707th German Infantry

 

Guest Book of the 707th Infantry Division – With Signatures of Nazi Commanders

Date: September 16, 1941 – 1943

Location: Minsk, Belarus

Medium: Signed guest book

Collection: Yavneh Klos Collection, Holocaust Archive 

This guest book from the 707th Infantry Division, known for its role in Holocaust atrocities in Belarus, includes signatures of key Nazi military and SS leaders. Among them: Heinz Guderian, Wilhelm Kube, Max von Schenckendorff, and Spanish Blue Division officers. A chilling artifact of complicity, it documents visits from high-ranking officials during the division’s mass murder of Jews and partisans in 1941–42.

Guest Book of the WWII German 707th Infanterie Division

Kai Wittke
Dr. Yavneh
LNCS-H396-003
17 March 2025

This guest book contains signatures from officers in the 707th Infanterie Division of the Nazi German Wehrmacht. There are approximately 40–50 signatures across 19 pages in this octavo faux-leather-bound volume, with the first page dated “Minsk, 16 Sept. 1941.”

The 707th Infantry Division was a unit of the Nazi German Army, also known as the Wehrmacht, during World War II. Formed in May 1941, the division was transferred to the Eastern Front in August 1941, where it operated mainly in the rear of Army Group Centre. Officially designated for “security and anti-partisan operations,” the division’s activities were in fact centered on identifying and eliminating those deemed enemies of the Nazi state—including large numbers of civilians.

Due to its operations and ideology, the 707th soon gained a more sinister title: the 707th Security Division. It was one of the few Wehrmacht units directly involved in the Holocaust, participating in mass atrocities. Between the fall and winter of 1941–1942, the division was responsible for the murder of more than 10,000 Belarusian Jews, making it one of Nazi Germany’s most infamous military formations.

The guest book itself is a chilling artifact. Signed on September 16, 1941, in Minsk, Belarus, it includes the names, ranks, and titles of high-ranking officers present during these operations. It stands as a witness to their complicity—if not direct command—in crimes against humanity. That the Red Army destroyed the 707th Infantry Division in June 1944 offers a measure of historical closure, but the atrocities committed by the division remain well-documented in Holocaust and military scholarship.

The guest book offers a rare primary source: a physical record of perpetrators involved in the early phase of the “War of Annihilation” (Vernichtungskrieg). It also complements other key documents from the Holocaust Witnessed exhibit, such as correspondence from Hans Heinrich Lammers and Franz von Papen, by showing how bureaucracy, ideology, and military might converged in the machinery of genocide.

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Works Cited

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Heer, Hannes, and Jane Caplan. “The Difficulty of Ending a War: Reactions to the Exhibition ‘War of Extermination: Crimes of the Wehrmacht 1941 to 1944.’” History Workshop Journal, no. 46, 1998, pp. 187–203. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4289586. Accessed 17 Mar. 2025.

Shepherd, Ben. “The Clean Wehrmacht, the War of Extermination, and Beyond.” The Historical Journal, vol. 52, no. 2, 2009, pp. 455–73. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40264179. Accessed 17 Mar. 2025.