine. After the war they changed their identities to escape the wrath of the newly anti-Semitic soviet government.

[stinky]

Sabina Spielrein was alleged to have been killed in both the first and second German occupations of Rostov-on-Don.

Spielrein is a 'holocaust' victim x 2
(((Witnesses))) saw her killed both times.

[EtienneSC]

the "mission reports" are obvious fakes

If they are fakes, I don't think they are obvious ones, as David Irving accepted them at his trial. There seems to be a report for Rostov from the SD, referring to 2,000 Jews killed.

Spielrein is a 'holocaust' victim x 2 (((Witnesses))) saw her killed both times.

I'm not aware of any witnesses who claim to have actually seen her killed. There seems to be one report of her in German custody, but I haven't verified this.

[EtienneSC]

Propaganda of the Second Occupation
Before proceeding, I will review the propaganda of the second German occupation of Rostov from July 1942. This indicates the quality of information from wartime Soviet and press sources. These were collected by BlackRabbitofInle, a former contributor to this site and blogger who seems to have gone silent of late. The Soviet Embassy in London reported in Soviet War News Weekly on March 18, 1943 about poisonings, shootings and deportations, not specifically of Jews:

AFTER the occupation of the town, Major-General Kittel organised the mass extermination of peaceful inhabitants. Many hundreds of citizens were forced to appear with their children at collection centres, bringing with them all their valuables and food for three days. At the centres they were put on lorries and driven outside the town. In the Botanical Garden and the Zoo Park the adults were shot and the children were poisoned with a strong poisonous substance which was put on their lips... According to incomplete figures the Germans shot or poisoned 15,000-18,000 people...

Under threat of shooting, they deported many Rostov people to slave labour in Germany. By order of the commandant, all men between and 60 and women between 15 and 50 were registered. Their passports were taken away. They then assembled at the centres. Under threat of shooting they were put into wagons and deported to the west like cattle. Many thousands of Soviet people were sent to Germany in this way. The remaining inhabitants of Rostov were condemned to starve to death or perish from disease.

Before they retreated under the blows of the Red Army, the Germans executed in the town prison 135 inhabitants of Rostov whom they had imprisoned. Before the execution they subjected their victims to terrible tortures. They cut off their noses, gouged out their eyes, cut off their arms and legs. After that they blew up the prison building, with all the Soviet citizens imprisoned there. In the prison yard, 1,154 dead bodies were found, including 122 bodies of women and 57 bodies of children...

Source: https://rodoh.info/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=1684&hilit=rostov

The Jewish Telegraph Agency (JTA) reported on January 10, 1943 on executions by electricity:

As the Russian Army advances toward Rostov, the Nazi military authorities there have started mass-executions–by electricity – of Jews in the city, Major Krasotkin, a Russian commander, reported today. The executions are carried out in one of the buildings on Engels Street, in Rostov, the Russian commander stated. Jewish families, including persons of all ages, are brought to this building where they are electrocuted, German war prisoners captured by Major Krasotkin’s troops reported.

Source: https://www.jta.org/1943/01/10/archive/mass-executions-of-jews-by-nazis-in-rostov-and-on-stalingrad-front#ixzz2wWsXw19J This links to a copy of the original press release. The fascination with electricity is typical of the era prior to widespread electrification. And on 24 February 1943, the JTA reports on the torture, burning, burying alive, electrocution, poisoning and shooting of Jews:

Thousands of Jews were among an estimated 20,000 persons murdered during the Nazi occupation of Rostov, the Moscow radio declared last night, quoting a letter sent to Premier Stalin by the citizens of Rostov. The Jews were tortured to death, burned, buried alive and electrocuted, the broadcast said. Even small children and women were not spared.

In Remontnoye, in the Rostov district, which was wrested from the Germans only a few days ago, one correspondent was told how the Nazis placed the entire Jewish population of the town, mainly refugees who had fled from the Ukraine, in a specially constructed barbed-wire enclosure at the out-skirts of the town. Scores of old men, women and children were forced to walk over strands of the wire which had been electrified and were electrocuted on the spot. When some of the prisoners asked for something to drink, they were given poisoned water, which killed most of them. Those who still survived were machine-gunned. In Remontnoye the Nazi score was 300 dead.

And on 21 July 1943, the JTA reported drownings:

In the town of Shackty, which is a few miles north-east of Rostov, the advancing Red Army found the corpses of 30000 Jews who had been drowned in flooded coal mines by the fleeing Nazis, the commission’s report states.

Roberto Muehlenkamp of HC was involved in this discussion, which apparently followed a dispute about a plaque reported by the BBC in 2012: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16697485 The BBC article cites figures of 15,000 to 27,000 Jews killed from the Russian-Jewish sources and Yad Vashem. In my experience, BBC journalists do not do much to verify sources in this area. The contemporary reports all have the lurid tone of the propaganda of the time.

Spielrein's biographer Richebächer comments:

"There are very different estimates of the number of Jewish people murdered in Rostov. The figure of 2,000 Jews that was given in the SD report is certainly too low." (Sabina Spielrein, page 359)

She also refers to NKVD killings of suspected collaborators. In general, she is cautious and diligent in tracking down sources, but does not diverge from reliance on the "Auschwitz generation"'s assumptions. I have yet to track down all her sources. She relies in part on a statement by Otto Ohlendorf, whom l will discuss in a further post.

[stinky]

Spielrein is a 'holocaust' victim x 2 (((Witnesses))) saw her killed both times.

I'm not aware of any witnesses who claim to have actually seen her killed. There seems to be one report of her in German custody, but I haven't verified this.

I was using a (((creative writing technique))).
Some things are true, even though they never actually happened.

[EtienneSC]

Otto Ohlendorf's Testimony on Einsatzgruppe D
Sabina' Spielrein's biographer, Sabine Richebächer, cites the following sworn statement by the head of Einsatzgruppe D, Otto Ohlendorf, in her chapter on Spielrein's death:
https://www.ns-archiv.de/einsatzgruppen/ohlendorf/eidesstattliche-erklaerung-1.php (5 November 1945)
The same website also cites Ohlendorf's later statement, presumably for the 1947 Einsatzgruppen trial:
https://www.ns-archiv.de/einsatzgruppen/ohlendorf/eidesstattliche-erklaerung-2.php (24 April 1947).
Ohlendorf was an SS General who commanded Einsatzgruppe D in South Russia from the start of hostilities in 1941 to June 1942. He left to work at the RSHA in Berlin shortly prior to the occupation of Rostov during which Spielrein appears to have died.
Ohlendorf's testimony at the IMT on the morning of 3 January 1946 was recently put on the internet by the Robert Jackson Center:

Ohlendorf's morning testimony at the trial was mainly taken under questioning by Colonel John Amen, who was also responsible for the examination of Rudolf Hoess that involved false statements made after torture and presumably under duress. There is some further questioning by the Russian prosecutor and judges. Ohlendorf replies in German. There is an English version here that also includes the afternoon testimony:
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/01-03-46.asp

In his morning testimony, Ohlendorf makes some suspicious statements. He confirms the existence of gas vans and the authenticity of the letter on these between Becker and Rauff that was introduced in evidence at the IMT. He explains that he was aware of a Hitler order communicated by Himmler to kill Jews. He describes the famous "Commissar order" as being to kill Jews and Soviet Commissars, when it is now said that the order was to kill Jewish Soviet Commissars (see Hilberg's testimony in the 1985 Zundel trial). At the Manstein trial, this was said to be a dead letter. Ohlendorf makes some statements to implicate those on trial that are convenient for the prosecution, suggesting co-operation. He describes how mass killings of Jews were organised: those to be killed were gathered together with the help of Jewish elders' councils. The decision as to who was Jewish or not was taken by the council. Presumably these councils would soon have become suspicious. Killings were in ravines. This is a common theme between Rostov and Babi Yar in Kiev. He personally attended two such executions. He agrees that the figures of 90,000 killed attributed to Einsatzgruppe D was communicated to him (he is at pains to avoid saying that it is accurate, but simply that it was reported to him). He confirms that it was reported on to others.

Unless we are prepared to accept all these statements, it sounds like Ohlendorf is an unreliable witness. Like Hoess, he often replies "Jawohl" to Amen's questions, though at times he adds detail to open questions and gives factual information. It seems that he is a broken man, saying what his captors require of him. If so, it did him little good in the end, as he was condemned to death in 1948 after the Einsatzgruppen trial and executed in 1951.

Amongst other sources, Richebächer also cites a recent book by Andrej Angrick, Besatzungpolitik und Massemord: die Einsatzgruppe D 1941-1945 (Occupation Policy and Mass Murder, 2005). It will be interesting to compare this (and another recent book by Angrick on Operation 1005) with Mattogno's views.

[EtienneSC]

Spielrein's biographer, Richebächer, cites several sources in her account of Spielrein's death that I have yet to review on this thread. These are:

- An interview with Nina Snitkowa (which I have yet to locate)
- Some testimony from the trial of Seetzen (commander of Einsatzkommando 10a) in Munich in the 1965-66
- Besatzungpolitik und Massenmord by Andrej Angrick (2003, book version of an earlier thesis)
- "Zum Tode Sabina Spielreins" (On Sabina Spielrein's death), by Burkhard Issel, an article in Beiträge sur Geschichte der Psychologie 19 (Frankfurt, Lang, 2003).

In this post, I will look at the sources and conclusions in Issel's article. This article was key in moving the presumed date of Spielrein's death from 1941 to 1942.

Issel's article on Spielrein's death
Issel notes that there are scant sources for Spielrein's life after her decision to return to Soviet Russia in 1923. She sent no scholarly articles abroad after 1931. There is an absence of correspondence from the 1930s and the circumstances of her death remained "mysterious" until the 1980s (arguably they still are). The state of the sources is "catastrophic" (page 198). However, German and Swiss scholars have sought to improve this situation and important contacts have been made with Russia for the purpose. Rostov was "largely devastated" during the Second World War, with its Archives and documents that could have shed light on Spielrein destroyed (page 198). She is recorded in a list of Russian psychotherapists in 1937, but her life "seems to end in nothing" (page 196).

Origins of the 1941 date
This situation changed in 1983 when a Swedish researcher, Magnus Ljunggren, published a newspaper article (Expressen, 15 July 1983) that included an interview with Sabina Spielrein's niece, Menicha Spielrein. After this, sources began to report her date of death as 1941 and that she "was shot, with her daughters, as a Jewess by the Germans who had conquered Rostov" (page 197). Later biographical sources relied on this and stated as fact:

"Sabina Spielrein was last seen with both her daughters in a train of Jews that were driven through the streets of Rostov and finally shot by Nazis in the Synagogue." (page 198)

Subsequent books, including works by Mühlheimer and Stephan and essays by Wittgenstein and Volgger repeat this story. It seems likely then, that Jones too is repeating the story whose ultimate source is Ljunggren's interview with Menicha Spielrein in 1983.

Doubts about the 1941 date
Rostov was occupied twice by the Germans, briefly in 1941 and then for seven months in 1942-43. Ljundggren reports that "it was said" that all Jews were shot in the Synagogue during the first occupation. Issel doubts this. No direct eye-witnessses are cited and Menicha seems to be simply reporting second-hand reports and rumours. There is a conflict between the report of Jews being driven through the town to a building and those that say they assembled and were taken away in lorries.

The first occupation lasted only a few days before the Germans retreated to Taganrog for the winter. A unit of Einsatzgruppe D (Sonderkommando 10a) was present in the town, but its reports make no reference to this event and they seem to have been occupied with other activities. Hence Issel thinks a date in the second occupation (1942-February 1943) is "more probable" (page 199). It here emerges that he has made contact with Andrej Angrick, the leading (non-revisionist) scholar of the Einsatzgruppen, who concurs with his judgement. Issel is inclined to rely on Angrick's judgement, though he has also consulted the original German wartime documents and the published reminiscences of a German general.

There are two surviving reports from Sonderkommando 10a from Rostov in 1941. The unit was around 100 strong, of whom around 60 were present in Rostov. As said, the reports make no mention of executions of Jews. These reports were sent by courier or transmission to the RSHA, where they were rewritten (page 203n). 35 people were shot after a confrontation with an armed group.

Angrick's work is cited by Mattogno in his book on the Einsatzgruppen (Castle Hill, 2018), though only for the document collections that Angrick has published.

Evidence for 1942-43 as date of death
The first occupation of Rostov took several days fighting. The second occupation was costlier. There were three lines of defence including minefields. The NKVD had ensured that the streets were barricaded, with doors and windows secured and sandbagged and snipers placed on roofs. SS General Carell later said that "The struggle for the town centre was a merciless one." (page 202).

There is evidence of Jews being registered in August 1942 and an Elders' Council formed as required by Seetzen. The Jews in Rostov did not live in a quarter, but dispersed through the city. There is a report of 400 people being liquidated. There are reports of Jews being taken out of the city on lorries to the Snake ravine. Various figures are reported of executed Jews. There is a confession that mentions 1,000 people killed in three days in August 1942. The "Black Book" speaks of 15-16,000 Jews. Gerald Reitlinger mentions 18,000.

One of Spielrein's relatives has told Issel that he thinks 1942 is a more probable date for Sabina Spielrein's death and Angrick endorses this. Recent Russian books have moved to a presumed 1942 date of death. There is one additional source in them: an interview with Spielrein's in-law Nina Pawlowna. Issel himself concludes:

"In short, I too cannot say with any final assurance what happened to Sabina Spielrein and her two daughters and when." (page 207).

Nonetheless, it is "his conviction" that she died in a "world-historical massacre" (page 207). The surviving German records appear inconclusive. The Synagogue of Rostov still survives (though perhaps it has been rebuilt).

Rostov_Synagogue.jpg (12.73 KiB) Viewed 2399 times

A study of it might at least exclude the 1941 date, based on the shooting in a Synagogue story.

The broader question though, is that both dates might be wrong and the cause of Spielrein and her daughters' deaths could lie elsewhere.

Conclusion
There are three well-attested events in this period that involved the deaths of civilians in Rostov-on-Don. Firstly the initial German assault in November 1941. Secondly, the onslaught in July 1942 against a defended city in which civilians and military personnel were mixed; and thirdly the Soviet assault on the city in February 1943. In addition, there is the likely toll on civilian lives under the NKVD and Einsatzgruppe D.

In light of this, it seems arbitrary to assume with any high probability that Spielrein was killed as a Jew by Einsatzgruppe D, though it may nonetheless be true. It is noteworthy that the archives of the city were destroyed, but presumably they were later reconstructed for purposes of civil administration (e.g. property allocation, rent collection). Perhaps then, more information will still be forthcoming.

This may be an instance of other disciplines placing undue reliance on the findings of Holocaust Studies. A comparison of Mattogno's work with that of Angrick might shed more light on this.