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Einsatzgruppen
Mobile Killing
Units
Letter From Hitler to Adolf Gemlich,
September 16, 1919:
Anti-Semitism as a political movement should not and cannot be
determined by factors of sentiment, but only by the recognition of
the facts. These are the facts:
To begin with, Jewry is unqualifiedly a racial association and not a
religious association. . . . Its influence will bring about the racial
tuberculosis of the people.
Hence it follows: Anti-Semitism on purely emotional grounds will
find its ultimate expression in the form of pogroms. Rational antisemitism, however, must lead to a systematic legal opposition and
elimination of the special privileges which Jews hold, in contrast
to the other aliens living among us (aliens' legislation). Its final
objective must unswervingly be the removal of the Jews
altogether. Only a government of national vitality is capable of
doing both, and never a government of national impotence.
Jewish Communities in Europe Before the
Nazi Rise to Power
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Germany
France
Great Britain
Switzerland
Italy
Austria
Czechoslovakia
Poland
Soviet Union
Hungary
Romania
Denmark
525,000
330,000
385,000
18,000
42,500
185,000
357,000
3,325,000
3,020,000
401,000
757,000
7,800
.8% of population
.9%
.8%
.4%
1%
2.8%
2.4%
10.3%
1.8%
4.9%
4.2%
.2%
Einsatzgruppen
• Who?
• Squads of German SS
and police personnel
• Established by Reinhard
Heydrich
Einsatzgruppen
• What?
- Murdered over one million Jews and others
- usually through mass shootings
- Liquidate the politically and racially undesirable
• When?
- Beginning in June 1941
• Where?
- During the German invasion of the Soviet Union
(Operation Barbarossa)
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Part of a report
detailing murder of
Jews in the Nazioccupied Baltic
states and White
Russia by
Einsatzgruppe A,
submitted February
1, 1942. There were
four such
Einsatzgruppen
which carried out
the massacres of
Jews in the Soviet
Union.
Einsatzgruppen
• Process
1. Often used local collaborators
* Hungarian and Romanian Soldiers
* local police and others
2. Came directly to the home communities of the Jews
3. Initially only took men--- extents to all (men, women,
and children)
4. Ditches/trenches dug
before transport
Jewish men are forced by
Waffen-SS troops and
SD officers to dig their
own grave before being
executed
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View of the ravine at Babi Yar circa 1944. On September 29-30, 1941,
more than 33,000 Jewish residents of Kiev were marched to this site
and systematically gunned down over the edge of the ravine
5. Transport Jews,
often by truck
Jews, on their way out of the city
of Kiev to the Babi Yar ravine, pass
corpses lying on the street.
(September 29, 1941)
Over one thousand Jews from the Ukrainian town of Lubny,
ordered to assemble for "resettlement," in an open field before
they were massacred by Einsatzgruppen. Lubny, Soviet Union,
October 16, 1941.
6. Gather the Jews
together- sometimes men
and women were
separated.
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Lubny, Soviet Union
A young mother and
her two children sit
among a large group of
Jews from Lubny who
have been assembled
for mass execution on
October 16, 1941.
Ukrainian Jews who were forced to undress before they were
massacred by Einsatzgruppe detachments.
7. Take all
valuables/clothing
Members of a
Lithuanian
militia unit force
a group
of Jewish women
from Panevezys
to undress
before their
execution in the
Pajuoste Forest.
German police and
Ukrainian collaborators
in civilian clothes look
on as Jewish women are
forced to undress before
their execution
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8. Shoot all of the Jews,
bury their bodies in mass
graves
The execution of
civilians at an
unidentified location
in the Germanoccupied eastern
territories. (June 22,
1941 - 1943)
Kovno Lituania
Members of an
Einsatzkommando (mobile
killing squad) before shooting
a Jewish youth. The boy's
murdered family lies in front
of him; the men to the left are
ethnic Germans aiding the
squad. Slarow, Soviet Union,
July 4, 1941.
German soldiers of the
Waffen-SS and the Reich
Labor Service look on as a
member of Einsatzgruppe
D prepares to shoot a
Ukrainian Jew kneeling on
the edge of a mass grave
filled with corpses. (1942)
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Men with an unidentified unit execute a
group of Soviet civilians kneeling by the
side of a mass grave. (June 22 September 1941
Killing of Jews at
Ivangorod, Ukraine, 1942
A German policeman shoots
individual Jewish women
who remain alive in the
ravine after a mass execution
of Jews from the Mizocz
ghetto. (October 14, 1942
German police look through the
clothing of people killed during a
shooting action, presumably at
Babi Yar. (Sep 29-30, 1941)
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A member of an Einsatzgruppe speaks
with two women at the top of what is
presumably the ravine at Babi Yar. Soviet
POWs in the ravine are busy exhuming
the bodies of the thousands of Jews,
Gypsies, and Soviet POWs killed there in
the previous two years. (August 19, 1943)
The remains of shoes and clothing of
people killed in the ravine at Babi Yar.
(Circa 1944)
Einsatzgruppen
• The End
- Methods proved to be inefficient and
- psychologically burdensome to the killers
• Need a “final solution”
Why was the world
Skeptical?
• We had been lied to about German atrocities in
Belgium during WWI.
• Germany was too civilized to allow such a thing
to happen.
• WWII temporarily masked the testimony of
eyewitnesses and photographic evidence.
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